April 28, 2012
Dear members of the Securities and Exchange Commission:
I am writing to urge the SEC to issue a rule requiring publicly traded corporations to publicly disclose all their political spending.
Both shareholders and the public must be fully informed as to how much the corporation spends on politics and which candidates are being promoted or attacked. Disclosures should be posted promptly on the SEC's web site.
I and millions of other concerned citizens have rejected the SCOTUS ruling that equates corporate entities with personhood; it defies the very intent of our Constitution. That ruling creates a de facto existence of a form of life and citizenship that has never existed before and should never have been allowed to exist. That form is embodied in the real live human beings that are allowed to operate without accountability behind the the invisible screen that a corporation provides - with all the benefits and freedoms normally reserved for all men and women. That is subversive to so many core principles we ostensibly stand for. Without accountability and transparency with regard to legal-behavior questions, these persons have been endowed with immunity to behave outside the constraints that every other human-being citizen must operate within.
You at the SEC can and should exercise your rightful power to require that all corporations publish and make public all transactions that affect our political process. If you continue to allow them to operate behind the scenes, secretively - then YOU are complicit with this subversion. We implore you to take the higher ground and make a stand to defend the principles that helped create the very foundation of our freedoms and rights.
Shine light in the shadows. Do your part to restore our Constitutional Republic.
Thank you for considering my comment.
Sincerely,
Greg Covington