May 6, 2020
As a citizen, retiree, and a stockholder in many companies, I find the current proliferation of so many meaningless stockholder proposals as an appalling effort by a few self-centered opportunists to gain their own 15 minutes of fame by pretending to be civic-minded but at the same time wasting everyone's time and focus with their personal antics and agendas better suited for their bridge games or homeowners associations -- not respectable Fortune 500 companies trying to get by in these tough times. Yet, companies are required to humor and kow-tow to these silly people by wasting valuable company time and money publicizing their proposals in their annual proxy statements. I think we need to do away with these proposals for now, or at least do what is necessary to "flatten the curve" of this growing tsunami of silly proposals. I say raise up the minimum amount of money needed to $100K or 20,000 shares. This way, only people with real skin in the game can ask companies to print these proposals in their proxy statements. Or else, stockholders should have to pay the costs of putting these proposals in their proxies. That would surely "flatten the curve'. If these so called do-gooders had to spend their own dime, I'll bet you wouldn't have so many silly proposals floating around from company to company. To be more competitive in the marketplace, we ought to put this stockholder proposal rule on permanent hiatus, not to be returned to until the economy can again support this kind of socialistic nonsense. That surely is not now due to the Corona virus and the economic ravages of the COVID 19.