SEC Declares Shareholder 'Input' a Dangerous Form of 'Interference,' Demands More Corporate Hand-Wringing

Washington, D.C. — In a bold move to streamline corporate decision-making and ensure maximum executive comfort, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced a groundbreaking initiative to eliminate the pesky 'shareholder proposal' process. Sources close to the SEC, who spoke on condition of anonymity while polishing their yachts, confirmed that these 'activist' proposals — often advocating for trivialities like environmental stewardship or diversity in leadership — have become an 'unacceptable burden' on corporate behemoths. 'Frankly,' explained an unnamed SEC official, 'these annual pleas for basic human decency and planetary survival were just creating too much paperwork. Our boards are already incredibly busy ensuring quarterly profits and maximizing golden parachutes; they simply don't have the bandwidth for shareholders to suggest, you know, *anything*.' The new policy, lauded by industry titans as a 'return to sanity,' will effectively silence the irritating drone of investors demanding things like 'accountability' or 'not poisoning local water supplies.' Critics, who are presumably communists or at least mildly inconvenienced by widespread corporate malfeasance, suggested this might reduce corporate transparency. However, the SEC quickly assuaged these fears, clarifying that corporations will still provide 'robust' annual reports, largely consisting of stock photos of diverse, smiling employees and carefully curated infographics showing year-over-year growth in 'stakeholder engagement initiatives' that somehow never lead to actual engagement.