Letters to the editor are a high-profile way to express your opinion and educate your fellow citizens. Below is a sample letter, which may be useful as a guide. But we encourage you to cite local examples or relevant articles in your local paper.

To the editor:

As Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) recently stated to Congress, stock options are “the 800-pound gorilla that has yet to be caged by corporate reform.” Currently, a loophole the size of the California High Tech industry allows stock options to remain unexpensed and thus invisible in corporate financial records.

While corporations don’t have to deduct stock options from the company books, they can conveniently claim them as a tax deduction when reporting to the IRS. As a result, greedy executives continue to cash out on millions of dollars of unexpensed stock options, which inflates company earnings, reduces corporate taxes, and misleads investors. Unexpensed options were a major factor in the recent corporate scandals. Have we not learned our lesson?

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, investing authority Warren Buffet, former SEC chief accountant Lynn Turner, and Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, among other notable economists, all support the practice of expensing options publicly. In order to restore confidence in American business, we must begin by restoring honest and accurate accounting standards. That means expensing options.

See "Nine Steps to a Successful Letter to the Editor"