A Modest Proposal

I've been thinking about corporate malfeasance lately.  It's not like misbehaving corporations are a new thing, the Baby Boomers didn't invent corporate weasels.  They did, however, raise corporate weasel-ism to a high art.  And with the incredibly regressive and punitive laissez-faire Federal policies of the past thirty years things are as bad as I've been alive to see them.

Time was, back in the bad old days of the 50's, 60's and 70's, corporations and the men who ran them seemed to understand that we really were all in this together.  You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family, and America is one huge extended family.  Sure, in the 50's the government ran the corporations as much as the CEOs did - talk about picking winners and losers - but there wasn't the zero-sum mentality that pervades modern American business.

The problem today, as I see it, is that corporations and the weasels who run them hide behind anonymity.  Sure, you'd probably recognize Mark Zuckerberg, maybe Marissa Mayer, but they're names in the news right now.  Who's the CEO of Goldman Sachs?  Of Fannie Mae?  Of Monsanto? Of Archer Daniels Midland?  Of Valero?  What about the most ubiquitous company in the country, a place you can't outrun no matter how hard you try - for God's sake, who runs Wal-Mart?  Do you know?  His name is Michael T. Duke.  Could you pick him out of a police lineup if he punched you square in the face?  Of course you can't, he's anonymous on purpose, he doesn't want you to know who he is.  But he makes decisions every day that directly affect what you can buy with your meager wages, and how much of it you can afford.
   See?  This is a problem.  The people making the most important decisions for us these days are not our elected officials.  Not even close.  The people who run corporations, from the CEO on down, sit behind their desks comfortable in their anonymity, assured that no matter how bad their decisions are, they'll never really be held accountable, and they'll always get paid more next year.  That's the problem, and it needs to stop.

So here's my modest proposal:  we need to change the laws regarding forming corporations and make the C-level executives and every Board member individually and personally liable for any malfeasance, crime, fraud, or abuse committed by the corporations. 

It's that simple.  And that difficult.  No more hiding behind a piece of paper on file in a cabinet in an office in Delaware.  So if, say, BP 'accidentally' spills another hundred million gallons of oil somewhere, their CEO will be personally fiscally and criminally liable.  So will all the board members.  So will everyone who approved the project and carries a title.
   The immediate affect of this would be very frightening for every CEO.  We'd see a rash of resignations, for sure.  Weasels hate more than anything being held accountable.  But then we'd get men and women in those jobs who actually earn their salaries instead of stealing them.  We'd have more measured progress, sure, but we'd have far more responsible progress.  And we'd have companies who know for a fact that they're in it together with us.

Do you want the privilege of doing business in the United States?  Do you want to earn the insane paycheck?  Do you want to sit in the big leather chair?  Do you want the private jets and drivers and country club memberships?  Then you'll need to prove you're committed to more than just a money grab. You need to put your ass on the line.