July 9, 2002
What a Riot!
Bush Comes out for 'Corporate Responsibility'!!
What a presentation! On AOL's greeting window we have a picture of Bush giving his speech about "corporate responsibility" in front of a background that says "corporate responsibility" all over it. And what a nice suit he has on!One thing you can always say for Bush, he wears fabulous suits. He's up there with David Letterman and Jay Leno when it comes to being a snappy dresser. GW Bush coming out for "corporate responsibility" is a little too ridiculous though. I feel sorry for the stooge that buys that line.
An AP story posted on Yahoo!, however, seems determined to try.
After telling us that "Bush called for stiff new penalties for corporate corruption," the story goes on to bullet-point these tough proposals. What velvety soft verbs this cowboy uses when telling us how tough he's going to be on corporate crime! HA!
_Enhance the ability of the Securities and Exchange Commission ( news - web sites) to freeze improper payments to corporate executives while a company is under investigation.
_Call for a stronger SEC — one with 100 new enforcement officers, plus more investigators and an extra $100 million to work with. Earlier this year, the White House proposed a "zero-growth" budget for the SEC that calls for staff reductions in securities fraud investigations.
_Persuade publicly traded companies to prevent corporate officers from receiving loans from their own companies.
_Ask stock markets to require that a majority of a company's directors — and all members of the company's audit, nominating and compensation committees — have no material relationship with the company so that they are truly independent.In this "bold initiative" we find the same underlying philosophy that guided Bush's "voluntary" environmental protection laws in Texas, the most polluted state in the U.S.
Of course if you make it voluntary for corporations to clean up their own pollution, they will, because basically they're a really nice bunch of folks. And same with these uh-nishyatives to clean up corporate crime. They're bound to clean up that corruption!
Yo George! Great to see you really looking out for the little guy! You surprise me, I didn't expect you to get so tough on the guys that gave you millions and millions of dollars to get you elected so you could free them to steal and pollute freely.
-- By David Cogswell