Where are the Biggest Crooks?

Tom Kando

Okay, so the government of the Southern California city of Bell is made up of crooks. City manager Rizzo and council members voted themselves annual salaries ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to one and a half million. Then, forced to retire by the scandal, they will enjoy annual pensions ranging from a couple of hundred thousand to over a million. Bell is a poor suburb of Los Angeles, with a population of 40,000 people and an annual budget of $14 million.

And every day, we hear about other similar malfeasance - State senators receiving fat per diems even when they are not at work. Public officials on school boards and in the court system enjoying salaries in excess of half a million dollars, and then in addition charging Las Vegas casino trips to their office account, i.e. to the tax payer. And so forth.

But here is what gets me:

In the same issue of the Sacramento Bee which reports on the above crookedness, I find an article about Mark Hurd, the recently fired CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Guess what his severance package is? $40 million!

There is a lot of thievery in society. Greed and dishonesty have become pandemic. But where do we find the most astronomical instances of greed? We focus a lot on the public sector and on politicians. Politicians are seen as the lowest form of human life, something out of which Jay Leno and other banal comedians get a lot of mileage.

But where is the outrage about the ten or hundred times greater money grabs in corporate America?

The President of my university makes almost $400,000, which aggravates the Professors’ Union. Big deal. Michele Obama spent a few thousand dollars on a Spanish holiday. Wooptido.

Meanwhile, in April, Goldman Sachs paid its bank staff $5 billion (yes, that’s billion, with a “B,” five thousand million) in bonuses for three months work.

Clearly, the public is angry. The public wants change. The public has been brainwashed into believing that the government/public sector is the problem, and that corporate America is the solution. People like Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Mitt Romney will save us (after buying their victories).

So here is my question:

Doesn’t anyone understand that, corrupt and dysfunctional as things may be now, a great right-wing victory in the Fall elections will make things infinitely worse?

“Change” is great, but change for what? Republicans offer tax cuts for the rich, cutbacks of the social safety net, escalation of the war in Afghanistan, more inequality, more privilege, more prisons to house the poor.

Two idioms come to mind, when seeing the direction in which groups like the Tea-Party want to go: Cutting off your nose to spite your face, and: jumping from the frying pan into the fire! leave comment here