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Hightower Lowdown
"Loyalty to country, always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it." -- Mark Twain
In This Issue
Sheriff Bush and his posse widen their range
The homeland rebels against the security act
Also in this issue:
July's Lowdown
Big biz wants to own the information superhighway while We the People bump along the backroads
In the 1970s, Lily Tomlin developed an iconic comic character she named Ernestine--a telephone clerk who took perverse pleasure from hectoring customers. Her character was a perfect portrayal of the arrogance of AT&T, the monopolistic telephone giant of that day. In one skit on on the TV show, Laugh-In, Tomlin had Ernestine delivering a TV pitch for the corporation:
"A gracious hello," she cheerfully began, speaking directly into the camera. "Here at the Phone Company, we handle 84 billion calls a year. So, we realize that every so often, you can't get an operator, or for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make. We don't care!"
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Bush's snow job
John W. Snow was the Big Kahuna of CSX corporation, one of the nation’s largest railroads, before being tapped by George W. to be Treasury Secretary, our government’s top economic position.
Snow was touted by Bush for his ethics. It seems that he had been quite outspoken in his condemnation of the CEOs of Enron, WorldCom, and other ethically challenged execs. The White House propaganda machine exclaimed that Mr. Pure-as-the-Driven-Snow is so ethical that he agreed to forgo a $15 million payoff that he had written into his CSX contract.
Before we heap hosannas on him, however, let’s note a very special favor he’s getting from CSX that neither he nor the White House have mentioned: his pension. As CEO, Snow cut back on the pensions of CSX retirees, but he took very good care of himself.
He’ll get credit for 44 years of work at CSX, even though he was only there for 25. His benefits will be based not just on his salary (the rule for regular workers), but also on his bonuses and on the value of 250,000 shares of stock the board gave him. This means he’ll collect $2.5 million a year, every year, until he dies.
All this for a CEO who was no great shakes. In the past five years, while his pay rose 69%, CSX’s stock price fell 53%.
John is neither managerially nor ethically apt—he’s just another Bush Snow job.