CEOs Make Me Want To Have A Nasty Catharsis...(Puke)

So, as I've mentioned before, I love sports. Playing, watching, reading, keeping stats, etc. My favorite writer is Bill Simmons...aka: The Sports Guy. He writes about sports, obviuosly, but does so with creativity and wit. One of my favorite things he has come up with is the slightly racist group called The Reggie Cleveland All-Stars, caucasion athletes who sound like they have black names. Slightly racist, pretty funny. He also writes about pop-culture...ie The Hills, and The Road-Rules Real-World Challenge which he has proposed to take over the slot of the 4th major American sport...from hockey.
My second favorite sports writer is Gregg Easterbrook...aka: Tuesday Morning Quarterback, who I have quoted on my blog before. Every Tuesday he writes a very in depth article about what happened the previous weekend in football, mostly pro, and some college. He also has a Christmas Creep section where fans get to write in about when they see Christmas things, ie sales and decorations in stores, way too early...As in September and October when they should be focused on Halloween. Possibly because I'm Jewish, this has always been a pet peave of mine, and I find it hilarious Easterbrook has his fans writing in about it. He also delves into astronomy a lot, and other serious topics such as economy and politics.
This week a section of Easterbrook's article was on CEOs and their spoiledness and hypocrasy. If everything Easterbrook wrote about CEOs is true, their actions made me soooooo angry I had to post this part of his article. It is long but worth reading all of it. Here it is:

The Corporate Security Hustle: When they come to Washington again Tuesday to appeal for subsidies, the Detroit automaker CEOs are likely to travel by Greyhound, if not hitchhiking. What possible excuse did they have to fly in private jets the first time? "Like many corporations, [the Big Three] have policies requiring their CEOs to travel in private jets for safety," CNN reported. Safety? That cannot mean crash safety -- U.S. commercial airline fatality rates are so phenomenally low that you're safer aboard a big commercial jet in bad weather than you are riding a bicycle in the park on a sunny day. By "safety," corporations mean security from terrorism: not being aboard a commercial airliner that might be hijacked. General Motors "requires top executives to fly on company planes for their security," the Washington Post added. But the odds a person will board a jetliner that is hijacked are substantially lower than the odds any given person will drown, yet no big companies forbid their CEOs to swim. Even taking into account the horror of 9/11, over the past decade the chance that a regularly scheduled U.S. airline departure would be involved in a terrorism incident was about one in 25 million, while the chance of being struck by lighting in the same period was about one in 700,000. So do corporations require their CEOs to wear lightning rods?
The real reason CEOs demand private jets is to stroke their egos. Private jet travel is luxurious, there's no waiting in line with the unwashed, no crowding on the plane, no security checks. At most airports a limo can drive right up to the door of a private jet parked in the general-aviation area. Security is the cover story for CEO airborne luxury. No corporate leader needs to fly a private jet to be safe. They do so to feel important and lord over others. The suspicious "requirement" that CEOs "must" travel by private jet is usually imposed by boards of directors composed largely of people who are themselves CEOs, and who know that inventing a private jet rule at one company creates a justification for the same luxury at their own companies. If 9/11 had never occurred, CEOs would be saying, "I must fly in a luxury private jet for protection against climate change."
Security is being used as the cover story for all manner of CEO perquisites, including armored chauffeur-driven SUVs, that have little to do with protection of life and everything to do with granting CEOs a visiting royalty treatment at the expense of shareholders and workers. Recently Joann Lublin of the Wall Street Journal reported Occidental Petroleum spent about $775,000 in 2007 on security for its CEO, much of this money for bodyguards. No CEO actually needs bodyguards, but the guards lend an illusion the CEO is some kind of world leader. ("Make way, make way, VIP coming through.") The Journal reported Oracle spent about $1.7 million in 2007 on bodyguards and other security for CEO Larry Ellison, while Limited Brands spent about $1.2 million to protect its CEO. Macy's approved $87,000 last year for CEO Terry Lundgren for "a specially equipped SUV driven by a security professional for his commute and his personal use." Driver, take me to the golf course, where I will boldly play a round of golf in defiance of these terrorists.
It may well be there is an inverse relationship between top-management pay and corporate success -- the more CEOs are overpaid and treated like little kings, the less they care about the real-world concerns of shareholders, workers, and most of all, customers. Corporate America has experienced meltdown after meltdown in the past decade -- the very period in which CEO pay has skyrocketed and costly luxuries such as private jets have become considered by top management as necessities. The CEO can't stand in line at the airport like everyone else, the CEO is a little king! Perhaps the overpay and the perks are causative factors in the meltdowns.
Government officials are now also using security to justify spending that could never pass the giggle test otherwise. The independent Project on Government Procurement recently reported that the Air Force wants to divert $16.2 million from counter-terrorism funds to build personal comfort "capsules" for senior officers traveling in its transport planes. Most military transport aircraft have austere seating, plus it's much louder inside than in a commercial airliner. But there's a difference between adding decent seats for soldiers and providing luxury for generals -- the latter is what the Air Force wants. The Project on Government Procurement reports the Air Force has already spent $2.7 million building the first luxury capsule, a unit that can be loaded into the open area of a cargo plane: it has leather chairs, a 37-inch flat screen television and other luxo touches. Supposedly, generals need more comfort in order to focus their minds on fighting terrorism.

Later he goes on about AIG CEO Edward Liddy:
Note 2: AIG, which has been shoveled $152 billion of your children's money without accountability, announced last week that new CEO Edward Liddy will work for $1 a year and receive no bonus. Sounds good, and media reports were favorable. But buried in the announcement is that Liddy is also receiving stock ("equity grants"). The announcement mysteriously does not say how much. With AIG selling for $2 a share -- the strike price of the grant would be the price when awarded -- even if the shares rose only to $5, a large block of stock acquired at $2 could be quite valuable. So how come AIG doesn't disclose how much taxpayer-subsidized stock its CEO is pocketing?
Also buried: Liddy "may be eligible for a special bonus for extraordinary performance." Have you ever read anything more transparently phony? A good guess is that no matter how the current CEO does, the board will find he deserves a "special bonus" that won't be announced until media attention has shifted to whatever the next scandal is. Sadly, reader Melanie Cleten of Providence, R.I., notes, "AIG's management has tricked taxpayers into handing the company $152 billion. What other corporate executives in history have brought in so much cash so quickly? Maybe they do deserve bonuses, unless we are fools." She leaves it there.