Corporate Profits

Can you tell the difference between OBSCENE and FAIR compensation?

America's Highest Paid CEOs in 2011
source:  http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-compensation-11_land.html
1 yr Rank	Name	Company	1 yr pay per hr	5 yr pay per hr	PLUS accumulated shares owned
1	Stephen J Hemsley	UnitedHealth Group	$49,983	$   11,811	$         111,400,000
2	Edward A Mueller	Qwest Communications	$32,255	$    7,353	$          36,300,000
3	Robert A Iger	Walt Disney	$26,137	$   14,420	$          43,400,000
4	George Paz	Express Scripts	$25,255	$    9,825	$          79,500,000
5	Lew Frankfort	Coach	$24,240	$   13,517	$         133,900,000
6	Ralph Lauren	Polo Ralph Lauren	$21,078	$   15,221	$      3,417,800,000
7	John C Martin	Gilead Sciences	$20,941	$   20,024	$          76,800,000
8	James T Hackett	Anadarko Petroleum	$19,088	$    9,547	$          24,600,000
9	John T Chambers	Cisco Systems	$18,578	$   16,700	$          58,000,000
10	Ivan G Seidenberg	Verizon Commun	$18,015	$   12,764	$          76,500,000
5 yr Rank	Name	Company	1 yr pay per hr	5 yr pay per hr	PLUS accumulated shares owned
1	Lawrence J Ellison	Oracle	$  4,020	$   94,190	$    33,978,600,000
2	Steven P Jobs	Apple	$       -	$   64,827	$      1,833,900,000
3	Aubrey K McClendon	Chesapeake Energy	$  8,115	$   30,100	$          98,300,000
4	John B Hess	Hess	$  4,995	$   22,236	$         733,900,000
5	John C Martin	Gilead Sciences	$20,941	$   20,024	$          76,800,000
6	Michael D Watford	Ultra Petroleum	$14,723	$   19,726	$         156,600,000
7	William R Berkley	WR Berkley	$  9,978	$   19,611	$         738,800,000
8	David C Novak	Yum Brands	$14,544	$   19,596	$          13,600,000
9	H Lawrence Culp Jr	Danaher	$  8,686	$   19,400	$          61,600,000
10	Richard C Adkerson	Freeport Copper	$12,400	$   17,559	$         172,800,000
Shares Rank	Name	Company	1 yr pay per hr	5 yr pay per hr	PLUS accumulated shares owned
1	Warren E Buffett	Berkshire Hathaway	$     221	$       148	$    47,824,300,000
2	Lawrence J Ellison	Oracle	$  4,020	$   94,190	$    33,978,600,000
3	Larry Page	Google	$       -		$    15,773,400,000
4	Jeffrey P Bezos	Amazon.com	$     875	$       668	$    14,262,200,000
5	Sheldon G Adelson	Las Vegas Sands	$  1,831	$    1,705	$    12,202,900,000
6	Steven A Ballmer	Microsoft	$     662	$       611	$      8,264,700,000
7	Harold G Hamm	Continental Resources	$  2,203	$    1,241	$      8,199,900,000
8	Richard D Kinder	Kinder Morgan	$       -	$         -	$      6,604,400,000
9	Charles W Ergen	DISH Network	$     392	$       619	$      5,605,500,000
10	K Rupert Murdoch	News Corp	$  7,451	$   10,574	$      5,325,800,000

List of demands

We Must Not Capitulate to Greed, Power or Apathy

1.         Affordable medical care for ALL

2.         Update the 14^th Amendment

3.         Habeas corpus for ALL restored

4.         Mandatory civil service for ALL

5.         Fair Elections Now Act - strengthened

6.         Changes to allow a viable third party

7.         Re-training & jobs for displaced workers

8.         Buffett rule

9.         A set of trustworthy budgets

10.      Giving Pledge for 9 figure fortunes

A way to improve trust in our national dialog

One of our biggest problems in America today is that we do not trust what our elected officials are telling us.  Here is a suggestion for increasing trust in our political discourse by addressing the veracity of critical information and relating the information to our individual households.

Assemble a team of people to work for a new non-profit organization called something like the Trustworthy Institute (TI).  The team consists of respected individuals from widely varying points on the political spectrum in America.  The team’s size is large enough to represent the complexity of views in America, and at the same time is small enough to have a manageable dialog among team members.  The single most important thing that all of these team members have in common is integrity.  Each person is known among his/her peers - both allies and opponents - as being intellectually honest and respectful of others’ opinions.  The pool of potential team members can include universities, churches, ex-congressmen, business leaders and so on … anywhere except current office holders, their staff and the news media.  These are successful people who are not inclined to be bought by corporate money or swayed by political power.  Whatever process we use to select these team members, each person must be widely acceptable to both people holding the viewpoint he is representing and to the other members of the team.  It is essential that when most people in the general public look at the team, they see at least one member who thinks like they do and who is committed to honesty above personal and political gain. 

Cynics will say we cannot put together such a team.  Others will say various entrenched powers will ignore or ensure they influence the selection of team members.  I say, “Watch us, and pay close attention.”

Once the team is assembled, its first major goal is to collect a set of household budgets.  Similar to the team members, these household budgets reflect the variety and complexity of American households.  The budgets come from real people with real income and expenses.  They range from a single parent of three children living on minimum wage to a billionaire like Mark Cuban, from a small business owner to a senior citizen living on social security, etc.  The common thread among all of the budgets is that the team, and hopefully most people outside of the team, can agree that the budgets are financially responsible and in line with other households in their income levels.  The primary objective of the budgets is to enable most people to see their own personal financial situation in one or more of the budgets.

Then, when a politician or a government entity makes a proposal and wants the public to know how it will impact them, they can voluntarily submit it to the Trustworthy Institute.  The team has a corps of researchers that sanity check assumptions, verify facts, ask necessary questions, run the numbers through all of the budgets, and publish one or more assessments depending upon what is appropriate for the proposal.  The TI team does not endorse or criticize proposals.  They stick to the facts and provide genuine “best efforts” data that others can use to endorse or criticize the proposal.  If a politician does not wish to submit his proposal to TI, that’s OK.  It can be like selling products with and without the Underwriter’s Laboratory certification.

Admittedly, organizations already exist that do fact checking and analysis.  However, none of them has the widespread visibility and confidence that can be achieved by starting from scratch and building an inclusive, honorable team under the scrutiny of all points of the political spectrum. Neither have these organizations captured the attention of the general public with financial models that everybody can relate to their daily lives and trust the projections the models present.

The cost of implementing a Trustworthy Institute is relatively cheap; it can be easily paid for with private donations.  Since most reasonable people can buy into objectively verified facts they are familiar with, the risks in trying it are quite low and the potential benefits to the nation look pretty high.  Moreover, we do not need anybody’s permission to get started.  What we need is for enough people to say, “This makes sense.  I also think that we can find a team of trustworthy people to tell us the real facts in terms that we relate to, and I’m willing to give it a thumbs up.”

Please contact me at robertporter.home@gmail.com with your thoughts and suggestions for improvement.