LeftOut

Dubya: Butch Abroad, Fey at Home
Why there’s no hope for the war on corporate terrorism
by Daryl Moore

When it comes to fighting international terrorism, Dubya is just plain butch. Posing midday on his Crawford ranch in the sweltering Texas sun, chainsaw in hand, he’s bad. He looks like the Marlboro man without the mustache.

Dubya’s talking about wanting Osama “dead or alive.” He’s deploying troops around the globe to snuff out “evildoers.” He promises, “We’re gonna hunt ’em down, smoke ’em out, and then git ’em.”

Laura stands demurely behind Dubya in a prairie skirt, gazing adoringly at the former oil-company-running, Texas-Ranger-owning, 7-minute-mile-hoofing husband of hers. Let’s face it. Bush is butch.

America gets all fired up by this testosterone pep rally. We’ve been f----- with. We’re pissed off. We’ve got an identifiable enemy and a cowboy in a white hat in the White House. We’re fixin’ to whip a little terrorist ass.
Osama takes to his caves and reports only by video. Dubya’s approval ratings go through the roof. Bush is riding high. Re-election in 2004 is a shoo-in. What could possibly go wrong?

Can you say corporate greed at the highest level in the biggest companies in America? Enron. WorldCom. Halliburton. Anderson.
Corporate executives misstate profits. They cook the corporate books. Their auditors sign off on it. They exercise stock options on purposefully inflated stock. They sell when the stock is high and disappear when prices crash.
Employees whose 401k’s are made up of over-inflated stock find their retirement funds have disappeared. Shareholders whose stock portfolios had doubled or tripled in the last decade find their current value is half of what it was 12 months ago.

The result: The stock market is at its lowest in decades. Investors are panicked. Americans who thought Social Security was a bust and should be tied to the stock market find the stock market is a bust, and now their financial future is tied to the Social Security system.

Americans get all fired up by this fleecing of America. We’ve been f----- with. We’re pissed off. We’ve got an identifiable enemy and a bad ass in a white hat in the White House. We’re fixing to whip a little corporate ass.
Uh-oh. Not so fast. The butch in the cowboy hat has his head up Laura’s prairie skirt. Dick Cheney takes to his secure, undisclosed location and reports only by video. Dubya’s approval ratings drop below 70 percent for the first time since September 11. The Bush presidency is in jeopardy. What can Dubya do?

Dubya takes to the airwaves. He poses midday in a business suit on Wall Street, proposal for corporate responsibility in hand.But this time, Dubya’s different. There’s no talk about wanting corporate thieves “dead or alive.” No promise to “hunt ’em down, smoke ’em out, and git ’em.”

This time the terrorists are not “evildoers” but just “a few bad apples” who need “a new ethic of personal responsibility in the business community.” The government doesn’t need to overhaul the system, but shareholders should “demand an attentive and active board of directors.” After all, as Dubya reminds us, “in the corporate world, sometimes things aren’t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures. Sometimes there’s differences—an ability to interpret one way or the other.

Let’s face it. When it comes to fighting a bunch of rich white guys guilty of corporate terrorism, Bush is not butch. He is not going to kick any corporate ass. And putting him in charge of cleaning up corporate America is like putting Bill Clinton in charge of abstinence-only programs.

Bush in charge of corporate clean up. As Alanis Morissette might say: “Isn’t it ironic … don’t you think? A little too ironic … and, yeah, I really do think.”
Writing from the liberal end of the spectrum, Houston attorney Daryl Moore has a general practice and is board certified in civil and appellate law. He can be reached at DarylMoore@outsmartmagazine.com.