Hopin Mad!

Why is it people in this country continue to allow legalized embezzlement by corporate executives at the expense of both customers and employees?

When I heard the news of what the CEO of Merill Lynch had done and how much money was squandered away while the company failing, I just had to say something.  In my opinion, executive pay and benefits is outrageously, to the point of obscenity, high.  They get to pay themselves whatever they want and take bonus as they see fit, literally robbing a company blind.  In doing so, the price of goods and service have to go up in order to allow them to continue to rob the company, us, blind, because no one is stopping them.

I actually get most pissed off at the people of this country, who actually allow this to happen.  Why are people so stupid to think they can't do anything about it?  Don't get me wrong, executives do deserve a nice, fair income and benefits, but not at the expense of employees or their customers.  I am not their slave!

I propose, if there are others, which I am sure there are, who feel the same way I do, to get together and force legal changes.  Some suggestions:

• if employees are facing cuts, all executives do too in an equal manner
• if there are stock options for executives, there should be the same options for employees - after all, they also contribute to the success of the company
• cut executive pay, by at least half, and use that to pay for 100% health care of all employees, add more vacation days; sick and personal days off - to reduce stress which leads to improved health
  Corporate America has lied long enough about there not being enough money to provide affordable health care to their employees or to give them more than 2 weeks vacation days a  year or personal time off.  If that were true, executives couldn't be paid what they are being paid.  They are robbing their employees of everything!
• if executives get a bonus or pay raise, then all employees get one - automatically
• all executives are responsible and answerable first to their employees and then to their customers for both the success of a company, but most of all for their failures
• if a company is failing, executive pay and benefits get the first cut, before any other employees
• if a company seeks and gets a low interest loan because times are tough, executive pay and benefits, if they haven't been lowered already, get lowered and frozen until the loan is paid back in full and no bonuses are to come out of the loan either
• executive benefit packages should be made more reasonable - no free: apartments / homes, tickets to the arts, limo or other transportation, lunches or dinners, company plane rides, exceedingly high expense accounts and so forth.  A company should not be a free ride for executives. They should be made to pay more of their own way, are after all, they are getting huge incomes.

That's a start.  Of course, some would see me as extreme, but it is time we said, STOP, I've had enough, and do something about it.  We need to stop executives from robbing all of us, while half the country lives below a living wage, without health insurance or benefits and barely enough time off to catch their breath.  Stop expecting someone else or our government to do something about it, you need to do something about it!