Well hard times come no more. According to the GuardianUK CEO pay survey it just got a little shinier for some in that city on the hill. While austerity and stagnation is the order of the day for the majority of Americans some of the country’s top bosses got pay increases of between 27 and 40% last year.

America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m

The top of the top came from the health care industry. The head of the world’s largest healthcare firm McKesson’s, John Hammergren, made over $145million in 2010, the majority from stock options.

Just for laughs here is some local perspective on how much money Hammergren’s $145 million is in a human scale. In Vermont, Federal spending cuts to LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding to low-income households) might ultimately result in funding to the state going from $27.5 million in 2011 to approximately $11.6 Million for 2012.    

One counter-intuitive, gravity defying feature of high-end pay packages is that stock prices may go down, yet compensation continues to head up for some departing and retiring executives. Notice three out of these four highest paid departing or retiring CEOs were leaving companies where shareholder stock prices had declined during their tenure.

Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna's stock price declined by 70% from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement. At pharmacy chain CVS, Thomas Ryan made a $28m profit on his options. During Ryan's 13-year tenure as CEO, CVS Caremark's stock price decreased almost 54%.

Omnicare's Joel Gemunder retired last August and received cash severance of $16m, part of a final-year pay package worth $98.28m. Adam Metz, the former boss of General Growth Properties, a real estate company that specialises in shopping malls, walked away with a $46m cash bonus in 2010. GGP executives received nearly $115m in bonuses from the firm as it emerged from bankruptcy.

It may always to be good at the top. However for many Americans maybe “all they can do is stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers” (to lift a line from part of a well known speech).

 If I had thought much about it I would have assumed the ever vigilant Vermont Yankee management team might keep their corporate office’s door locked.

However in Brattleboro on Monday eleven women from an anti-nuclear group walked through an unlocked door and entered Entergy’s Vermont Yankee corporate headquarters.

The eleven protesters walked in and spread out yellow crime scene tape in the emergency operations press center conference room in order to make a citizens arrest before they themselves were arrested.  

The door they gained entrance through is operated by an electronic key system and people normally enter only when accompanied by an Entergy employee.

Larry Smith, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said 11 people had been arrested Monday but declined to comment further about why the front door to the headquarters was unlocked.

Did I mention the door was unlocked and unattended?

All this follows after last September’s fire at VY headquarters. The fire at Vermont Yankee corporate offices in Brattleboro was termed brazen and suspicious. As far as anyone knows it is still under investigation.

Commenting on the fire last September spokesman Larry Smith said

"It's a little disturbing; it's unnerving. If the cause of the fire is determined to be deliberate, that's the most brazen, deliberate attempt on our property, or our employees or one of our facilities in our 39 year history."

Suggestion: Keep an eye on those unlocked doors, never know who might wander in.

 Gov.Peter Shumlin traveled to Los Angeles on Monday to attend the Democratic Governors Association meeting. Twenty two Democratic governors are attending and discussions are naturally expected to include how to tackle their state’s budget crisis. While in Los Angeles Shumlin might get wind of New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California Governor Jerry Brown plans to have upper income earners help with their state’s budget problems by pay higher taxes.

Brown said he’d ask voters to raise income taxes on individuals making more than $250,000 a year and boost the sales levy. Cuomo said he wants an income-tax overhaul that would place a higher burden [burden!] on top earners.

Scary political third rail stuff to be sure. However growing middle-class awareness of how  unfairly the pie is divided has been headlined by Occupy movements and may lessen the burden of political fear and allow politicians to torque-up their courage levels. Governor Shumlin might recall last year some 50 wealthy Vermonters actually requested a temporary tax increase surcharge to help shoulder their fair share. Also a recent study in Vermont showed that:

“The effects of taxes on migration are, at most, small—so small that states that raise income taxes on the wealthiest households will see a substantial net gain in revenue.”

So spare Vermonters the perennial warning that wealthy Vermonters will flee for the borders if the state raises their income taxes. No Democrat should ever bother hauling that out and spreading it on the fields again.

Nationally Warren Buffet, other all around rich people and even a group called Patriotic Millionaires are publically support tax increases for their own income brackets. And significantly Republican Bruce Bartlett a former member of the Reagan and GHW Bush administration closes a piece in the New York Times today with the following:  

But the idea that the rich cannot or should not pay more should be dismissed out of hand. They can and must pay more; the only question is how best to do it.

So Governor, do enjoy LA and by all means have a talk with Andrew and Jerry.  

 Newtie the Republican idea man:

“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, in child [labor] laws, which are truly stupid,” he said.  

”I tried for years to have a very simple model,” he continued. “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they’d have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

Who but Newt Gingrich could blame child labor laws for entrapping children in poverty and pack so many old dog whistles in such a short remark? But perhaps he was just helpfully offering evidence in support of former Sec. of Labor Robert Reich’s description of the current scrum of Republican candidates.

Reich: They're not conservatives. They're regressives. And the America they seek is the one we had in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.

Or, I suppose the strategy minded Gingrich as he headed to South Carolina was just blunting accusations that his recent stance on immigration was humane. I understand that is a bad thing for him in the context of the battle for the Republican nomination.

Anyhow, up in various polls and with undiminished confidence Newt the new Gilded Age regressive told ABC News last night “I’m going to be the nominee,”  

 Longtime media observer Jim Romenesko visited his archive way-back machine yesterday to see what he was writing about ten years ago. Among other items is a Vermont-based story the Rutland-Herald had in November 2001. It seems just months after September 11 a photographer on assignment for the Brattleboro Reformer was seen taking photos of Vermont Yankee and the police threatened him with arrest under a Vermont State treason statute.  

Eagle-eyed Vermont Yankee officials saw a photographer taking photos and called police. Rob Williams, the Vermont Yankee spokes-person/flack back then, noted with reassuring gravitas worthy of the times:

“It’s a police matter. We have been in a heightened state of awareness and we’ve been working closely with the Vernon Police Department,” Williams said

Vernon Police Chief Randy Wheelock (who reportedly knew the photographer) and Windham County State’s Attorney Dan Davis referred to Vermont Statute Title 13, Section 3481, titled "Treason and other offenses against the government”:

Davis said he became aware of the treason statute after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and especially after three men of Middle Eastern appearance were seen photographing the Bellows Falls hydroelectric station owned by U.S. Gen.        

“I don’t think it’s a good time to be publishing photos of Vermont Yankee,” Davis said. “But I didn’t write the law.”

The relevant Vermont law states that it is unlawful: “while the United States is at war or threatened with war” to map, draw, model or picture without authorization “property of any corporation subject to the supervision of the public service board, or of any municipality or part thereof” punishment calls for imprisonment of not more than ten years.

States Attorney Davis said he would be surprised if this case was prosecuted. The Rutland Herald and others noted then that an image of the Vermont Yankee control room was featured on the VY website.  

My sense is that we aren’t that crazy anymore. However, if asked to I am not confident that I could prove it.  

   No straight line can be drawn from the pepper spray incident on the UC Davis campus but it does  make an interesting backdrop from which to read about the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board. Dave Zirin explains in The Nation:

In 2010, [scandalized Penn State’s  recently resigned President] Spanier chose [UC Davis Chancellor Linda] Katehi to join an elite team of twenty college presidents on what’s called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which “promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI.”

The Advisory Board, started in 2005 has concerns that include violent acts by animal rights terrorists, research theft, acquisition or theft of technology and information sensitive enough to harm national security. Secrecy surrounds the meetings between university officials and the FBI and the contents are kept classified. Zirin writes:

As has been true with the FBI since Hoover, give them a foothold, and they’ll take off their shoes and get cozy. Their classified mandate has since expanded to such euphemisms as “counter-terrorism” and “public safety.” It also expanded federal anti-terrorism task forces to include the dark-helmeted pepper-spray brigades, otherwise known as the campus police.

After a week of images showing black helmeted body armored police on US streets and campuses and questions being raised (the National Lawyers Guild filed a FOIA request with DHS and FBI) about possible national “agency” coordination in the almost simultaneous break-up of Occupy encampments, Zirin’s closing questions are appropriate.  

Given the personal character on display by these two individuals, [former Penn President Spanier and UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi] why should anyone trust that the classified meetings have stayed in the realm of “cyber theft” and intellectual property rights? What did the FBI tell Chancellor Katehi about how to deal with the peacefully assembled Occupiers? Was “counter-terrorism” advice given on how to handle her own students?

Online sites and radio interviews have featured former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper’s reflections on the 1999 WTO demonstrations dubbed the Battle in Seattle.  Regarding his 1999 role in that “battle” Stamper states bluntly “My support for a militaristic solution caused all hell to break loose.” This, he observes, led to “…some cops clearly overreacting, escalating and prolonging the conflict.”

Along with his fairly thorough rejection of militaristic police tactics, Chief Stamper draws a second lesson from his leadership experience over ten years ago.

It is ironic that those police officers who are busting up the Occupy protesters are themselves victims of the same social ills the demonstrators are combating: corporate greed; the slackening of essential regulatory systems; and the abject failure of all three branches of government to safeguard civil liberties and to protect, if not provide, basic human needs like health, housing, education and more.

With cities and states struggling to balance the budget [starving the beast] while continuing to deliver public safety, many cops are finding themselves out of work. And, as many Occupy protesters have pointed out, even as police officers help to safeguard the power and profits of the 1 percent, police officers are part of the 99 percent.

It’s a lesson almost unheard, and a widespread awakening seems an unlikely prospect (mind those police pension cuts), but one retired Philadelphia Police captain (in his dress blues) marched in OWS events in New York City and was arrested last week.



It was reported he held a sign that read: “NYPD Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries.”

Speaker John Boehner has failed to visit Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since she has been recovering from her injuries sustained in last January’s shooting. It's reported Giffords’ husband, Astronaut Mark Kelly takes Boehner to task in a new book he and Gabrielle have written together.  

Kelly noted that in April, Boehner was in Houston for the NCAA Final Four Tournament while Giffords was at a rehabilitation center there following the Jan. 8 attempt on her life.  

“Considering that she was a member of Congress and he was the highest-ranking member, we thought he’d ask to visit Gabby or at least give a call to see how she was doing,” Kelly writes in Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope. “Our only contact with him had been a simple get-well card he’d sent a few days after Gabby was injured.”

“Maybe she scared him off” jokes Kelly. In the book he reportedly recounts an incident in the past when in the midst of difficult re-election campaign Giffords remarked jokingly to Boehner with

“a big smile on her face”: “You stay out of my district. OK. Remember. Stay out of my district.”

Boehner,who is often noted for sentimentality tears up at everything from commencement ceremonies to a speech defending his proposal to reinstate the District of Columbia's school voucher program has only sent “a simple get-well card”.

Classy fellow, that Speaker Boehner.  

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the Citizens United decision he authored:

“With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions.”  

Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits and citizens can see whether elected officials are in the pocket of so-called moneyed interests.

Wonder how that is working so far?

Reports about a study conducted by the Sustainable Investments Institute titled Analysis Counts More Companies with “No Spending” Policies, but Reveals Inconsistencies Between What Companies Say and What They Do shows early trends among S&P 500 companies since the game changing Citizens United decision.

It was found that the number of companies with declared policies on corporate oversight of direct spending jumped to 24% from 14% a year ago, but only 14% of S&P 500 companies actually give a numerical report on how much of their trade association dues are spent for political purposes.

In addition the study uncovered inconsistencies between companiesʼ stated political expenditure policies and what is actually spent. Fifty-seven of S&P 500 companies state they will not make political contributions, up from just 40 in 2010. But an in-depth search of federal and state records shows that only 23 of these companies actually refrained from giving to candidates, parties, political committees and ballot measures in 2010.  

So policies are proliferating but well less than half of the companies with stated political expenditure policies actually followed their own guidelines.

Other findings include:

• The percentage of political spending coming from groups that do not disclose their donors has risen from 1 percent to 47 percent since the 2006 midterm elections

• political spending by 501c-designated  non-profits increased from zero percent of total spending by outside groups in 2006 to 42 percent in 2010.

• Outside interest groups spent more on election season political advertising than party committees for the first time in at least two decades, besting party committees by about $105 million.  

• The amount of independent expenditure and electioneering communication spending by outside groups has quadrupled since 2006.

• Seventy-two percent of political advertising spending by outside groups in 2010 came from sources that were prohibited from spending money on political ads or campaigns in 2006  

But let’s remember what Justice Kennedy confidently imagined:

“With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions.”

 

Sure, prompt disclosure of political expenditures, unless corporations want to hide them or not follow their own policies at all or just not bother to because, well because they can.

Money equals “free” speech and “corporations are people, my friend.”

Well maybe that will happen if a retired Wall Streeter and Vermont resident who spoke to the annual meeting of the famously conservative Associated Industries of Vermont has his way. Bruce Lisman maintains that Irene recovery costs must side-track other state policy initiatives. The Irene recovery an “all in” bet (as he calls it) is so big it should preclude what he considers two other “all in” bets, specifically single-payer and investment in renewable energy. Lisman told the AIV …

“…But maybe this is not the moment to introduce two all-in bets [single payer, renewable energy investment] that would freeze, well, people like you [manufacturers, financiers and entrepreneurs], who might make decisions about expanding a business or adding people or thinking about new capacity or new markets. Maybe not this moment.”

Not surprisingly he doesn’t entertain the possibility of even a modest upper income tax increase.

Practically a living mirror opposite of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Lisman sits on the board of National Life Group, is retired chief of JPMorgan’s Global Equity Division and served as Senior Managing Director of the defunct investment bank Bear Stearns, and plans to launch the Campaign for Vermont.

His campaign will champion what he claims are “centrist, down-the-middle, common-sense” policies and focus on prosperity. While no specific policy initiatives were offered it was made clear according to the vtdigger.com article that scrapping both single payer and renewable energy investment are paramount features of the campaign. He brands both efforts “large, profound” and “maybe intrusive in a fashion”.

A recent poll shows a plurality of Vermonters supporting the new health care law. So maybe it isn’t a surprise  his argument found less than enthusiastic support even among business types.

Said one business leader when asked if he agreed with Lisman that Irene’s recovery cost should make it necessary to scrap healthcare reform and stop investment in renewable energy: “Let’s focus on Irene, get ourselves set, but the other issues are critical and important to the state and I don’t think we can ignore them.”

Another attendee took exception to the “all-in bet” can’t-walk-and-chew characterization of the problem: “I don’t know that I agree with that. I think there’s room for small bets in more than one area.”

Looks like Lisman’s Irene-based campaign to scrap healthcare and renewable energy investment aka Campaign for Vermont hasn’t found the moment and is more than half a bubble off-center.