I’m mad as hell and I’m not doing anything about it. Yet. Except to blow off a little steam on this page. I’m not sick but I’m oh so tired of hearing about Enron and a dozen other corporations seeking protection under our bizarre bankruptcy laws. The laws that allow bankrupt individuals to retain their Florida mansions. The laws that seem to wink at executives of failed companies paying themselves and their cohorts huge bonuses before pink-slipping their workers, whose pensions are gone with the wind.
Congress wants to know what went wrong at Enron-like how they could possibly tank after spreading so much money across the political board? Perhaps they didn’t get the influence they paid for. And why is the vice president refusing to answer Congress about Enron’s contributions to the administration’s energy policy? Who does he think he’s protecting here? Didn’t he learn anything from Clinton? It’s not nice to thumb your nose at Congress. It makes them mad. They could put a Starr in his future.
I know next to nothing about government policy as it applies to business. That is to say, I don’t understand what I know about it. What I know is that it stinks, and it’s not limited to Enron. The purveyors of drugs that make people sicker than what they took the drugs to fix; chemicals that poison the earth, water and air; vehicles that roll over and make people instantly dead; and tobacco that does the same thing but takes longer. All were given the green light by the very agencies meant to regulate them.
Ken Lay and others at Enron were just following a grand old American tradition. Screw the consumer, protect your investors, get the government to bail you out and blame the law, while taking the fifth.
Deregulation didn’t kill Enron. Enron killed itself with the blessing of our prevailing corporate culture.
Just when I was ready to forget about Enron, PBS aired a “Frontline” special on the auto industry. It focused on the history of the ubiquitous SUV: from the first Ford Broncos, infamous for rollovers, to the Explorers, which rolled over and over and over. How NHTSA, the agency responsible for highway safety, did nothing to stop the carnage. How Ford executives used film of crash tests dubbed with its own voiceover explaining not that SUVs caused unreasonable damage to regular passenger cars, but that economical cars were dangerous because they were, well, small.
The “Frontline” report had news clips of trial testimony in wrongful death suits brought by families of Explorer rollover victims. Ford’s own engineers warned the company of instability problems caused by plunking a top-heavy passenger compartment on a narrow truck chassis. The engineers said widening the frame by only two inches would stabilize the vehicles. Ford execs declined, saying, guess what, it would cost too much. Like the margin of profit on an SUV isn’t high enough anyway?
Don’t kill the company cash cow. It’s cheaper to settle the claims when people are killed. About 500 lobbyists showed their muscle at hearings, which took place only after hundreds of deaths in rollover accidents. By that time the automaker was able to focus mainly on Firestone tires and their proclivity for “tread separation” when “underinflated.”
But Ford, of course, is not alone among automakers that care less about safety and quality than the bottom line. We used to use GMC pickups to pull our horse trailers, partly because they seemed to last the longest and partly because a friend of ours was a GMC dealer. But in the ’80s, when all the paint peeled off in sheets and the gas tanks exploded in accidents, I looked to GM for some action. After class action lawsuits were finally settled, I was told my truck didn’t qualify for the paint job because I’d waited too long. Huh? The lawsuit was settled only the week before. Also, for the gas tank thing, I got a $1,000 rebate on the price of a new GMC pickup (but not a Saturn). By that time, I was no longer interested in their damn trucks.
Now, I read last week GM is closing three auto plants that are “unprofitable” and wants to expand a plant that makes trucks. But that plant already has a pollution problem, and GM wants the government to double its pollution allowance, although local residents already are being sickened by the smokestack emissions.
All of this so GM can make less efficient vehicles. The final insult comes with the news that GM will sue the state of California over its vehicle-emission standards, which were enacted several years ago and due to take effect in 2004.
Come on, guys. How much notice do you need? If Gov. Davis backs down, as he says he may do with the MTBE (gasoline additive) ban, what does this tell the rest of America’s corporations about our will to hold them accountable? For pollution, for unsafe vehicles, for unconscionable profits at the expense of us all.
When are we all going to get mad as hell? Mad enough to actually change the culture that condones corporate greed? Consumers ultimately hold the cards. We can and should enact our own bans and start voting with our wallets.