It's Godden Time again.
There are so many things I want to talk about with you all, and so little space. So it's bullet time, without the cutesy license plates.
* First, the daily papers are trumpeting the fact that state Republicans are going to run Safeco CEO Mike McGavick against the Democrats' incumbent senator, Maria Cantwell, next year.
McGavick is heralded as the guy who turned Safeco around.
McGavick allegedly saved Safeco when he took over in 2001. The poor company had shown only a "paltry" profit of $10-mil or so the year before Mike took the helm, according to a recent Seattle Times article.
Now the company just reported a second-quarter 2005 net income of $187.3 million, or $1.46 a share.
That's all great, but three things need to be mentioned.
One of Mikey's first acts upon taking the helm of Safeco was getting rid of approximately 1,200 employees, many of whom had given a large portion of their lives to the corporation.
Secondly, Mikey's salary last year, including bonuses and stock awards, was $7.3 million. I wonder what the 1,200 people let go made in total.
Thirdly, the country is currently being run like a corporation by the criminals, or clowns, in Washington (you take your pick); sort of like Enron, if you ask me.
Why is business success suddenly a predicator of good governance?
There is little historical connection.
Truman failed in business but was a very good president.
Lincoln was a country lawyer.
Eisenhower was a general.
Reagan, if you think he's great, was an actor.
Andy Jackson, too, was a soldier.
Ditto George Washington.
Teddy Roosevelt was an adventurer.
Jefferson, arguably the greatest president, was a gentleman farmer with financial troubles.
Being good at making money, especially the modern-business way, at the expense often of low-level employees and the consumer, has very little to do with moving the United States along in the complicated, divided (by religion more than political systems currently) modern world.
Even if you approve of Mikey's methods in "turning around" Safeco, what the hell does that have to do with being a senator?
Who would Mikey represent?
The common man?
Very, very doubtful.
He's a corporate man who got rich being a corporate man.
I never thought I'd be supporting Maria Cantwell for anything, but if my choice is Maria or Mikey, it's not even a head-scratcher.
C'mon, Maria.
* In New York City, a nationally famous CEO, former WorldCom chief executive Bernard Ebbers, 63, was sentenced to 25 years the other day after being convicted of fraud. Bernie cried and cried, according to news reports. They should have been tears of joy that I wasn't the prosecutor - I would have sought the death penalty, even if it meant changing some laws to do it.
How come unemployed bank robbers with guns they never fire get life sentences, while crooks in suits almost never get a sentence even as stiff as the one Ebbers received?
Bernie is (so far, you can bet he'll appeal and try to stay out on bail) being held legally culpable for an accounting fraud that swindled $11 billion away from other folks.
In an attempt to lighten his sentence, Bernie agreed to give up $40 million to those bilked. The judge still hammered him. Most of the $40 million probably started out in somebody else's pockets, too.
* The recent local news item everyone is talking about concerns a horse farm south of Seattle and a dead Seattle man whose colon was ruptured/shattered/punctured on said horse farm after the fellow had congress with a stallion.
People keep bemoaning the fact that the man had sex with a horse, but if I'm reading the news items correctly, the man, and others who videotaped said events, were the actees, not the actors, to remain as delicate as you my faithful readers have become accustomed to my being.
Washington is one of 17 states with no laws against this perverted insanity. Let's make that 16 states where a dog may not be man's best friend.
Let's do it for Mr. Ed and Trigger!
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