Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Joe Sharkey Says: 'Every Time Someone Mentions Hideous Corporate Excess, a Business Jet Loses Its Wings'

A book deadline looms over me like some foul Dracula (hey, publishers actually expect you to deliver a manuscript in a reasonable period of time, after having paid you dough in advance! What is this outrage, paternalistic capitalism???!!!)

Anyway, I don't expect to be posting here for a couple of days. Unless, of course, another outrageous event gets me typing the blog (with weekly pay approaching the “high double digits,” as the great Calvin Trillin famously said of his remuneration at the Nation magazine), when I should be typing something else.

However, I will say this, having watched President Obama’s speech last night, and having written so early and so often about the public backlash over corporate excesses, including the manifest but occasional misuse of corporate jets (some of which backlash is misguided, since a good case can be made, and has been made often by me, for the sensible use of a company plane for bottom-line oriented business purposes).

The president only obliquely mentioned this last night, but he did say the words “corporate jets” in his gentle litany of abuses that cannot be tolerated any more, And I say this: Every time someone mentions corporate excess, a business jet loses its wings.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Joe:

What is noticeably absent in the rhetoric about the corporate excess associated with the use of business jets, is Congress's own use of these aircraft. In addition every 2-star (and above) and most 1-stars have their own dedicated fleets of corporate aircraft. These do not just go from base to base although for ease of transit they do but will often be found parked at civil airports. The reasons they are used are exactly the same as the corporate titans.

So what we are seeing is nothing but the politics of envy !