{"id":1670,"date":"2009-08-08T09:29:56","date_gmt":"2009-08-08T17:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=1670"},"modified":"2009-09-08T08:30:53","modified_gmt":"2009-09-08T16:30:53","slug":"governance-by-the-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/governance-by-the-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"Governance by the experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In looking over the rush of bills<\/a> being proposed by this congress to regulate corporate governance, I fished out this one<\/a> by Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), called The Corporate Governance Reform Act of 2009.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A skeptic might ask what a civil rights and labor lawyer might know about corporate governance.\u00a0 Has he ever advised a corporate board, or even attended a board meeting at a for-profit company?\u00a0 In Ellison’s defense, one could say that governance is not just a concept applicable to corporations.\u00a0 Every organization has governance mechanisms dictating what people need to do to obtain, retain, and exercise power.\u00a0 That includes the organization whose average member controls about $6.5 billion in spending–the U.S. Congress.\u00a0 What governance lessons would Mr. Ellison have learned from his experience with that institution?<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 Figure out what your constituents’ needs and preferences are, then use that info to campaign to win enough of their votes to get elected.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 Once in Congress, serve as a voice for your electorate, adding your ideas and judgment to the debate of the great issues of the day….<\/p>\n

Ha ha.\u00a0 Just kidding.\u00a0 Here is what he really learned:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 It helps to get your party’s nomination in the most gerrymandered district in your state<\/a>, one in which the opposing party has not won since 1963<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0 Once you get your seat, do pretty much whatever your party leadership tells you<\/a> in order to maintain their endorsement for your seat, and get onto a juicy committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0 Use your plum committee membership to hustle donations from organizations well outside of your district<\/a> that will be\u00a0 impacted by your legislation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0 Raise more than the $1.4 million<\/a> average for House members in order to gain the respect of the party bosses.\u00a0 Never mind that your House seat is not contestable, and you end up outspending your opponent 25 to 1<\/a>.\u00a0 Your fundraising ability is your cred in this ‘hood.<\/p>\n

This model has been gamed to perfection<\/a> by both parties to the point that the turnover rate of democratically elected congressmen in supposedly contested elections is lower than that of corporate directors in avowedly uncontested elections.<\/p>\n

Given the Congressional governance model that Ellison is most familiar with, one can forgive him for supposing that if the corporate governance model is only one-tenth as bad, it must surely need some help from any quarter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In looking over the rush of bills being proposed by this congress to regulate corporate governance, I fished out this one by Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), called The Corporate Governance Reform Act of 2009. A skeptic might ask what a civil rights and labor lawyer might know about corporate governance.\u00a0 Has he ever advised a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1670"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1737,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1670\/revisions\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}