I like the sound of that, don't you? Wouldn't you just love to hear that, just once?
      So, what's my point? Unless some corporate CEO stands before Congress and says something like this, nothing will change. But when he does, everything will change.
      Actually, I'd like to hear more of this. For one, I don't like members of Congress to be sitting way up there while citizens sit way down here. And I don't like members of Congress, up there, talking to us, down here, as if we were kitchen help...at least the Clinton's kitchen help.  It should be the other way around, don't you think? Aren't the citizens supreme? And I don't like members from the other side of the aisle not standing up when citizens are treated thus, then roll up a newspaper and walkover and swat that SOB, or SOB-ette, across the nose for bad manners.
      Sound silly? Let's look at it more closely. There is a point to this little bit of day-dreaming.

      Moses Sands once told me that he'd backed out of more corporate board rooms than I had saloons. In truth, I've backed out of a couple myself, and just for the reasons stated above, telling corporate bosses what they didn't want to hear about government. That was 20 years ago. What I am about to tell you here for free, if  I were in your board room today, I'd be charging about $10,000 to say...with a few more details, of course. I would already have cashed the check, too, so you couldn't throw me out then stop payment on the check, as was done on one other occasion. But since we don't consult with large corporations anymore, if you like what I say here then send a few bucks to thesandsinstitute.org.  Then you're advancing the cause.
     Why you can't tell Congress to take a hike (anymore)...and why you must learn to... is the subject of my sermon today.
     In 1978 I left the practice of law and entered a Fortune 500 manufacturing company as a manufacturer. It was the best 8-9 years of my life. I loved the production floor, the mills, the smells, the noise and I loved talking with the men. I loved knowing how things are made, and how they work, especially when they are made and work well.
     But being of the front office, I noticed a change in the corporate culture of my day from the generation that had built that company, from the 1950s, into a billion dollar corporation. On the fast track in the mid 1980s were financial managers, and (gad!) lawyers, and baby Meg Whitman's in marketing, who knew nothing about making the product well, or selling it well. And didn't care to. On the down track were the things I loved, the "manufacturers", the engineers and can-do-er's, a name which was spoken almost as an epithet in corporate front offices.
     I saw it coming then because I wrote about it then, and when Enron collapsed I knew exactly what had happened. Bandits in Finance. The culture of financial wizards, MBA's and lawyers define corporate America today every bit as much as it does in government. Precious few of them ever got their hands dirty in the manufacture of whatever product their company was selling. Almost all of them were second and third generation employees, coming in long after the dirty work had been done and it all moved into the conference room. In general, even with manufacturing companies today, (I don't know the histories of any of the auto-maker's CEO's) when a corporate president sits way down here and takes a tongue lashing from a congressman from way up there, and responds with foot kissing and fawning flattery, it's because they are from the same school, so to speak, and for twenty years at least, those guys sitting way down here have been conditioned to believe they are the Beta males while those guys up there are the Alpha males. Kissing up is something they've always done well.

    This, of course, is not so. In fact, it can't be so, at least in a free market as envisioned by the Constitution, for the only real instinct politicians have is fear. And you just can't be Alpha and afraid at the same time. The real question is, why is Congress no longer afraid of its citizens, including our private corporations? In Nature as envisioned by the Constitution, the private businessman, even the wimpish corporate executive, sitting way down there, should be the Alpha male and he should be spreading his scent all over the Senate chambers when he walks in and takes a seat.
    This doesn't happen any longer because that type doesn't exist in corporate America anymore.  Only in the small business class. In fact, that is probably one reason small business is never called before Congress...for the cameras would surely click.
 
     I just previewed a draft by Bernard Chumm (published here in a day or two) about the subject of fear, as natural (and healthy) to government. Every step government makes has to be done while in fear of the people's wrath if done wrong. It just isn't natural for Congress to be strutting around with the false puffery of a pea fowl...and getting away with it. This has to change on several fronts.
     But I'm not here to complain, but rather advise. I know you have to consult counsel about the the limits of contempt of Congress laws, so as to know where to curb your speech. Were I before a committee, I'd be hauled off in cuffs in a heartbeat for I suffer fools lightly. And bandits, charlatans, mountebanks, thieves, liars and general sumbitches even less so. The only time I want to march into Congress is with an army of federal marshalls and a fistful of arrest warrants. I don't recommend my approach. But then again, I've also played the game for more than I can afford to lose.
      My point, the title banner to this article, for instance, isn't contempt under the law. Neither are most threats when used in the context of defending your private property rights, and the rights of your shareholders. One can lawfully tell Congress to go to hell, and in more interesting ways than you can imagine. Moreover, with the right amount of backbone and support from your colleagues, there's not a lot Congress can really do about it. Biting the heads off congressmen and women could become fine sport. Even competition. With awards and prizes.
     Why you won't of course, is that point I just raised. It's not in your corporate genetic makeup to spit in a man's eye when a "with all due respect" will sound more politic. While the original builders of your company fought every imaginable alligator in the swamp just to get past the first decade, your track to the top was more often due to a strong competence in a field of expertise which, in the old days was borne by the company waterboys, plus the ability to sweet-talk and back-stab your way higher and higher as more honest, but less politically deft men and women fell by the wayside.
     To the few, the very few, that understand what I'm saying and have some memory that extends back past 1980, you need to discuss this with your colleagues, including competitors. You need to form a club of like-minded corporate leaders to sit, exchange notes, and discuss things common to you all, namely just how free enterprise fits into the Constitutional scheme, where your business fits into free enterprise, and where Congress fits, period. Actually, the better word I have in mind is "conspire".
    It should be obvious that Congress wants to peel many corporations off under it's own wing, where, it is true, there will be almost no competition, and almost no risk of failure. They will only fail when the government fails. Depending on your general grounding and genetic make-up this is either every executive's dream...you can even pass the compnay off to your son that way...or every executive's nightmare. But by nightmare I don't mean that they will be on the short end of the receiving stick when Congress passes out favors. I mean in it terms of what I have just described is fascism, not socialism, and while both are destined to fail in the end, one is destined to fail more violently, with far more rubble left in its wake.
     If you will recall, Bill Gates took no interest in government at all as he built Microsoft. In other words, he wouldn't give them any money, or try to buy their protection. So they came after him. It was a shakedown. But they came after him on behalf of his competitors....and he eventually caved, probably on advice of his financial advisers and lawyers, who, having no spines, souls or honor, found it easy to by-pass those things and take the boss straight to the bottom line.
     Today if you are in corporate America you have to believe that most of your competitors are the same sort of spineless weenies as Harry Reid. So I suggest you may want to find like-minded men and women across business lines (Is there a corprate Mann Act out there?), then begin to find ways to draw lines in the sand. Quit asking your attorneys for advice and ask for options. Add a few extra test questions when interviewing financial and tax specialists. Create a shadow network inside your own corporation and across industry lines.
     Be prepared to defend your decisions before boards of directors, and be prepared to be fired. The good news, unlike the toads in your business line, when fired someone else will want you, for what you have will be real capital in the coming days. Being able to tell Congress to buzz-off will be a career enhancement for many years to come...until the Restoration or until it all falls down. Either way, it's a win-win for you, since when in doubt, it's always best to take the high road. If you believe in a final judgment (I do) you can know that some day, Somewhere, there will be as final justice and you'll have ben on the right side.
     As long as a certain type of personality runs American corporations Congress will prevail because it is written in the stars that government lawyers should outwit and out-maneuver corporate accountants. There's a natural pecking order there, just as there is in the reverse direction between doctors and lawyers.
     But what Congress and government cannot withstand, never could withstand, and the Constitution always relied on as being there as part of that fear package, was the possibility, the mere possibility, of a calloused knuckle across the nose.
Vassar Bushmills