Memo To The FCC: Stop Obscenity, Fine CSPAN

Obscenities have been back in the news lately with the FCC imposing high fines on TV stations for airing programming thought to violate community standards. Even though cable is not part of the FCC’s regulatory mandate, perhaps an exception should be made in response to the recent coverage of one of the most shocking obscenities in recent times.

Perhaps the time has even come to fine or ban CSPAN!

The public interest network, born out of a desire by the cable industry to placate Congress and block regulatory oversight by giving unlimited airtime to members of Congress, has now gone too far in outraging the American public.

This network must be reined in.

Last week, CSPAN ran a Congressional hearing on the shocking level of excessive multi-million dollar compensation paid to financial industry executives while nearly three million families face foreclosure and all of us cope with ever escalating prices, even as the Administration insists it is heading off a recession. (On the same day as the hearing, the Wall Street Journal asserted we are already in a recession.)

If the “experts’ can’t agree on what constitutes a recession, they probably won’t agree on the meaning of obscenity. It usually has a sexual connotation, but in Latin, obscenus, just means “foul, repulsive, detestable.” Go to the Wikpedia and you find: “the word still retains the meanings of ‘inspiring disgust’ and even ‘inauspicious; ill-omened’, as in such uses as ‘obscene profits’, ‘the obscenity of war’, etc. It can simply be used to mean profanity, or it can mean anything that is taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting.”

So, CSPAN could be considered obscene when it features probes of how much moolah just three executives were walking away with in the midst of the most serious mortgage crisis since the Depression. (Some analysts say more money has been lost in this scandal than in 1929.)

Obscenity prosecutions may be in order because it seems easier for our self-righteous government to go after so-called obscene TV than white-collar theft, racketeering and crimes against our economic well-being.

This committee, unlike most, actually did its homework in probing into pay packages received by the avaricious trio of Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial Corporation, E. Stanley O’Neal of Merrill Lynch, and Charles Prince of Citigroup.

In a memo (http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080306123851.pdf) packed with questions, they explained; “In preparation for the Committee’s hearing, the Committee has received thousands of pages of documents from the three companies, including board minutes and internal company emails. The Committee staff also has reviewed hundreds of public Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings and consulted with leading experts in executive compensation.”

This is the kind of investigating media outlets used to do. Why did they focus on cases?

“A common element in the case studies is that each of the CEOs presided over multi-billion dollar losses in the mortgage market. Collectively, the companies run by Mr. Mozilo, Mr. O’Neal, and Mr. Prince lost more than $20 billion in the last two quarters of 2007 alone as a result of investments in subprime and other risky mortgages.

While Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup prospered, Mr. Mozilo, Mr. O’Neal, and Mr. Prince received lucrative pay packages. During the five-year period from January 2002 through December 2006, the stock of Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup appreciated, and the three CEOs collectively received more than $460 million in compensation.”

By just focusing on individuals, Congress risks letting institutions off the hook. These greedheads were not alone or acting alone. They were part of a major industry that is deeply implicated in concocting and pedaling so-called asset backed subprime securities that had few or no assets behind them. They were fraudulent products that are continuing to cause pain and suffering to millions.

So far, there have been few real investigations or prosecutions although the FBI has announced a criminal probe of Countrywide and other unnamed mortgage firms.

What may be even more shocking is that differing but obscenely high pay package deals negotiated by these executives were quite legal, even standard, in an industry that lives by its own rules and values with little effective oversight or regulation. When their shareholders prospered, no one was complaining and the media was not paying attention, even as some critics compared predatory lending in poor neighborhoods to a crack epidemic.

Noted the committee’s investigators: “The three case studies reveal important differences in the compensation packages and actions of Mr. Mozilo, Mr. O’Neal, and Mr. Prince. Mr. Mozilo stands out as the only CEO who sold large numbers of shares in his company while the company was engaged in a stock buyback plan. Mr. O’Neal stands out for the size of his retirement package, $161 million. And Mr. Prince stands out for the $10 million performance bonus he received for a performance year in which the company’s stock floundered.”

It may have been these hearings that encouraged the New York Times to pursue the story. The paper reported on Sunday, not on page one but in a blog, how much key executives at Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s old firm Goldman Sachs were making. The Times called them the “Golden Five” and noted that together they made $322 Million, or by another accounting standard $305 million just last year. These figures were filed a few hours before the Congressional hearing got underway.

What is fascinating are the comments on the blog from readers who seem to know the industry well. Someone who described himself as “One Chinese” wrote in part: “the world is watching… and learning.” Another writer called “hammer” adds: “These aren’t necessarily the highest paid guys. The head of the energy trading, private equity and prop groups probably got paid even more. The next level down guys like Vice Chairmen, department heads got at least $25MM. Managing Directors got $5MM. The ridiculousness keeps on going on and on.”

Another comment, this time by a person whose nickname “pissed off” sums up the others: “HELLO — Officers and directors ROB public companies and say it is ‘fair compensation.’ I didn’t fall off the turnip truck. You all are thieves and unfortunately are doing it legally - but not morally. But then again Capitalism and morals never have got along together.”

As a long gone historical figure who once opposed all of this, somewhat dogmatically, once asked: “What is to be done?” Clearly, the answer is not much will be done. These executives are laughing as they used to say, all the way to the bank.

But, I hear you say, we should do something! Ok, that’s why it may be time instead to just punish the messenger. Stop obscenities like this on the air. Fine CSPAN! Off with their license to broadcast!

– News Dissector Danny Schechter made the films IN DEBT WE TRUST (indebtwetrust.org) about the credit crisis and the still to be released BOOB TUBE about obscenity on TV. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org

Popularity: 2% [?]

The most important news story of the century apart from the wreckage of our Constitution may be the creation of a corporate-government collective “elite class”; these are incompetent minds who have been funneled 85% of the money in the country. How could this happen silently, with no press coverage, no headlines, no Congressional investigation, no public outrage? What sort of brainwashing by diciator-powermongers would that have to represent? Mr. Schechter is right here without argument…forget the single individuals–”singled out” here in this shocking and unAmerican case of corruption, avarice and anti-individual-rights; one was paid for total failure; the second for nothing as he departed; the third sold stock in his company while the organization was buying stock, a clear conflict of interest. Crimes in each case. Add up the amount top-tier unscientific minds are paid as boss-tsar exectuives in this benighted bureaucracy-ridden former country–and the effect on the cost of everything manufactured or provided as service in this nation becomes staggering–between 30 and 70 percent of any organization’s corporate operatng expenses (not one is a company nor participates in a real marketplace) are sucked up to pay these ‘vampires’ who drain the lifeblood of the corporation, act in a cruel, anti-merit, non-defining, unethical manner; they commit moral crimes against the Earth that many of them pollute, send our jobs overseas, downsize verything but their outrageous compensations; and all the while they are not being taxed–while the rest of us without rights in the area of work of competition for positions of leadership go down the toilet of their public-interest totalitarianism, presidd over by a do-nothing executive branch and an emasculated Congress. This is an abomination. What these men were paud was not “legal” even by the statist standards of the imperial prisdential right-wing government we have. A free citizen prospers in reality by his efficacy and scientific capability in performance, not leveraged dictatorship ploys. He then retires on his Social Security or private already-held monies, sans bonus, investments, etc.,—but not on both; SS payments were for the needy, those unable or victimized by injustice so they could not earn enough to retire upon. Mark my words: this is the story of the next century. The deadly strruggle by victims of an evil neo-fascistic neo-altruistic empire of non-scientific “bosses” to break the grip on their lives, their nation and their money has already begun. Mr. Schechter’s tongu-ein-cheek dismissal of the single investigation, notwithstanding, this is a battel to restore the Americanism in a no-longer-American constitution–before it is too late for all of us.

If it wasn’t for C-SPAN you might never even have HEARD about the way corporations are involved in the law-making of our country. Why fine C-SPAN for reporting the truth? Try running the lobbyists out of Washington politics instead! Try fining the unscrupulous, greedy CEOs who rip off consumers and taxpayers and citizens, for their own personal bank accounts, and for never giving anything back to the country that has allowed them this power. They prove that capitalism is a double-edged sword. They prove that uncontrolled and unregulated capitalism will destroy our great country by basically bankrupting it and thrusting most citizens into poverty. The reason that anyone can see what it does is because of honest, unedited media like C-SPAN!