[Dialogue] Shocked!

[Jim Rippey]

I started out writing this in reply to what Adelbert Batica wrote.  But in
view of the continuing comments, It’s become more than that.

 

Yes, I am SHOCKED.  And I guess I am naïve.  The corporate world I lived in
40 years ago had its faults but it certainly was vastly different from the
corporate world I see everywhere now.  The CEO I wrote for made something
like $200,000.  Competition for that “corner office” was fierce.  And that
CEO salary was maybe only 15 times what I could hire an entry level person
for.  (Yes, because of the CWA contract.  But for a CEO to make more than 30
times what an average employee made was still unusual back then.)  I
remember in 1962 when the accounting people were ecstatic because the
company had finally fully funded our pension obligation.  And back then, NWB
and other Bell companies matched donations employees made to any worthy
cause that was certified as tax exempt by the IRS. 

 

I guarantee you that most Bell System employees were proud to be telephone
people.  I was asked to write a company history and when it was published,
the company gave the books to the long service Telephone Pioneers.  They
sold those histories as a fund raiser for their charitable work and lots of
proud employees paid to buy that book. However, by the time I retired in the
early 80s, I kept running into people who told me, “You sure got out at the
right time.”

 

Along the way, the Bell System was split up, NWB became part of US West and
Qwest bought US West.  And almost immediately it killed off the matching
gift program.   A couple of years ago, the CEO of Qwest was making more than
$15 million with salary, bonuses and stock options.  He made more in five
days than the CEO I worked with made in a whole year.  Make it 10 days
allowing for inflation.

 

Back in those days, Northern Natural Gas Co. was a big, well respected
corporation with headquarters in Omaha.  The Northern Natural people were as
proud of their company as the Northwestern Bell employees were of theirs.
Along the way Northern Natural changed its name to Enron, bought a Houston
company and the board imported Ken Lay from Houston and made him CEO.  He
moved to Omaha and said nice things.  But then, quite suddenly and
apparently because of some shenanigans on the board, Enron headquarters was
moved  to Houston.   And eventually, the Northern Natural people’s
retirement funds were wiped out by Ken Lay and Enron’s bankruptcy.

 

Yes, I’m shocked.  And sick.  Nor do I agree, as Karl Hess puts it, that
free enterprise hasn’t existed for years.  But it is getting mighty scarce
and American voters are too gullible to understand what is happening, or
what it is costing them.  

 

As for the flap over my use of the word whore, I’m surprised and
disappointed by several of the reactions I’ve received.  I’ll reprint what I
wrote:

 

“Today, there are far too many politicians toadying to big business
interests because that’s where the money is.  When women do this, we call
them whores.”

 

First off, I’ll say that, of course there are male whores, too.  However, my
use of the word was to make the point that in our current economic system,
what these men (and women who are part of it) are doing makes them whores
and that’s what they should be called.   In fact, what they are doing is
WORSE because people are being killed and/or impoverished as a result of
their corporate greed.  And it’s sickening to see the enabling laws
politicians are willing to pass if the price is right.

 

As for feminism, I was probably reading Betty Friedan before a lot of OE-ICA
people were out of high school.  I was an early subscriber to MS mag and I
promoted women at the phone company.  I just got a letter from a woman who
went on to bigger and better things, has lots more money than I do, and she
still claims I was the best boss she ever had.  And for the record, my wife
of 60 years doesn’t hesitate to criticize me.  But she’s read some of the
Dialogue criticism and simply says, “They’re missing your point.

 

So I guess I should be sorry that some were offended.  But at the same time,
I’m offended that some people read what I wrote, missed the irony of it, and
chose to focus their upset on that instead of what is happening to our world
and our country.

 

Yes, I am shocked
 and disgusted.  I think I will give op on Dialogue for a
while.  

 

Jim Rippey

 

 

 

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