BUSH, CHENEY BLISTER SHADY BUSINESS ETHICS
BY BRUCE McCALL
Speaking today before members of the Golden Manacle Club, the elite organization of C.E.O.s released on more than ten million dollars' bail, President George W. Bush said that he had once held up a bank, "like thousands of other enterprising Americans and without spending a dime of taxpayer money," and vowed to employ the same can-do attitude in solving the real problems facing American business, such as overcharging employees for lunch in company cafeterias. The President announced the formation of a blue-ribbon panel of corporate food managers, who have been asked to report back to him by the year 2050 if they have any thoughts.
Meanwhile, Vice-President Dick Cheney, addressing the annual convention of the American Association of Incompetent Board Chairmen, firmly backed the President's position on bank robberies and took the opportunity to comment on the press's reaction to his own role in a South-western stolen-car ring. He said he viewed criticism of his activities as an example of McCarthyite witch-hunting by a self-appointed gestapo that threatened to undermine private-jet sales for years to come. The ring, he pointed out, had pumped millions into the Swiss economy.
In his speech, President Bush dismissed his involvement in a Texas counterfeiting operation ten years ago as old news. "And anyways," he explained, "I just spent it — I didn't make it. Everybody knows I can't draw a lick." Mr. Bush went on to deplore the shady business ethics that lead executives travelling at company expense to steal shampoo, soap, and sewing kits from hotel bathrooms for personal use. He announced that he will soon recommend to Congress the establishment of a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Personal Toiletries to monitor compliance with stringent new curbs on such thefts. Vice-president Cheney drew prolonged applause during his speech after pointing out that although Abraham Lincoln had once done legal work in Illinois for the same railway companies that he later patronized as a passenger, nobody had raised an eye-brow. He added that he was "about fed up" with this blatant double standard and called for its replacement by triple and even quadruple standards.
President Bush used the occasion of his address to state that his partnership role in the Texas Switch & Bait Corporation, a discount retail appliance vender, consisted of little more than dropping by the company's headquarters every Saturday to pick up his complimentary home-entertainment equipment, "just like any other American family man doing his Saturday chores." The experience, he continued, had taught him a valuable life lesson: "Even free appliances can weigh a ton, I tell ya."
Mr. Cheney called for an end to innuendo about his activities in a now bankrupt Pitcaim Island firm that sold itself the air rights to a million acres of West Texas flatlands, deducted the transaction from its taxes as an entertainment expense, then borrowed fourteen million dollars interest-free from the Liechtenstein bank it owned, using its assets of company-acquired Callaway golf clubs as collateral, to finance the purchase of gifts for some Bessarabian oil prospectors who were then passing through Dallas.
The President concluded his address by promising to "keep hammering away" at business corruption, targeting corporate limousine drivers who double-park as the real culprits in eroding the public's confidence in major financial institutions. Vice-president Cheney, in his windup, shed new light on his tenure as chairman of the now beleaguered Halliburton company by admitting that he might have been guilty of hiring dumb secretaries who kept typing the wrong figures but always started crying if he corrected them. "And just look what I get for trying to be a good guy," he said.
The New Yorker 29th July 2002 - Shouts and murmurs |
