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Rahm Emanuel on CorporationsDemocratic Rep. (IL-5); Chief of Staff-Designee |
Rahm impressed the gathering with his detailed knowledge of which congressional districts in Michigan had which auto plants. "You're always explaining that things are bad, but it's not like the Great Depression," he told the president. "Well, in some of the counties..."
"I know what you're going to say," Obama interjected. "In some of these counties it WILL be like the Great Depression." Obama said, "I've decided. I'm prepared to support Chrysler if we can get the Fiat alliance done." He would give Chrysler thirty days and GM sixty days to reorganize with the help of the task force or face a cutoff of TARP money. He could live with the government's forcing a bankruptcy, but not putting Chrysler out of business altogether.
Proponents support voting YES because:
We should not deprive the public, the stockholders, from being able to do anything meaningful once they find out about scandalous levels of executive compensation or board compensation. Everyone talks about the corporate board as the remedy. But the board is often a part of the problem, being paid huge amounts of money for showing up once or twice a year at meetings.
Give the stockholders a meaningful remedy. Once you get the mandatory disclosure put in place by previous legislation, we are saying the stockholders should be allowed to have a referendum on that and not have a runaround by the board.
Opponents support voting NO because:
This vote is based on mischaracterization--it is an unnecessary amendment. The opportunity for these kinds of votes already exists within the structure of corporate governance right now. A good company from Georgia, AFLAC, went ahead and already has these nonbinding shareholder votes. But there is a difference between having individuals in the private sector, shareholders and individuals outside of the mandating of government to have it occur and have government come in with its heavy hand and say, this is exactly what you need to do because we know best. Our constituents know better how to act and how to relate to corporations than Washington.
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A bill to reform the Consumer Product Safety Commission to provide greater protection for children's products, to improve the screening of non-compliant consumer products, to improve the effectiveness of consumer product recall programs, and for other purposes.