Taxpayer manifesto

Dear Editor,

Soliciting Corporate Officers' opinions is, by necessity, a part of the decision process for choosing the direction our bailout program will steer.

A problem with this was pointed out by Alan Greenspan's admission that he made a fundamental error in assuming a Board of Directors would always act prudently for the benefit of the company and its shareholders.

To sugarcoat it, he seemed to imply that these people opted for short-term, high risk solutions that were not in the best interest of the long term positions that a business ought to be maintaining. A less tasty interpretation of Greenspan's admission would be he was implying that the Board of Directors willingly took on high risk and intentionally misled shareholders in order to boost their own paychecks and bonuses. Either interpretation raises questions about the integrity of some of these businessmen's intentions.

In light of this, corporations that are requesting financial assistance, and specifically including the campaign contributions and professional lobbying they have come to represent, pose an immediate conflict of interest when it comes to our lawmakers seeking a fair and equitable remedy for the American taxpayer.

The U.S. taxpayer is in the unique position to demand of their representatives a requirement that any business wanting to sit at this table must voluntarily put a halt to any form of professional lobbying and dissolve their PAC's immediately.

We may be bound by Supreme Court rulings to allow Lobbyists and PAC's in our country, but we are certainly not bound to give these companies handouts or loans. In pushing restrictions, we would not be circumventing the law, simply dictating the terms of a loan to include the elimination of conflicts of interest. This is not statutory in the sense that the corporation always has the option of turning us down and going elsewhere for assistance.

On the flip-side, any member of Congress who would vote for the bailout of a corporation after having taken contributions from them during the current term ought to be nominated for immediate incarceration- abstention would be the preferred vote in this case. And finally, those who would vote for the bailout of a corporation that does not voluntarily agree to restrictions should be viewed as assisting that business in spite of their obvious conflict of interest and should probably not bother wasting our time with a re-election campaign.

Al Dunworth,

Culbertson