12 Steps to Breaking Enronesque Habits

12 Steps to Breaking Enronesque Habits

12 Steps to Breaking Enronesque Habits

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1. Improve public disclosure of (a) conflicts of interest among board members, management and auditors; (b) amount of cash taxes actually paid and significant sources of tax credits; (c) financing from government agencies and multinational agencies; and (d) recipients of campaign contributions and amount of lobbying expense.

2. Require 401(k) plans to be diversified, as traditional pension plans already are.

3. End taxpayer subsidies for excessive executive compensation by allowing companies to deduct only compensation less than twenty-five times the compensation of the lowest-paid employee.

4. Ban company loans to executives.

5. Adopt a regulatory standard of board independence.

6. Require complete auditor independence; ban companies’ auditors from doing non-audit consulting work.

7. Require auditors to be changed every five years.

8. Require stock options to be expensed on the company’s annual income statement. (Currently stock options never show up as an expense, an accounting convention that has inflated corporate earnings by tens of billions of dollars.)

9. Prohibit the inclusion of pension fund gains in the presentation of corporate earnings.

10. Adopt a progressive corporate income tax in which larger corporations pay a higher tax rate than small businesses.

11. Require US and international trade finance agencies to include sustainable development criteria and democratic input from affected peoples.

12. Amend corporate laws that mandate shareholder primacy in favor of rules that balance the needs and interests of all stakeholders.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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