A Higher Standard

It wasn’t that long ago that WorldCom seemed to be in the news almost every day. Their act was nothing new to the hardened, American news junkie. We all lived through the Enron fiasco. Artificially inflating stock prices, falsifying inventory, understating expenses, salary increases and lucrative stock options for the Executives. No real surprise these days.

Cooking the books and defrauding one’s stockholders is not a disease unique to major corporations, either. It happens at all levels of business. Of course, PA had its own Adelphia case. I believe John Rigas, Adelphia CEO is currently in jail.

Watching these incidents unfold right before our eyes on the national news, one fact jumps out at you. The tenacity possessed by government to fry the bad guys appears as if government itself is possessed. These are high profile, media circus events. Announcements of press conferences and pending indictments come pouring across the airwaves. I suppose the old cliche’ “you don’t want to mess with the government” comes through loud and clear when the government has you in their sights. When private stockholders are defrauded of their hard-earned money, government is more than willing to punish the bad guys. Criminal indictments are handed down and civil lawsuits are filed and the bad guys certainly feel like “the whole world is raining down on them” (Toby Keith).

The inconsistency that I see in this world of “government goes after the bad guys” is when government just might be the bad guys. Who is supposed to go after government? When our citizens are the stockholders and government is abusing our tax money, who will take the lead and prosecute the government with tenacity and as if possessed?

Let us consider the current deer management program. We were told we had 1.6 million deer and reduction was absolutely necessary. The 1.6 million number was very suspect and easily refuted by applying some simple, accepted deer management mathematics. Isn’t overstating our deer herd, or shall we say our inventory, a form of cooking the books? We have killed a few million deer in the past 5 years and yet the PGC still uses the same number of 1.6 million without adjustment. In this case our hunters are the stockholders and aren’t we being deceived by not getting a new, credible population number after every season. Would you buy stock in a company that refused to update its inventory number each year?

What about the elk program? Here’s a program whose popularity with hunters has plummeted for the past 4 years and the agency continues to spend our stockholders money to support it. In the private business sector if a product’s sales decline each year, the company will cut it losses and move on. Does anyone really know how much the elk program is costing our stockholders? Isn’t the elk program an example of understating and/or hiding unprofitable efforts from the stockholders?

I could go on, but I think you get my point. There really isn’t much difference when corporations act fraudulently and incompetently and when government acts fraudulently and incompetently. In the end the stockholders, private and our citizens’ financial investments are abused.

Did I hear someone say unnecessary deer reduction is a victimless crime and not a fair comparison to corporate fraud? Deer hunting touches the lives of literally millions of people in PA and has a value of $4 Billion (that’s Billion with a B) in this state. This number certainly compares to our infamous corporate scandals. Furthermore, our thousands of rural merchants who will now suffer tremendous financial losses from the current deer program certainly don’t feel victimless.

The Unified Sportsmen of PA’s lawsuit should expose the recipes utilized in our deer program. There will be interrogatories and discovery. The camera will roll for depositions. I don’t suspect it will be a media circus event. I don’t believe there will be indictments or civil lawsuits.

Frankly, the issue is equal accountability for the private and public sector. If we prosecute our citizens for violations with enthusiasm and righteousness should we not prosecute government with the same enthusiasm and righteousness.

Actually, should we not hold government to even higher standards? After all, it is our government’s actions that teach and ultimately determine the moral character of our state and nation.