Bonuses? Audit the bastards

Corporate America, tax system
need new measures of fairness

You have to wonder about all those banker bonuses – or corporate bonuses in general – when folks are getting a million bucks or more on top of salaries already bordering on the ludicrous.

After all, the President gets a mere $400,000. But even if you add on the benefits, and his own plane and helicopter, and about $150,000 for various expenses, a fat lifetime pension, book and speaking deals, the dough being spread around corporate America is obscene in comparison.

But with all the shouting about AIG, the pendulum of pay seems to have reached its limit and now will swing back – at least a little bit – lest greed give capitalism a bad name. Wouldn’t want the word “capitalism” competing with “socialism” for worst national operating system. (Speaking of which, I hope the folks at Microsoft who jammed Vista down PC buyers’ throats were the first to see layoff notices there… along with the folks whose Windows updates screw up all manner of other software.)

While the bonuses have been generating so much anger, cooler heads in Washington have been pointing out that they represent a tiny fraction of the government bailout money in which AIG is awash. Let it not distract from the wider concerns of taking steps to avoid a total economic meltdown.

I think you can do both – be angry about the obscene compensation paid to all those greedy bastards, and work on the wider challenge of building a ladder to climb out of the incredibly deep fiscal hole.

I have no idea how to build that ladder, not a clue.

But I have an idea about executive compensation, at least for companies that are publicly traded. It’s called fairness.

My definition of fairness: A top executive’s salary cannot exceed that of the company’s lowest-paid full-time employee by more than a hundredfold. Janitors get $20,000? The CEO can make $2 million.

Bonuses? Scale them companywide starting at a 20 percent minimum differential, based on percentage of annual salary. If the CEO gets 50 percent over salary (in the case above, that would be $1 million), the janitor gets at least 10 percent over salary ($2,000). If there’s no bonus paid companywide, why should executives get one?

I recognize that a million-dollar bonus sounds like a lot. But we’re limiting salaries, after all, based on the lowest-paid worker – and rewarding everyone in the company a share of the pie.

That’s at least a start.

Stock options, pensions, health benefits, life insurance all need a level playing field. The million-dollar executive needs health insurance far less than the $20,000-a-year janitor, but you know who has the Lexus in health care and who gets the beat-up Chevy – if at all.

Private companies will, of course, do whatever they want. That’s a shame. But at least imposing a measure of fairness on those that are ostensibly publicly owned would be a start toward taking the greed out of a very screwed-up economic system that until (and maybe despite) the meltdown had seen the rich get ever richer and a widening gulf between them and the poor.

A couple of other ideas to throw around:

Junk the existing income tax system in favor of a graduated scale based on income, with only a few standardized deductions for dependents and disability. Pick a number – say, $25,000 annual income after deductions – where income tax would begin at a flat 2 percent or whatever. Then it increases by set percentages for every dollar earned over specified levels, maybe at $27,500, $30,000, $32,500, and so on upward, maxing out at 35 percent for earned income in excess of $300,000.

Declare or fight a war? Everybody pays a tad more. That’ll make presidents think twice about invading other countries. No free lunch for Americans, and no action without possible consequences for presidents or, for that matter, members of Congress. I seem to recall that the Vietnam war eventually brought a temporary income tax surcharge for many Americans.

But back to those ugly bonuses: I can’t help but wonder what dirty little shenanigans would emerge from IRS audits of executives who got million-dollar bonuses. Might be enough to more than offset their obscene gains.

And for companies that may be tempted but have not yet paid out inappropriate bonuses (and I stress, inappropriate, as in a million bucks), just say “no” – and if those managers and executives don’t like it, tell them to look for a job somewhere else. It’s a very tough marketplace out there in the unemployment lines.

Today's fortune cookie message

Change is intuitive and action sublime.

Check out this story

My pal Rafael Alvarez has a nifty economy-related story online at the Christian Science Monitor, reporting from the town where the fictional account of the Joad family's travails began in Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." Check it out at:
http://features.csmonitor.com/backstory/2009/03/24/great-depression-icon-meets-the-great-recession/

Bonnie Goes Blogistic: Malware

Infected by pop-up plague, good cure tough to find

Trojan used to be such an innocent word – you know, like it was supposed to be protection.

Those were the good old days, before the digital revolution gave it a whole new meaning.

And we’re not talking about online porn stuff, either.

Not long ago I received email warnings relayed by family and friends that using Microsoft Internet Explorer might compromise my computer. I took it so seriously that I stopped using IE and turned to Mozilla Firefox as my browser.

Guess what? It, too, was vulnerable to attack as my computer was invaded by a Trojan from visiting a Web site that was Googled with Foxfire.

No, it wasn’t a porn site. I was merely looking for some UBB code I wanted to use on a forum. As soon as I clicked on this site (whose owners likely don’t even know it is infected, and I don’t remember the URL), Internet Explorer opened with no command from me and I received a machinegun-rapid barrage of advertisements.

I remember one ad being for online sports betting, but hardly paid attention to the content. I just wanted the pop-ups gone, but they came so fast I couldn’t close the windows quickly enough.

The lesson of Vanuatu

While this was happening, I remembered from years ago how our daughter’s computer at college, in a dial-up connection, got snared by a Web site where rapid clicking to close windows brought in an undesirable link to some distant place we’d never heard of – Vanuatu – and a huge unauthorized charge to the phone bill. A friend had been using the computer, surfing evidently in all the wrong places.

Because of that, I knew I shouldn’t continue clicking to close the array of windows. So I hit Control-Alt-Delete, bringing up the Task Manager where I could End Task for unwanted applications.

That worked for the moment, but not in time to avoid longer-term problems. I was infected with a Trojan.

What bothers me is that I’ve been good. I haven’t visited questionable Web sites. In fact, the one I clicked on that planted this Trojan had a green sign from my supposed protector, McAfee, which indicated that it was safe. And I keep up with all the latest updates.

I used to subscribe to McAfee. But in buying high-speed cable, it came free with the service from Comcast.

(I know – they say if it’s free, you get what you pay for.)

I have McAfee protection. I counted on it, and it let me down.

I’m not a computer geek. All I want to do is use my equipment for creativity, communication and information. That’s it.

But now I had to face geeky challenges to try to fix my problem since I couldn’t count on McAfee. Nor could I count on Microsoft – which is real good about messaging you about having to shut down, and asking if you want the problem reported. Kind of an inside joke, no doubt, for all the answers anyone gets back from Seattle or Mumbai or wherever.

Vulnerable and angry

But I was determined to fight back against this “home invasion.”

Yes, that’s what it was. It was a digital home invasion and I felt violated. I WAS violated. I couldn’t trust actions I performed on my computer for fear that I was vulnerable. I WAS vulnerable.

So the first thing I tried to do was to go back a few days to an earlier restore point. Dead end! Apparently the Trojan took care of that and all restore points were wiped out except for the day I was infected, and I wasn’t going to use that as a restore point.

The next thing I did was a full McAfee scan. Guess what? Nothing was found.

Then I rebooted my computer to safe mode and scanned again. McAfee still didn’t find anything.

During the next couple of days, McAfee was able to quarantine a malware file named Generic. And it was able to remove another, named Vundo. However, it was unable to do anything with GenericArtemis and this was a problem.

I got constant pop-ups from McAfee that I should reboot and scan. Every time I did, nothing was found and then I got the same message again. It reminded me of the old song about Boston Charlie riding the MTA. It was an unending, frustrating loop.

Unable to delete Internet Explorer (probably because it is so ingrained in the Microsoft package), I took some extreme measures – unplugging my connection to the outside world, and setting the program to its highest security level. Then I deleted Firefox.

Connecting to the Internet again, I started using Safari, an Apple product which seems not to be vulnerable.

But I still had a Trojan. I knew this because I kept getting a blank white screen. With the new IE settings, the Trojan couldn’t access the advertising sites but could still open IE –hence the blank window, which I then had to close using Control-Alt-Delete.

Next I tried to download another possible malware remedy called Ad-Aware, recommended by a son-in-law who said it had worked for him in the past. He also looked at a record of the infected files, and said, “This is bad,” explaining that the files had “hooks” which attached themselves to many other files.

Microsoft disallowed a download of Ad-Aware until the security setting was back to “medium,” and then I was able to scan with Ad-Aware, which found and removed a nasty thing named Virtumonde.

But I was not anywhere near out of the woods. There was still a problem, as some electronic critter kept opening Internet Explorer and the white screen reappeared again and again.
Neither McAfee nor Ad-Aware solved the problem.

Link to the solution?

Next, I tried downloading a program called Malwarebytes, which was recommended by a participant in a forum of McAfee users – and I seemed to have hit the jackpot! (So McAfee was good for something – one of its users had an answer).

Malwarebytes found about 40 infected files and removed some. The others were quarantined and then removed when I restarted my computer.

It’s now been six hours since I’ve done this, and so far (knock on plastic), no more ads.

I’m left angry that the good guys haven’t been smart enough to overcome the bad guys – at least, in this case, Microsoft (assuming they are good guys) and McAfee (where maybe they are smart, but just not fast enough to keep up).

I’m angry that stealth programs can invade my computer, in spite of all the right things I do. I’m angry at Microsoft and McAfee for not protecting me.

But I’m thankful to Safari for providing a free browser that doesn’t seem to be so vulnerable, and to Malwarebytes for having a smart program that helped me solve my problem.

I’m so grateful that, if a few days pass without a recurrence, I might even buy the full version.

Today's fortune cookie message

Your happiness is intertwined with your outlook on life.

(... but probably not with Microsoft's Outlook Express)

Daily number: 900

Editor's note

The Bonnie who occasionally goes 'blogistic' here in The Real Muck is Bonnie J. Schupp, the life partner, inspiration and art director for the blogger-in-chief. David has been lazy and not written very much in the past week. But he'll be back soon, and thanks you for visiting.

Note to dictionary editors

Blogistic: Venting feelings or exorcizing demons or any sort through a blog posting.