When the CEO Dies

One of the least-discussed and barely-admitted aftereffects of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder is something that should make every over-paid, under-worked, totally unnecessary corporate executive nervous:  more than 30 states have passed bills limiting insurance carriers’ ability to reject necessary medical treatment with “prior authorization” abuses and more such bills are pending this year.  Thompson was the overpaid ($10,221,898 for 2023), grossly unnecessary UnitedHealthcare CEO when he was shot to death on the streets of New York, allegedly, by an assassin who’d written “deny, defend, depose” on the shells of the ammunition used in the shooting in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on December 4, 2024. 

Let’s reflect on that unanticipated outcome for a moment.  The so-called “healthcare insurance industry” reported over $71.3 billion in profits in 2024, while increasing premiums, begging for more government-funded revenue, particularly from Medicare and Medicaid.  Corporate executive salaries have ballooned to levels that can’t be explained by any rational means (see below).  And that includes Thompsons’s UnitedHealthcare replacement, Andrew Witty, who leads the pack of deadbeat, useless CEOs scalping the public with the assistance of the Republican Party’s usual corporate welfare suspects. 

Obviously, getting shot at isn’t reforming the industry from within, even a little bit, as UnitedHealthcare’s 2025 Revenues increased to $447.6 Billion, growing at 12% over the year, and investor earnings of $13.23/share.  But if taking out one overpaid and useless insurance company CEO caused more than 30 states to make feeble attempts at reining in the nation’s most corrupt insurance industry, imagine what actual threat of real reform would do for the American healthcare system. 

In fact, if the American public discovered it had hind legs to rise up on, a whole world of problems could be solved quickly, French Revolution style.  Pick a problem and pick a CEO or “investor” who is that problem’s most obvious representative and you have your target?  Corporate and special interests’ election interference and the biggest benefactors of the Extreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United v. FEC (2010) decision?  Obviously, Elon Musk and/or Peter Theil.  Corporate environmental and climate change damage?  Darren W. Woods (CEO of ExxonMobil) or Meg O'Neill (CEO of BP).  Benefactor of the media’s trust conglomerates and the decimation of reliable US national media? David Ellison (CEO of Paramount Skydance) or Lachlan Murdoch (Fox Corporation CEO).  Predatory low income housing vultures?  Warren Buffett (Clayton Homes, the largest manufacturer and lender of manufactured homes in the United States) and/or Sam Zell  (Equity Lifestyle Properties, ELS)  the largest owner of trailer courts in the United States,

Before it happened, few in 1790 France ever imagined seeing the “worst of the worst,” the French aristocracy, waiting for their turn at the guillotine.  But it happened.  Our ruling class loudly cries about the public dislike of executives with the usual “this is un-American” whine, but is it?  The only people describing Brian Thompson’s death as “tragic” are corporate executives and their useless, babbling corporate media and academia shills.  It is hard to find a working-class person who doesn’t just shrug and say “So what?” when it comes to a blip in the revolving doors of the executive class.  It’s obvious it doesn’t matter which suit occupies those corner offices, the show goes on regardless of who is earning a minimum of 300 times their typical worker. 

And, business-wise, it’s pretty obvious that the ruling class has almost no contribution to make to progress, the economy the 99% relies on, science and technology, and, especially, democracy and national security.  If you can think of anything that critically requires the “guidance” of billionaires like Musk, Peter Theil, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, the Waltons, Jensen Huang, Warren Buffett, or any billionaire in this or any other country, you probably don’t know much about that particular technical or economic activity.  In the past 20 years, so-called “founders” and (usually) self-proclaimed “brilliant leaders” like Steve Jobs (Apple, 2011), Paul Allen (2018, Microsoft), Ingvar Kamprad (2018, IKEA), Jack Welch (2020, GE), Sumner Redstone (2020, Viacom/CBS) Sheldon Adelson (2021, Los Vegas Sands Corp), Sergio Marchionne (2018, Fiat Chrysler), Giorgio Armani (2025, Armani Group), Frederick W. Smith (2025, FedEx), Charles T. Munger (2023, Berkshire Hathaway) and a raft of other overpaid, self-promoted, largely useless executives, “founders,” and investors have died and, mostly, the fallout has been . . . crickets. 

After all the noise about Jobs’ brilliant “leadership,” Apple has done quite a bit better under Tim Cook and, when Cook is dead and gone, likely the next corner office resident will do just as well or better.  GE continued it’s de-evolution into a national embarrassment, the decline of which was started under the “leadership” of Jack Welch, until what was once America’s most powerful and profitable company became a footnote in business history.  The last GE CEO, H. Lawrence "Larry" Culp Jr., was paid $87.6 million to disassemble that once-great company.  The “richest person in the world,” Elon Musk, contributed nothing but political connection and bad press to Tesla until the company finally came out with a vehicle solidly representing Elon’s input: the Cybertruck.  Elon’s 6,500lb+ “pickup” has significant build quality/fitment issues (rattles, panel gaps, water leaks), non-existent impact protection, rusting “stainless steel” construction, dangerous motorized bed and front-trunk lids, limited cargo space (67 cubic feet), and doubtful towing capacity (the hitch is mounted to a cast aluminum frame which is known to fail well under the 11,000 pound rating).  None of Elon’s companies are better because of his involvement and some, SpaceX for example, are considerably worse off from his mismanagement interference. 

The two most important factors in an executive’s tenure are luck and who is doing the bulk of the work and making the most critical decisions behind that “leadership” (also determined, mostly, by luck).  The Ivy League MBA mills have been cranking out thousands of over-educated fools and arrogant narcissists using the Harvard “push blame down and pull credit up” mantra for at least 100 years, but those “skills” don’t make or break any business.  I have documented, in past essays, my own CEO experiences and none of them have been inspiring in any way (other than the usual “how NOT to do it” examples).  I’ve never been in a meeting where a CEO contributed anything even a little bit useful or enlightening, let alone actual leadership.  And I’ve been in hundreds of meetings with CEOs from seven very different industries from small companies to Fortune 100 catastrophes. 

A smart, democratic public would realize the obvious, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” [Louis Brandeis (U.S. Supreme Court Justice)] 

After WWII and the Great Depression, the country’s leadership and the majority of voters realized that the first task was to pay off the war debt and catch up on all of the infrastructure maintenance and modernization that had been put off by the war effort.  The post-WWII highest tax rate was in the mid-90% territory.  What used to be called “unearned income” (investment and dividend income) was taxed at the highest rate, since it is obviously unproductive income.  Today, all of that is reversed and the chart below plainly demonstrates the result (and this picture is a lot worse as a result of the first year of Trump’s second term). 

Even someone as math-disabled as Republican voters can see the relationship between tax rates and national debt and it’s also pretty obvious where this national insolvency problem began: Ronald Reagan’s “economic miracle.”  In 1981, there were 13 billionaires in the United States and our national debt was $994.8 billion.  By 1989, the country suffered 99 billionaires (an increase of 761%) and a national debt of $2.86 trillion, while the middle class paid the bill for this gross acceleration in the nation’s idle rich.  Today, there are over 1,100 estimated billionaires in the US and the country is drowning in debt as a result. 

Performance is NEVER linked to an executive’s salary and there is no known positive relationship between a nation’s income gap and any useful measure of a nation’s quality of life, security, productivity, or even lifespan.  Self-regulation is not a real thing.  Rich people, companies, corporations, and even communities consistently prove themselves to be incapable of reining in their worst inclinations.  It always takes an outside force to reform anything.  Brian Thompson’s execution was certainly a demonstration of how quickly reform can happen when outside forces exert themselves on a corrupt industry. 

Recently, Musk whined that $900B wasn’t making him happy.  Author George Ouzounian replied, “Do you think it has to do with the fact that all you do is put out hatred and negativity into the world and it reflects back to you constantly?”  Several other people suggested that Musk’s legendary selfishness, greed, entitlement, corruption, and disdain toward “philanthropic activity” was key to his unhappiness.  It’s highly unlikely that logic or morality would have any influence on how someone as corruptible as Elon Musk lives his life, but a better view of the guillotine might.\

 

Spring in America and Minnesota

There are signs of spring coming in Minnesota and it is almost mid-March. We just passed through the usual Minnesota late-winter “blizzard” and while it was advertised as a “major event,” it wasn’t that much of a storm.  This isn't a Happy Spring though. About the only thing I have to look forward to is spring cleaning.  Trump and the American Fascist Party have launched an illegal war, sent armed, violent, lawless, and undisciplined ICE goons into American cities (particularly Minneapolis), murdered and kidnapped American citizens and legal immigrants, and the economy and the entire US economic system is on the verge of toppling into chaos. 

Usually, the sound of early spring in Minnesota is full of birdsong. Not this year. Thanks to bird flu, a federal Administration that too stupid, gullible, and superstitious to comprehend any area of science, and our rapidly changing and highly unpredictable climate, birds are dying in droves. Last year, we saw volunteers along the Mississippi carefully picking up dead birds and disposing of them: geese, ducks, cranes, swans, and songbirds. We are living in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. And while we didn't cause this die off with poisons like DDT, we caused it with the poison of carbon dioxide and we probably helped it along with the GMO herbicides and insecticide toxins.  This year, the skies are empty of migrating birds and bird watchers across the country are wondering “Where did all the birds go?” 

As usual, Americans are distracting themselves with the trivia of the MAGA/Trump insanity, our ruling class-manufactured cultural divide, and the continual dumbing down of an already foolish, gullible, and suicidal American public. I wouldn't feel nearly as bad about this if I didn't think we were taking the rest of the world down with us. The loss of 300 million Americans would barely be noticed in a world population of 8 billion, less than 4% of the world population, if it was noticed at all. Everything about the current moment reads like the explanation of how America fell in The Handmaid's Tale.  That’s because it is exactly the same.  Religion and other superstitions, oligarchy corruption, an uneducated and uneducable population, and an economic world that is quickly moving past and away from the American Century have put the United States in exactly the “right” place for a violent overthrow by the ruling class.  If/when that happens, our current kleptocracy will establish itself as the “owners” of everything and everyone below them.  This is the world those same people sent Southern working class fools out to fight for in 1863 and they’ve been trying to destroy our poorly-created shambles of a democracy every since slavery was abolished. 

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend (Charles Yancy), “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”  The MAGA crowd, proud examples of the end result of centuries of Dunning-Kruger breeding, happily creates its own facts, ignores expertise and science, and lives on feelings rather than rational thought and analysis.  As of November 2024, it is well-documented that at least 77,303,568 stupid, lawless, felon-loving, misogynist, racist fools live and vote in the United States.  That is a stunning statistic and one that goes a long way in explaining how and why the United States is no longer a leading first world nation.  

In fact, we’re likely on our way to becoming several smaller, less-powerful, less internationally influential, and much poorer nations.  With luck, there will be a couple of spots on the coasts remaining democratic and functional, while the inner red state core of the US, which is already very dependent on the blue states’ financial support, becoming North America’s Bangladesh.  If/when that happens, Putin will have accomplished Khrushchev’s 1956 warning, that whether the West liked it or not, "history is on our side. We will bury you!"  The unintended MAGA outcome will be that communism (through Russia and China becoming the world’s super powers) will outlast and naturally replace capitalism.  The Communist Party of the Russian Federation remains the second-largest political party in Russia, after United Russia (Putin’s party, even though he is listed as “independent”).  Putin may not be loyal to the Communist Party, but he has ambitions to return to the Soviet Union’s old super power status and the MAGA crowd and the pitiful remains of the Republican Party are solidly in Putin’s pocket. 

So, spring this year isn’t coming with the usual hope and optimism after a long, cold winter.  In fact, most likely another kind of “winter is coming” right behind the seasonal one.