Molly Ivins April 11

Helena, Mont. — Some outstanding work by the Montana Legislature this year.

On the knotty question of allowing concealed weapons in bars — which would strike the more pedestrian intelligence as only a fairish idea — even the bar owners were opposed. They pointed out that gunfire in a bar causes customers to dive to the floor and then flee the establishment, cutting heavily into profits for the night.

But some righteous thinkers on the Senate side noted that silencers would solve the problem. A barroom tiff, a small "pfft,'' a customer slumps over — but as far as the rest of the patrons are concerned, it's just another drunk taking a nap, and the drinking continues quite merrily. And if Darwin was right about the theory of evolution, Montana will soon have produced a strain of less quarrelsome drinkers.

Also on the hereditary front, the Lege was fixing to fingerprint every teacher in the state to see if any of them had records for child molestation, but it was widely felt that this was too intrusive (not to mention too expensive) an initiative. So, they compromised: Now, Montana will only fingerprint teachers from out of state, it being clear to the legislature that no native Montanan could be a child molester. Good thinking, team.

Now, here's an interesting example of how political assumptions get set in concrete. All the politicos I ran into here wanted to know if our Gov. Shrub in Texas would name their Gov. Marc Racicot (pronounced like "Vasco'') to Shrub's forthcoming federal Cabinet — Interior being the position mentioned most often.

The Montanans point out rather anxiously that their guv is a lot like our guv. He's immensely popular, with 80 percent approval ratings, and has never done a thing. Everyone likes him because he's such a nice fellow; they call Racicot "the Cotton-Candy Governor.'' So, what do I think — is he a natural for the Bush Cabinet or not?

I thought it was pretty funny that they were asking me, but what I mostly think is that first George W. has to win the nomination, and then he has to win the election, and then we'll talk. Good grief, at this point in the '92 race, no one outside Arkansas had ever heard of Bill Clinton, and Shrub's daddy had 90 percent approval ratings. All I am saying is, give the unexpected a chance.

On to other things: In The Wall Street Journal's special section on executive pay, a subject of understandable interest to Journal readers, we learn: "Chief executives' cash compensation soared skyward again in 1998, though at a slower speed. Salaries and bonuses of the surveyed CEOs went up 5.2 percent, a considerably slower rate than 1997's 11.7 percent but at the same speed as in 1996.

Nevertheless, the latest gain overtook the 4.2 percent upswing in pay among white collar employees. In the survey, 160 corporate leaders exercised stock options in 1998 for a median gain of $2.77 million, up from $1.86 million in 1997. The latest figure is the largest cache of stock option profits in the survey's history. Overall, option gains for surveyed CEOs vaulted 85.3 percent last year."

How nice. Up 85.3 percent.

Also from the Journal we learn: "At a surprising number of corporations, the chief executive officer ignores an obvious conflict of interest by serving on the board's compensation committee.'' Surprising to whom? The absurdity of these compensation committees — their cozy, interlocking, self-interested nature, with "conflict of interest'' stamped all over them for any fool to see — has been the subject of much reportage.

I think my favorite exec comp stories are the ones about slashers, like Eastman Kodak's George Fisher, who cut 14,000 jobs in '93-'94 and got a raise to $3.9 million from $1.9 million. IBM CEO Louis Gerstner cut 36,000 jobs in '94 and was raised from $2.8 million to $4.6 million.

"Both chief executives have explained that the job reductions were necessary to restructure the companies and achieve profitable growth,'' deadpanned the Journal. But shouldn't it be the reverse? If things are so badly managed that you have to fire lots of people regardless of merit, shouldn't the CEO's pay be cut? Who else is responsible for such appalling mismanagement?

One of those droll little assumptions you find in business writing is that shareholders have some say in such matters. The farcical fiction that a corporation is really a democratic institution, with all the widows and orphans who own 10 shares apiece calling the shots, is beneath discussion. I just wish business would drop the annoying pretense.

Chuck Collins of Boston's Responsible Wealth group told the Journal: "There's an overall sense that the gap between what CEOs make and what the average worker earns is widening. (set ital) It is. (end ital) We even get ex-CEOs telling us they're aghast at what's happening. They think some responsible line has been crossed.''

What's interesting is that there are any players left with a sense of outrage. Rather like the case of the inevitability of George Bush, what is striking is the widespread resignation and acceptance, the inability to imagine that it could be any other way — as though the proposition that there can be and should be no limits on greed were some natural law recognized by all.

Actually, history suggests quite the opposite — that gross social and economic inequity leads to the massive upheavals we call revolutions. Reading The Wall Street Journal often moves one to meditate on revolution, I find.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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