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Jewish World Review
Oct. 8, 2009
/ 20 Tishrei 5770
White-Collar Hero
By
Bob Tyrrell
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
If you happen to be in Manhattan on Monday, do not
miss the Columbus Day parade gliding up Fifth Avenue. It will be a gaudy,
joyful affair as always, but it will feature something especially timely.
Its grand marshal is a brassy gent who took on Eliot Spitzer when the former
New York governor as attorney general was at the height of his reckless
powers, publicly slandering private citizens in the hopes of intimidating
them into plea bargains while privately employing ladies of delight for what
the FBI reported was "unsafe sex," perhaps undertaken at breakneck speed and
without a seat belt. Let us pass on; "unsafe sex" does not invite prolonged
contemplation in a serious column, and in this column, I am particularly
serious. The Columbus Day grand marshal did something uniquely honorable and
courageous.
He is Kenneth Langone, a self-made investment banker, venture
capitalist and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Home Depot Inc. Of even
greater importance, he is a proud American who did not flinch when Spitzer
went after him. He and an associate, Richard Grasso, spent some $70 million
defending their good names after Spitzer trashed them. Then, several months
after the former attorney general had trashed his own good name, they won.
It took four years, but they won.
Those must have been harrowing years, for, though Langone is
clearly a spirited and amusing adversary, he was under heavy fire. Back in
2004, Spitzer publicly called Langone, then head of the New York Stock
Exchange's compensation committee, "unsavory," "deceptive" and "tainted." To
his receptive stenographers in the media, Spitzer then went on to vow that
he would put a "stake" through Langone's heart; so when Spitzer is accused
of "unsafe sex," it might not be such a laughing matter. Actually, Langone
laughed. In The Wall Street Journal, he characterized this threat as a
"metaphorical threat" to his "cardiovascular system," as well as "brash
talk." Denying he had broken the law as the grandstanding attorney general
alleged, Langone went on to demonstrate that there was no case against him.
He was being accused of duping NYSE directors into approving the
compensation package of the outgoing chairman, Grasso. Yet the directors
denied that Langone had duped them by concealment or faked data those
being Spitzer's charges. In fact, Langone demonstrated that it was Spitzer
who was practicing concealment. The attorney general did not want what was
called the Webb report, the compilation of evidence and charges against
Langone, made public. When its contents were revealed, Langone was shown to
be innocent.
In threatening executives such as Langone with scurrilous
threats broadcast by a willing media, Spitzer's intent was always to
intimidate them into out-of-court settlements. He tried this with others,
for instance Hank Greenberg, the man who made AIG an insurance giant and who
was driven out of the company by a cowardly board. The consequence of that
prosecutorial excess cost the federal government a fortune in bailouts. The
consensus among financial experts is that had Greenberg remained atop AIG,
it never would have come to the grief it did.
Spitzer's barbarous use of his office "has never been adequately
addressed in the media," remarks Lawrence Auriana, chairman of the Columbus
Citizens Foundation, which is honoring Langone in Monday's parade. Auriana
makes another worthwhile point. Had Langone not defended himself, "it would
have been impossible to honor him Monday." His name would have been
irretrievably defamed, says Auriana, "despite the hundreds of millions of
dollars he has contributed to charities, the hundreds of thousands of jobs
he has created and hundreds of millions of dollars in savings he has given
the customers of Home Depot." A great exemplar of civic responsibility would
be denied us.
Aside from being an ambitious attorney general who abused his
power to attain higher office (remember that Spitzer rose to become the
"reform governor" of New York), Spitzer was part of a wider movement to
criminalize commerce. The movement began in the late 1940s, when sociologist
Edwin Sutherland coined the term "white-collar crime" and set about to
revise criminal law so that the prosecution of theretofore perfectly legal
transactions could be possible. Sutherland wanted to eliminate the
presumption of innocence, among other revisions. He was a leading theorist
of the kind of class warfare that we see being practiced by certain members
of the Obama administration today. With heroes like Kenneth Langone, the
demagogues can be thwarted. If they are not, our economic woes will last a
long time.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.
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