With all these unqualified nominations, doesn't it make you wonder about the people

[Baitball Blogger]

who get voted into the boards of corporate America? I have it down to two streams of thoughts,

The first: That Corporate America really does have to survive financially, so incompetent board member are at a minimum. These would include Nepo appointments as well as cronyism. YET, there have been many examples where the workers of a company have seen their corporations suffer because their new CEOs do not understand anything about the business they're managing. A contradiction that is hard to rationalize.

The second: There is no way possible that using the business model to run government effectively is possible, if Trump is any example. The appointments have mostly been loyalists who know absolutely nothing about government or business. Elon Musk is an outlier, though he has shown that he is capable of destroying a business, as he is doing with X. The rest are political hacks. However, if the Trump appointments tell us anything, it is that Grover Norquist's mission is the objective. All they're going to do is tear down government, and the hacks will do just fine for the job.

[marble falls]

1. "Well, if you won't give me the cabinet I need, I'll just be a dictator on day 2, day 3, day 4 ..............."

[underpants]

2. Loyalty (fealty really) outweighs all.

There was a video of Gaetz and Tulsi sitting around as Trump dictates a social media post to Leavitt. Just nodding away.

He’s picking from the people in the room.

[Walleye]

3. Sure, you can hear people who call themselves a patriotic American saying, "just tear the place up and burn it down"

They think it’s real cool to hate their own government. Thank you, Ronald and Nancy Reagan. There’s lots of peer pressure, especially from the bros. It is to them like a sports team, nobody really wants to see the other team torn apart and left on the field, broken, but that’s the kind of cheers they do to fans of the other team at their tailgate parties. They don’t really mean it. They don’t really want to see violence, most of them. they just can’t talk any other way. unfortunately, Donald Trump thinks it’s a license to execute his sadistic tendencies on the rest of us

[Sneederbunk]

6. Comparable to antebellum Fire-Eaters.

[Mike 03]

4. Interesting. I can add little; I think your observations are

on point. I don't know the situation on modern Boards. I can only tell you that in the late 90s and early 2000s I worked for someone who sat on several boards. He had a lot of experience in banking and management. He took it very seriously. He had a high regard for others on these boards. In advance of board meetings he had huge binders he studied, and he went prepared. My dad also sat on a couple of boards in his lifetime; not nearly as many as my boss.

You have to ask yourself about a Board like Tesla. Do they worry about Musk? Are they just cronies, or is it the kind of board that can confront him and say: "Your behavior is bad for our stock price. It's terrible for the reputation of our company?" I don't know. I know that the major agencies in Hollywood were very assertive about reining in crazy behavior. If they had to send top management to rehab for a month they'd do it immediately. (Not so much with the talent--but the suits, yes)

Look at Theranos. Somehow Elizabeth Holmes convince a lot of smart people to sit on that board. They didn't know anything about the products that company made. They appear not to have known the products were worthless frauds. Did they do research? Did they read those thick binders and find things that didn't make sense or were hard to believe? How about those absurd financial projections? Did Holmes deliberately not pick any Board members who knew anything about finance? Was that a competent board, despite the credentials of the people sitting on it?

I think there's a very good chance that many Boards have members on them who love the paychecks and prestige but don't do any homework. Recent events make me wonder about Boeing. What was going on at the board meetings at Worldcom? Also, should board members be held liable for the misconduct of senior management? (Maybe in some cases they are)

Sorry to blather on, but this is a really interesting topic.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. You're providing great examples forf the kind of questions we should be asking ourselves.

The other side is so intent on running government like a business, but the business models are replete with examples of why it can't be applied to government, for reasons that we're only now scratching the surface, because of Trump! The best boards will have the most educated people WHO ACTUALLY KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THE WIDGETS THE COMPANY MAKES.

But this last election, people who undervalued college degrees voted for an administration that doesn't care about surrounding itself by unqualified individuals. They liked the idea of tearing down government, without having the intelligence to understand how that will affect them in the end.

[doc03]

7. Look at the CEO of any company you will find

they also sit on the board of another company or maybe several. If the CEO of company A wants a raise the CEO of company B that is on the board of company A votes for it since the CEO of company A sits on the board of company B. Wall Street is a massive theifdom. If you are incompetent and bankrupt a company you get a $10 million golden parachute when you get fired. Then they cut 1000 employees to pay for it.