Looting in L.A. and elsewhere
Rothstein, Richard
The television reporter on the scene was incredulous. A looter, unconcerned with television cameras, police, or the stares of fellow neighborhood residents, walked by, arms laden with...
...Who might they have been...
...Probably not, as events last week in Los Angeles showed...
...No," the looter said matter-of-factly, and walked off...
...Hay expected the government's pension insurance plan to make up the difference, and it did so...
...Perhaps the television anchor wanted to remind him of the cost to Malaysian girls crowded with a dozen others into one-room dormitories so they can work round-the-clock shifts...
...Of course it's not free," one of them pontificated...
...The looters, those grinning, arm-laden, amoral thieves, didn't stop to give their names to our on-the-scene television reporter...
...But let's try...
...This article first appeared in the L.A...
...Was one of the looters John Nevin, chief executive of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, who collected a $5.6-million bonus payment in 1986, two years before Firestone was sold to a Japanese firm...
...Or was the reporter trying to find out how Johnson felt when he lost the bidding war to merger artists (who bought the company with borrowed money) pledged to sell off most of the company in pieces to pay off their debts...
...For this kind of hard work, Vernon Savings and Loan paid Dixon more than $2 million per year in salary and bonuses in the mid-1980s, not including outright gifts to Dixon of a $2-million beach house and a $5.5-million art collection...
...Dixon could never have claimed his loot was "free" —Vernon S&L paid out almost $50,000 to host fund-raising parties on a yacht in the Potomac for congressmen who might influence S&L regulators...
...where teenage girls from rural villages can be had for factory assembly work at a wage of forty-five cents an hour, so long as their fingers are nimble...
...No, it's not free...
...Nevin felt guilty about today's desperate residents of South-Central Los Angeles, who no longer have the industrial jobs with which families can be supported in decency...
...The cost of looting, he said, is enormous: businesses destroyed, jobs lost to the community, lives wasted, children destined to go hungry, a generation's opportunities devastated...
...the reported pleaded...
...Could one of the looters have been Raymond Hay, chairman and chief executive officer of the LTV Corporation, who put his firm into bankruptcy in 1986, claiming it couldn't afford to pay $2 billion in FALL • 1992 • 429 debt to its employees' pension fund...
...Newscasters last week were shocked at the "carnival" atmosphere while looters smashed store windows and walked off with all the merchandise they could carry...
...If Coffey had been asked whether he felt any guilt over stealing $900 million from Washington's public schools, he might have responded as he did last year, "Why should I give [the schools] more money...
...Firestone once had a plant in Los Angeles, employing approximately three thousand workers under a union contract that provided decent wages, health benefits, and pension protection...
...Back to the news anchors...
...We thought pensions for our one hundred thousand steelworkers were free...
...Meanwhile, Riklis rewarded himself with a gift from McCrory of stock in a McCrory subsidiary...
...But within a year, when LTV returned to profitability, the company refused to reassume responsibility for these pension payments...
...Could he have been John Welch, Jr., chairman of General Electric, who oversaw increasing growth of RCA production work at his plant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where unions are illegal...
...Another looter came by, also laden with someone else's property...
...Or about the fact that Firestone took Nevin's $5.6 million as a business-expense tax deduction, helping to starve our public coffers of the funds needed for education, health care, and public safety...
...Though profitable, Zody's cash flow was not as lucrative as the real estate on which the stores sat, so Riklis slashed Zody's severance-pay policy for its 3,000 then closed the stores and sold the land...
...Why are you doing this...
...We'll let sucker taxpayers underwrite them...
...Over the last two years alone, Washington paid blackmail of $900 million to Boeing in sales-tax exemptions...
...said Hay...
...Perhaps the interviewer had run across one of South-Central Los Angeles' most notorious looters, Meshulam Riklis, husband of singer Pia Zadora...
...Or perhaps the looter was F. Ross Johnson, once president of RJR Nabisco, who "put the company into play" by trying to buy his own firm from its stockholders for $17 billion...
...The reporter raced after, trying to shove her microphone in the looter's face: "Why are you doing this...
...Perhaps the television anchor was trying to remind this looter that $5.6 million can never really be free...
...Johnson probably didn't feel too badly...
...On second thought, though, the looter on television probably wasn't Dixon...
...Can we have a civilized society if looting is the norm and getting something for free the ideal...
...Was our on-the-scene reporter trying to find out whether Johnson felt guilty about trying to trick his own stockholders into selling their shares for $8 billion less than he knew those shares were worth...
...What do I get...
...This time the looter turned to the reporter and gloated, "Because it's free...
...The tooter shrugged...
...Where have the newscasters been for the last ten years...
...Welch may have thought the profits were free...
...Eight years ago, Riklis, owner of the McCrory retail chain, took over Zody's discount stores, which provided merchandise as well as hundreds of jobs to South-Central residents...
...Nevin had certainly earned his bonus—by shrinking the company payroll by almost sixty thousand workers over the last seven years alone...
...Or perhaps the anchor was thinking of a Bloomington woman, forced to sell her home after being laid off, because the only jobs available now are table waiting, at one-third her former wages...
...What the hey...
...430 • DISSENT...
...Perhaps the looter was Frank Shrontz, chairman and chief executive of Boeing in Seattle, or Shrontz's vice president, Forrest Coffey...
...One of the looters seemed to emerge from a store that sold electronic devices...
...Three years later, he sold the stock, clearing more than $1 billion...
...Was our on-the-scene reporter trying to ascertain whether Mr...
...Weekly, May 8, 1992, from which it is reprinted with permission...
...Dixon took depositors' money and "lent" it to friends who had no means of repayment—the loans were for as much as $90 million each...
...Perhaps we've run across them before...
...A looter, unconcerned with television cameras, police, or the stares of fellow neighborhood residents, walked by, arms laden with stolen property...
...Boeing is Washington state's largest employer and, like other giant corporations, threatens to relocate unless it can avoid taxes that ordinary businesses must pay...
...and where the supply of other girls to replace them is seemingly limitless...
...Don't you feel guilty...
...The Reagan and Bush administrations have encouraged a decade-long carnival of looters, and the cost was high, paid mostly by former industrial workers who saw their jobs turned into gambling chips in a deregulated financial casino...
...Did Welch feel guilty about the devastation of communities like Bloomington, Indiana, where five hundred RCA workers lost their jobs in the 1980s...
...Riklis proved it: loot really is for free...
...As president, Johnson presumably knew what his company was worth, and in the bidding war that followed raised his offer to $25 billion...
...He also got some loot for free—as president, he had committed the company to give him $4 million in severance pay if control of the company changed...
...Was Don Dixon, owner of a savings and loan in Texas, one of the looters spotted by our shocked reporter...
...We can only guess at their identities...
...And no, we don't feel guilty about taking our profits home...
Vol. 39 • September 1992 • No. 4
