KEEPING IT ALL IN THE FAMILY

Systemic: Relating to or affecting the entire body or an entire organism: systemic symptoms; a systemic poison.

It is the systemic poison affecting our entire corporate business structure that needs addressing, not that we can do much about it. It is not just a fluke or an aberration that the Main Stream News Media, the Hollywood to Broadway entertainment complex, and the U.S. auto businesses show the same symptoms of a disease that is racking our entire business structure. I'll call it the "Give Me a Raise and I'll do Better Next Time" syndrome. A type of wishful thinking that once injected into a system becomes "systemic."

An on-line news site called "New Yorkish" lists hundreds of sons and daughters, wives and girl friends, or just plain family who have jobs in Tinsel Town. The first dozen out of a hundred are:

Adam Arkin (son of Alan)
Jake Busey (son of Gary)
Michael Douglas (son of Kirk Douglas)
Kiefer Sutherland (son of Donald)
Scott Caan (son of James)
Kate Hudson (daughter of Goldie Hawn)
Brandon Lee (son of Bruce)
Chad McQueen (son of Steve)
Angelina Jolie (daughter of Jon Voight)
Timothy Hutton (son of Jim)
Charley Boorman (son of John)
Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, married to Christopher Guest)

Even near ugly sister of Michelle, Dedee Pfeiffer, (that's great looking Michelle on the left) and Joey Travolta who appeared in a movie with Anna Nicole Smith, have cracked into the system which even has a Nepotism Award page.

Auto giant GM has corporate and labor nepotism. Favors given out to both management and the UAW are listed here and a UAW insertion of more than 300 friends and relatives into the GM work force while the union was on strike is on line here.

The cozy family that runs the New York Times, the Tribune Companies, and The Atlanta Constitution are public knowledge. The legion of family hacks in TV news was listed in an NRO piece here.

On CNN there's Andrea Koppel, daughter of Ted and Benno Schmidt, son of the former president of Yale. CNN also boasts anchorman Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt Â? as well as Jeffrey Toobin, whose mother, Marlene Sanders, was one of the first women to make it at CBS News as a correspondent and whose father, Jerry Toobin, was at NBC for many years.

Sell fewer cars year after year and the suits get bonuses. See circulation and ratings drop for more than a decade and everyone gets more money. Make movies nobody wants to see and the "creative end" gets twenty mil per picture.

You don't have to think too much to see that the corporate leaders will keep their jobs no matter what. The Adam Smith model of competition which weeds out the losers, a model composed of competitive pressures making sure that only the "best and brightest" rise to the top, doesn't apply to our elites these days.

Trust Fund Babies have taken over many news "businesses" and nepotism has ruled Hollywood for the better part of the last fifty years. Detroit is completely ingrown where nobody not educated in the right universities need apply, design cars, or even create and implement minor features on cars. In short, there is no competition within these large businesses. The incompetent keep their jobs, get raises, and retire with Golden Parachutes.

Spread to the political class, note that The Bush Administration has never fired anyone---well they did punish Benedict Arnold---in spite of some of the worst agency performances this country has ever seen. In fact even after repeated agency failures they continue to appoint political hacks who hire their incompetent pals as assistants; the recent appointment of Julie Myers and her subsequent appointment of an assistant with no experience at all is the latest nepotism example.

Critics outside of this country think we are too tough. They call it "Economic Darwinism," when in fact what we actually have is "economic insulation from every mistake."

Nobody in top management at either GM or Ford should have their jobs, but they do. Nobody running the studios or the financing arms of the motion picture business should be employed at all. And the obvious incompetence from top to bottom in the "news business" is plain for all to see.

Our business model has failed. The wheels have come off the comptetive system and we run on rails by using sled skids because nobody is forced to change to newer and better wheels. The price for failure is more success, a success that is measured only by take home pay and perks.

Oh, and did I mention the university "system" of guaranteed employment for life no matter what?

We have a lot of cleaning up to do and I don't think we are up to the job. The system we have now has degenerated into Free Market Capitalism for the suckers and monopoly mercantilism for the smart---and well connected.

Keep up the fiction, be sure your Ferrari is insured, and don't rock the boat.