Texas: What the Hell?

Once again, my state’s GOP hierarchy is leading the nation in creative ways to increase corporate power over people’s rights. This time, lawmakers are rushing to protect corrupt executives from legal challenges by their own shareholders!

Their law would ban rank-and-file owners of corporate giants from suing their CEOs and other top officials for financial malfeasance. In particular, it’s a heavy-handed attempt to prohibit shareholders from suing bosses who lavish shareholder funds on extravagant pay and luxury perks for themselves.

But leave it to Lone Star Republicans to make a bad law worse. Indeed, they say they only want to bar suits by “pesky” small investors—people who own less than three percent of a corporation’s stock. But that’s a flimflam, since almost no one owns more than three percent of any big corporation. And the few who do are huge Wall Street operators and multibillionaires—and they’re not about to sue a fellow-richie for being greedy.

So the Texas law would effectively institutionalize a corrupt, closed-loop protection racket, freeing self-serving executives from internal accountability.

Speaking of corrupt, who wrote this boondoggle? It’s sponsored by Dustin Burrows, the top official of the Texas House, but he doesn’t write bills—he totes bills written by big campaign donors, corporate lobbyists, and right-wing extremists. In this case, he’s working for all three.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Burrows brags that his scam will be a boon for our state, because it’ll prompt CEOs everywhere to move their corporations here to take advantage of this law. Sure—corporations up to no good! Who needs ‘em? And if they set a precedent in Texas, I guarantee you they’ll be pushing it in your state next.

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