Bears, bulls -- and bull

One dignitary it wasn't too difficult to get to, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "The issue that boils people's blood is that of corporate miscreants," the individuals who collect high salaries and bonuses while selling their stock and running their corporations in the ground, screwing stockholders like this reporter who lost a bundle on WorldCom. "The president was strong about that on his new laws," Schumer said, referring to the Bush proposal to allow the SEC to go to court to freeze bonuses and extraordinary payments to executives. "To make sure that they don't try to steal the company assets on the way out the door," as a senior administration official later put it.

Bush also called on stock markets to require that the majority of directors on a company's board be truly independent, and told CEOs to publish their compensation and bonuses in prominent places instead of tucked away in proxy statements. He proposed doubling the maximum prison term for wire and mail fraud to 10 years, and called on the sentencing commission to add a new aggregating factor to mete a higher level of punishment to executives and CEOs who commit fraud. He unveiled a new proposal to ease the burden for prosecutors to charge obstruction of justice against individuals, even if the tampering took place before a proceeding is pending or a subpoena has been issued. Though previous Bush budgets cut funding for the SEC, Bush now favors an additional $100 million to its budget.

But, Schumer said, on other issues Bush was all platitudes and no proposals. "To prevent future bad guys from doing stuff, we didn't hear details," Schumer said. "When it comes to making sure this doesn't happen in the future there he was more vague."

Schumer's reaction was repeated hundreds of miles south, in Washington, where his Senate Democratic colleagues jumped on Bush's proposals as too little. "The test for the president today is not whether he shares the outrage that the workers and shareholders in these companies feel; I'm sure he does," Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., told reporters. "The question is whether he is willing to take action on that outrage and support the legislation which will actually solve the problem." He made the remarks at an event he held with House Minority Leader Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and former WorldCom and Enron employees, where the Democratic leaders tried to steal the president's thunder by presenting their own "investor's bill of rights."

Democrats charged that the president's plan fails to set up a strong independent oversight board to audit the auditors -- favoring instead, presumably, that neat-o SWAT team. Democrats also criticized the plan for failing to restrict auditor conflicts of interest, or for not creating a new felony charged for securities fraud, or for a million other things (this is an election year, I'm sure I don't have to tell you).

"So far the administration's approach has been a familiar strategy: Use harsh rhetoric to condemn wrongdoers while delaying and watering down whatever reforms might come out of Congress," Gephardt said.

But in downtown Manhattan, the president was amid his own people -- bidnessmen -- and they seemed to take it all in with cheer and goodwill. Many of those assembled before him were affiliated with the Association for a Better New York, an organization born from the New York City financial crises of the 1970s and self-tasked with boosterism. ABNY led the "I [Heart] New York" campaign and in his introduction to the president's speech, ABNY chairman William Rudin made it clear that he [Heart] President Bush. "Mr. President, we know you will not let us down," he said.

Next Page: There was no "malfeance"

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