Top 10 greediest Americans of 2011

 RIM COUNTRY GAZETTE BLOG

SIGN OF THE TIMES

By Sam Pizzigati
nationofchange.org

You don't have to make mil­lions to rate as an all-star greed­ster. You do have to be ruth­less, self-ab­sorbed, and in­sen­si­tive to oth­ers. Here's my list of the 10 greed­i­est Amer­i­cans of 2011.

10. Michael T. Duke, Wal-Mart CEO
Duke takes home his mil­lions — $18.7 mil­lion in the com­pany's lat­est fis­cal year — by squeez­ing work­ers. He ended "pre­mium pay" for the hours Wal-Mart work­ers have to put in on Sun­days, elim­i­nated profit-shar­ing, sheared health care ben­e­fits, and cut staffing lev­els so low, Re­tail­ing Today re­ports, that cus­tomers some­times can't find shop­ping carts be­cause the store where they're shop­ping has no em­ploy­ees avail­able to col­lect carts from the park­ing lot.

9. Paul Hoola­han, Sugar Bowl CEO
The Sugar Bowl, one of col­lege foot­ball's top four post­sea­son games, en­joys tax-ex­empt sta­tus and reg­u­larly touts its con­tri­bu­tions to good causes. But Hoola­han's fa­vorite cause may be his own. He took home just under $600,000 in 2009, al­most quadru­ple his $160,500 pay­check for the same job 13 years ear­lier. Mean­while, the Sugar Bowl and its three "Bowl Cham­pi­onship Se­ries" part­ners are con­tribut­ing to char­ity only 20 cents from every $10 in rev­enue, the Ari­zona Re­pub­lic re­ports.

8. Robert Iger, Dis­ney CEO
His an­nual com­pen­sa­tion topped $28 mil­lion last year, a neat 35-per­cent in­crease. In Oc­to­ber, Iger picked up a new pay deal that ex­tends his CEO con­tract into 2015 and then adds on a cushy final year as Dis­ney's "ex­ec­u­tive chair­man" — at $2.5 mil­lion — to help him make the tran­si­tion into re­tire­ment.

7. Doug Ober­hel­man, Cater­pil­lar CEO
In 2009, a year that saw only three U.S. cor­po­ra­tions lay off more work­ers than Cater­pil­lar, its CEO took home just under $3 mil­lion. His 2010 pay­check soared to $10.4 mil­lion. Cater­pil­lar work­ers, mean­while, have a new six-year con­tract that ex­cludes wage in­creases and raises health care pre­mi­ums.

6. William Wel­don, John­son & John­son CEO
Wel­don "re­struc­tured" this health care giant in 2007, slash­ing its qual­ity-con­trol pro­gram. For the next two years, a hir­ing freeze made re­plac­ing va­cant qual­ity po­si­tions al­most im­pos­si­ble. In 2009, a flood of re­calls began for com­pany prod­ucts from con­tact lenses to hip im­plants, but Wel­don took home $25.6 mil­lion any­way. After those re­calls and as­sorted other scan­dals, the com­pany did fi­nally trim his an­nual pay — to $23.2 mil­lion.

5. Lloyd Blank­fein, Gold­man Sachs CEO
In 2007, on the eve of the melt­down banks like Gold­man did so much to has­ten, Blank­fein col­lected a $68-mil­lion bonus, the largest in Wall Street his­tory. In 2011, Blank­fein had a chance to hit the restart but­ton. He didn't. In April, Gold­man Sachs re­vealed that Blank­fein, after going two years with­out a cash bonus, had gob­bled up $5.4 mil­lion in bonus cash for the bank's lat­est fis­cal year. And plenty more in stock and salary. His total pay: $19 mil­lion, about dou­ble his pay the year be­fore.

4. Alan Mu­lally, Ford Motor CEO
After los­ing $30 bil­lion over three years, Ford has gained back $9.3 bil­lion. In re­ward, Ford handed Mu­lally $56.5 mil­lion in stock and then, a month later, an­nounced that he pulled down an ad­di­tional $26.5 mil­lion last year. That amounted to 910 times the pay of en­try-level Ford work­ers.

3. Larry El­li­son, Or­a­cle CEO
The top exec at busi­ness soft­ware giant Or­a­cle col­lected $77.6 mil­lion for the fis­cal year that ended this past May 31.​That piece of change added less than two-tenths of 1 per­cent to El­li­son's $39.5 bil­lion per­sonal for­tune, the world's fifth largest.

2. Don Blanken­ship, For­mer Massey En­ergy CEO
West Vir­ginia in­ves­ti­ga­tors found Massey man­age­ment di­rectly to blame for the 2010 blast that left 29 min­ers dead at the com­pany's Upper Big Branch coal mine. Massey, the re­port charged, had nur­tured a "cul­ture bent on pro­duc­tion at the ex­pense of safety." That cul­ture paid off hand­somely for Blanken­ship. He pock­eted $38.2 mil­lion from 2007 through 2009, after rak­ing in $34 mil­lion in 2005, and re­tired with a $5.7-mil­lion pen­sion and $12 mil­lion in sev­er­ance.

1. Mark Pin­cus, Zynga CEO
High-tech start-ups like the on­line so­cial gam­ing em­pire Zynga typ­i­cally at­tract tal­ent by of­fer­ing shares of stock. But Pin­cus had ap­par­ently con­cluded, with a multi-bil­lion-dol­lar IPO pend­ing, that he had given away too many shares. Pin­cus de­manded that var­i­ous em­ploy­ees "give back not-yet-vested stock or face ter­mi­na­tion," The Wall Street Jour­nal re­ported.

Labor journalist Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, an online weekly on excess and inequality, and also serves as the co-editor of Inequality.Org, the Web portal to all things online related to the economic gaps that divide us. Currently an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., Pizzigati has written widely on economic inequality, with op-eds and articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and a host of other newspapers and periodicals. Pizzigati's latest book, Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality that Limits Our Lives (Apex Press, 2004), won an "outstanding title" of the year ranking from the American Library Association's Choice book review journal.