End Corruption by Punishing the Corrupt Overlords--Two-Dysfunctional Party Foxified Reganomitized CONservatized NeoConized Republicanized Global Corporatized Crazy Clown Car Country you live in...[Picture]

ight-wing conservatives never tire of saying people are paid what they’re worth. So what do they make of Jeff Smisek, the CEO and chairman of United Airlines, who was just fired for bribing a public official — and yet is walking away with a $4.9 million separation payment? Smisek didn’t even make money for United. The airline has been crippled with operational problems since its merger with Continental, mounting customer complaints, and a standoff with its unions.

An internal investigation by United revealed Smisek’s involvement in a scheme to give personal favors to David Samson (below left), the former chairman of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority, in order to get the Authority to do favors for the airline. (The payoff came in the form of United reinstituting a money-losing flight to an airport near Samson’s South Carolina weekend home, which even Authority officials nicknamed “the chairman’s flight” and which United discontinued as soon as Samson resigned.) Samson, you may remember, had been appointed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (below right) and resigned in March 2014 amid charges he and his underlings had closed lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge, at the direction of Christie and Christie’s underlings, to punish a mayor who hadn’t supported Christie’s reelection.

Payoffs to public officials are obviously a form of corruption. Payoffs to ousted CEOs are another form of corruption. Closing a public bridge as a political vendetta is a third form of corruption. Corruption doesn’t end until corrupters and the corrupted are punished. If Smisek was involved in paying off Sampson, both should go to jail. If Chris Christie had anything to do with closing the George Washington Bridge as a political vendetta, he should be jailed as well. Meanwhile, Smisek’s separation agreement should be clawed back, as should his pay since he became CEO. And United’s major shareholders should sack United’s board of directors.

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