Talent Pool Decides Pay
Executive compensation is the hot button of many misguided people ("Executive Compensation Part II: Can't We All Get Along?" Jan. 29). As a member of the compensation committee and executive committee of several companies, I have participated actively in recruiting talent at all senior management positions. Market forces, as well as the health and well-being of the companies under my stewardship, were primary drivers in the selection process of the top candidates for key executive positions. The higher up the corporate ladder, the thinner the talent pool. Supply and demand will dictate what you need to pay to get the best!

Switching gears, we the public fail to focus efforts in areas where we can really make a difference. We can elect officials who have an earnest desire to carry out fiduciary obligations of political office. The road to shareholder hell is paved with the smiling faces of dishonest politicians. If we fixed the political system, we'd have less of a problem hiring good managers and empowering them to produce the business operating results that we as shareholders desire.

Salvatore A. Grasso
Independent Consultant
Technology Solutions
Media, Pa.

You Scratch My Back ...
Executive pay isn't "a function of the incontrovertible forces of supply and demand." Of course, it's not generally "nepotism, negligence, incompetence, deception, [or] fraud." It's the other scheme--the one where I sit on your board of directors and give you obscene amounts of money and you do the same for me.

Then there is my favorite line, "A contract is a contract." Is that like the contracts that the automakers signed with the UAW? Maybe it's more like the ones the airlines signed with the pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics. Perhaps it's the steel companies' contracts with the workers that I'm thinking of. Turned out those were just some of the contracts that weren't worth the paper they were printed on. It seems a company just declares bankruptcy, hands over its pensions (part of those contracts) to the federal government, and then complains about the high cost of government.

Larry Woldt
Windsor, Colo.
Corporate Outlaws

Corporate Outlaws
In "Advocacy Inc.," the authors gush out dire alarms about a handful of austere advocacy groups that, in fact, stand up to a dizzying array of corporate behemoths and jaded politicians (Jan. 15). At issue is the shameful mind-set, adopted by many policy makers in corporate America, that it's permissible to habitually place at risk the privacy rights and financial identities of decent, hard-working citizens.

This is the same sort of thinking that sees fit to embrace free but unfair trade, to lobby for increasing the importation of foreign workers while turning a deaf ear to reasonable pleas seeking civic bolstering of our underfunded schools and cash-strapped universities, to engage in the wholesale exportation of industry at the expense of decimating entire communities, and to rush in line to unapologetically outsource our jobs and consequently depress worker income across all walks of life in this country. There's one, inexorable description for this disaffected pattern of conduct: outlaw behavior. And the outlaws are comprised of a huge number of the biggest names in the Fortune 1,000.

Bob Harrell
Owner, RL Harrell Consulting & Technical Services
Portales, N.M.

Put Down That iPod
Hallelujah! ("Bloggers Rail Against Proposed N.Y. iPod Fine," Feb. 7). People should be paying attention to what's immediately around them. I'm all for individual rights, until my individual rights have been violated. Let's have some consideration and decency in public areas.

Micki Maxwell
Owner, Maxwell Studios
Itasca, Ill.

Right Of Way Is Wrong
The proposed ban on personal tech use on the crosswalks of New York fails to effectively address the true issue. American pedestrians embrace their legal right of way and with it a false sense of security. This refusal or failure of pedestrians to pay attention is the true danger. Forget the ban on technology and address the problem. Give the right of way to the driver as it is in Europe. In London, I was surprised to find that simply making eye contact with a driver causes him to yield to a pedestrian. Problem solved!

Jonathan Parisi
Nuclear Medicine Technologist
Hackensack University Medical Center
Hackensack, N.J.