John Kerry, or "Franken-Kerry" as I call him, claims on his website that,

In my first 100 days as President, we will begin to change the corporate culture of America.

Big words from Kerry. The problem is: corporate culture has already changed extensively, especially since the burst of the economic bubble of the 1990's. Many of the crooks who ripped off shareholders during the last decade's party have had their Champaign glasses taken away. The excesses of the 1990's have been squeezed out of the system by the U.S. economy's natural selection mechanisms. Our economy is on the mend. Kerry doesn't mention publicly that he takes more special interest money than almost every other member of the Senate.

If one believes John Kerry's diatribes, then all the corporate malefactors of the '90's are sitting pretty. Kerry's website prevaricates,

They [the Bush Administration] have looked the other way while corporate crooks in corner office suites have defrauded everyday investors and destroyed the retirement savings of workers.

Au contraire, monsieur Kerry. Au contraire. While I agree that shareholders were cheated and pension funds were squandered, the blame does not lay with President Bush.

First of all, most of these "corporate crooks" started cooking their financial books before George W. Bush became president. Secondly, most of the "corporate crooks" that Kerry speaks of are either in jail, indicted, or currently in the crosshairs of justice officials.

Today, Bernie Ebbers, former CEO of the now bankrupt WorldCom, was indicted for telling lies to shareholders and to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). [1] Ebbers presided over the doctoring up of WorldCom financial statements to the tune of $11 billion dollars. To add to my delight today, WorldCom's ex-chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, pled guilty to "creative" accounting practices that inflated the company's revenues in an attempt to boost the company stock price. But the long arms of the law have reached far beyond WorldCom's scandal.

Remember Enron? Less than two weeks ago, Enron's former CEO, Jeff Skilling, was handcuffed and taken into a federal courthouse to hear charges that he cooked his company's books while simultaneously selling company shares ("insider trading"). Enron's collapse wiped out billions in shareholder value and employee pensions. Skilling will most likely spill the beans about his predecessor at Enron, Ken Lay. It's just a matter of time before Lay is led off in cuffs. Ol' Ken was telling his employees to buy Enron stock while he himself was dumping the same shares.

But have you heard John Kerry mention any of the successes in the war on corporate fraud? I haven't. So let me continue to set the record straight on justice's progress against the 1990's corporate wrongdoers.

Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay aren't the only former Enron employees in hot water over that company's multi-billion dollar implosion. Enron's former Chief Accounting Officer was indicted on January 22. The company's former CFO, Andrew S. Fastow, and his wife Lea pled guilty to fraud charges on January 15. Several other Enron employees have been arrested/charged and one even committed suicide.

A slew of other crooks are in trouble. Tyco's former CFO Mark Swartz and CEO Dennis Kozlowski are both on trial for bilking their own company out of $600 million. According to CNN.com, Kozlowski spent $2 million of employee/shareholder funds on a party for his 40th birthday

... which featured an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David spewing vodka from his penis and a birthday cake in the shape of a woman's breasts with sparklers mounted on top.

Another former Tyco official, Frank Walsh, was charged with fraud.

How could I forget to mention Martha Stewart? I haven't. Martha is now on trial for taking a tip from an insider at another company, and selling shares in that company before us little guys in the public had a chance to sell their shares. It just so happens that that insider is Sam Waksal, former CEO of ImClone, and now spending 7+ years in prison for his own insider selling.

Other changes are taking place in the American economic landscape. For example, many of the mutual funds in which fraudulent stock manipulations occurred have either fessed up voluntarily, or been forced by regulators to make reparations to their shareholders and change their way of doing business.

And the U.S. economy is improving, no doubt. Last week, the widest measure of U.S. economic growth, the gross domestic product (GDP), was revised higher -- from a 4.0% annual gain to 4.1%.

So if Senator John Kerry tells you corporate wrongdoers are all on the loose, or that he can fix the economy overnight, just remind him of one thing: The Washington Post revealed that Kerry

...has raised more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years, federal records show.

Kerry, a 19-year veteran of the Senate who fought and won four expensive political campaigns, has received nearly $640,000 from lobbyists, many representing telecommunications and financial companies with business before his committee, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Kerry has raised about $225,000 from lobbyists for his current campaign. That is twice as much as any of the other Democratic candidates. I'm not so sure Kerry will take on corporate America like he says he will. Big businesses already have him in their back pockets.