Piggy

This guy better stay away from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. NYTimes (01.02.06), via Economist's View:

"[David Brooks, chief executive of the bulletproof vest manufacturer DHB Industries Inc.] has made hundreds of millions of dollars through the company, principally from federal and municipal contracts for bulletproof vests. But while 18,000 of those vests were being recalled by the United States military, some from Iraq, Mr. Brooks was in the midst of throwing a private party for his daughter and her friends at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center." Another Marie Antoinette Moment

A party with a price tag "estimated $10 million price tag - a figure Mr. Brooks albeit called greatly exaggerated - culminated with guests reportedly walking out carrying gift bags valued at $1,000 each, stocked with digital cameras and video iPods." "Mr. Brooks is free to spend his money as he pleases, but he might have thought better than to draw added attention to his company right now. The November recall of the vests was the second by the military in 2005. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the company and Mr. Brooks. And the company is also the target of several shareholder lawsuits after a material in some of its body armor failed a federal safety test." "Meanwhile, the party came less than three months after the release of a report on ballooning pay for chief executives that singled out Mr. Brooks for making $70 million in 2004 compared with $525,000 in pre-Iraq-war 2001. The report said he made an additional $186 million in 2004 selling company stock." "The same report, by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning research center, and United for a Fair Economy, a group seeking to narrow the gap between rich and poor, found that in 2004 the ratio of C.E.O. pay to worker pay at large companies had ballooned to 431 to 1." "If the minimum wage had advanced at the same rate as chief executive compensation since 1990, America's bottom-of-the-barrel working poor would be enjoying salad days, with legal wages at $23.03 an hour instead of $5.15."