Richard Penske, a Greenwich gentleman

Written by Christopher vonKeyserling
Thursday, 16 February 2012 01:00

Last month, Roger Penske, not just his monster Mercedes Dealership Corporation, came to Greenwich. In one afternoon, he overrode a corporate policy towards regional dealership and service centers. After a short conference with the impacted neighbors and town officials, he realized that a local scale operation was the appropriate plan for his new complex on the Post Road. In a matter of hours he had changed his application to Planning & Zoning and had it approved.

In direct contrast is the Lexus Service Center proposal on Old Track Road. This poor dealership owner is at the mercy of the Lexus Corporation and its “cookie cutter” requirements for “branded” service centers. He has been caught in a bitter contest between Goliath Lexus and his neighbors, town officials, and the Greenwich Plan of Conservation and Development. Here, there is no individual, human being, or person with which to reason, and no serious, local consequence for corporate obstinacy. Who should take the moral penalty? Certainly not our old neighbor, the Griffin Family who is caught between a “rock and the hard place.” With no moral responsibility there is no real accountability for the corporate actions.

This is a demonstration of the Supreme Court’s error in declaring a corporation a person. In the 1880’s, it declared that a corporation was a person under the law. Just recently, it declared for Citizens United, and allowed the SuperPACS to receive unlimited contributions under its “Right to Shout” interpretation of the First Amendment.

But a real world corporation is not the same as a human being. If one limits consideration to commercial law, one might conflate the qualities of a human being with a businessman, with a group of businessmen, and then with a corporation. If one includes the spiritual and moral values of a human being, all equality is lost. A corporation is amoral by purpose, construction and law. A corporation can be sued by its stockholders for avoiding profit, no matter the altruism of its action. The corporation’s main purpose is to limit its owners’ liability to the actions of the corporation, thus shielding the owner from loss beyond his investment. In practice, this is not just a financial fire-wall, but also a social one. This creates the perfect home for financial sociopaths. Finding individual corporation owners is often as difficult as identifying a New York City slumlord. A bad corporation may even change its name to avoid public censure. Not so easy for a real person.

Try to remember any campaign — political, legal or social — by “people” over the corporation. The last, successful battle of human conscience over corporate machine was the Apartheid Stock Divestiture decades ago, and that only succeeded as part of the US Civil Rights movement.

At risk of being labeled a local heretic, the main purpose of a human being is not amassing profit. My salute goes to those like our Roger Penske, and those many within the business world whose horizons extend past the “bottom line.”

Chris Von Keyserling is a Republican on the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting.