Participation in America's Business

I started cleaning out my e-mail (Hotmail) today, and I found a number of notices from Charles Schwab about annual meetings of companies in which we own stock. I have never gone to an annual meeting, even though Forest Oil has its shareholder meetings up the road in Denver. But the annual meeting invitations also include an opportunity to vote my shares. Not that I have enough shares to swing an issue, but I do try to vote my shares every year. It's my way of helping to keep American business a little participatory.

I rarely vote against the nominees for the Board of Directors of any company. For a while, I was voting against board members who were over 70, on the ground that the companies needed to bring in some new blood once in a while. And I always voted against John Deutsch for the board of Citigroup; Deutsch was a former head of the CIA, and not a particularly distinguished one. Well, distinguished by incompetence.

This year I waited too long and missed my chance to vote my shares in Citigroup and Pfizer, but there's always next year.