How to Buy 15 Minutes of Fame

How to Buy 15 Minutes of Fame

This is too much like that Ameritrade commercial that shows up on television every now and then. In that advertisement, a fairly average person, who owns a minute fraction of a large, well-known company’s outstanding shares, is mistaken for a board chairman. But imagine that concept turned around. Imagine that the owner of those paltry few shares mistakes himself for a big shot. This scenario describes Spokane’s John Osborn. John Osborn owns all of .00034% of Potlatch Corporation, but believes that he should be dictating the company’s operations.
Before ascending to his new post as the imaginary CEO of the Potlatch Corporation, Osborn made his nut as a Spokane physician. Thus capitalized, he moved on to found The Lands Council, an inland northwest environmental activist organization. But John Osborn also owns 100 shares of Potlatch Corporation stock. There are roughly 29 million publicly traded shares of Potlatch stock in circulation. Nevertheless, his teensy-weensy holdings entitle John Osborn to attend shareholder meetings and propose changes in the way that Potlatch Corporations conducts its business. At each of the last two annual meetings, John Osborn has introduced a resolution suggesting that the company modify its dividend policy.
Certainly the logic behind Potlatch’s current dividend policy is opaque to my unschooled eyes. Even though the company has lost more than a third of a billion dollars over the past three years, the company has still paid its stockholders millions of dollars in dividends. I always thought that dividends were intended as a means to distribute a share of a corporation’s profits. Clearly, Potlatch doesn’t agree with me. But neither does Potlatch Corporation agree with John Osborn. Osborn would prefer that, rather than reward stockholders, Potlatch spend that money on environmental remediation projects dear to his heart.
This year, his proposal won only 18% of the votes. But, as he points out, that’s really the same as getting 36% of the votes because, half of Potlatch stock is held by blood sucking space aliens. No, actually he believes that he won 36% because, half of Potlatch stock is owned by the Weyerhauser family who, in Osborn’s eyes, are much worse than a horde of blood sucking space aliens. If only Al Gore had John Osborn counting votes in Florida, then Saddam Hussein would still be safe in his palaces.
But, it’s not entirely true that John Osborn simply wants to change the way that Potlatch manages its finances. John Osborn is less interested in changing the way that Potlatch does business as he is in putting Potlatch out of business. One of the causes backed by The Lands Council is the “End Commercial Logging Campaign.” To quote The Land’s Council’s website: “Transforming the vibrant energy of a grassroots movement to end commercial logging into a targeted advocacy campaign is not a simple task. Because of our history of grassroots empowerment, the Council is uniquely positioned to aid in that transformation.” Yeah brother, whatever you say. Pass the doobie.
For that matter, The Lands Council opposes all modern forest management. “In less than 200 years, our industrial culture has severely damaged the forested ecosystems of the American Northwest. Like the coastal forests before them, the vast forests that once existed in the Inland Northwest have largely been lost. Industrial forestry has wiped out enormous resources while making an arrogant assertion that the ecological cycles of intact forests can be replicated and improved upon by human manipulations.” Or, so reads their website.
Osborn’s strategy is part of a growing trend among environmental groups in which they purchase small blocks of stock to gain entry into stockholder meetings, where they grandstand by introducing frivolous proposals that attract the attention of the press but have no chance of passing. While it is unlikely that any corporation will take an environmentalist’s advice, it does give people who are of little genuine consequence an opportunity to make a nuisance of themselves to the people who really make the world work. It’s like spray painting obscene graffiti on bridges.
But let’s get to the real point. Buying a few shares gets these nuisances their fifteen minutes of fame. Potlatch stock sells for about $25 per share. How else could John Osborn get a front page, above the fold story about himself for only 2500 bucks?