An underweight dog limps onto your property. Her eyes slay you. She's been running the roads of Fairfield county for months, fighting for food. She looks up at you as if to say,"
I'm tired now. I need a hand"

You make a gut decision, not a corporate one. You say to yourself, "I'm going to rescue this dog". After a few weeks of nourishment and vet bills you discover you were the one rescued. You become less selfish. And you are happier for it.

The American economy is a dog. The people who are unemployed need a hand. Many of them have educational deficits, you couldn't hire them in your company and neither could I in my small business. They just don't have the skills. It would be disruptive and counter-productive.

We need $200 million from G.E. and every other Fortune 500 company to form a back-to-work government/private sector enterprise. If you do this right, perhaps in a telethon, you could get the top 1000 companies to contribute, or the top 5000. The President needs to sit in front of a camera and telephone each of these CEO's one by one. Let the CEO tell the American public why the corporation cannot come to the rescue of the country they call home.

Now, you may ask, why $200 million. Put it this way. When you go to a benefit auction at the Country Club of New Canaan and you see there an 1890 first edition of Emily Dickinson, the sticker doesn't say, "make a bid". It says, minimum bid, $25K. The same here. $200 million is what we're asking.

Besides, $200 is a handy round number. It makes up $100 Billion, more if you do a good job with the other CEO's you're supposed to be keeping tabs with. You could raise a third of it on the commuter train into the city. The Fortune 500 is sitting on $2 Trillion in cash. $200 million a big hit? Any of the companies can go to the market in a heart beat, issue a few bonds at 1%, and have the money in a month.

As for organization, pick a plan. The Catholic church is the most successful horizontal organization in the history of the world. Use that. Or, hell, use the Catholic church for all I care. It doesn't matter. What kind of work doesn't matter. As long as the money gets into the pockets of the unemployed, it works, and they work. We will call the enterprise G.E. Saves--,er, on second thought, Corporations Contributing to the resCue.--or CCC for short. Come to think about it I would add Baptist churches to the distribution channels.

The most amazing thing about CCC?. The contributors will get most of their money back. It is said that unemployment insurance cycles directly back into the economy. As the economy improves, corporate sales go up a fraction without a dime of extra expense. Later, when the economy has recovered and tax revenues are up, write the donation off as a bad debt and take a tax deduction. The original donation will probably cost you next to nothing in actual cash flow. The small boats lift the big boats.

Obviously, I am using Mr. Immelt, the CEO of G.E, as a foil. Any corporate CEO could kick this off. I just thought Immelt would be a good one to start with--have a kick-off meeting in the White House, sleep over in the Lincoln bedroom.

To that CEO with courage and a sense of how bad things are in this country for the unemployed: Rescue this dog! You will be a hero in her eyes.