Often we here at The ESOP Association are puzzled by two things.  One, comments by some that ESOPs have no problems on Capitol Hill because everyone loves ESOPs.  Two, the seemingly never ending criticism of ESOPs based on not so subtle personal degradation of both Dr. Louis Kelso, whose ideas form the basis of leveraged ESOPs, and Senator Russell B. Long, who championed the original ESOP laws, both deceased.  Well, the evidence of the cynicism about the motives of Dr. Kelso, and the leadership and intelligence of Senator Long, who was loved by everyone who knew him for both his gentle leadership style and his common sense approach to helping people, is more than proven in an upcoming article, that frankly is not very lawyerlike, in the prominent American Bar Association’s publication The Tax Lawyer, Vol. 62, No. 2, Winter 2009 issue.  Here is a link to an excerpt of the article that is being touted by the ABA Tax Section: http://www.abanet.org/tax/pubs/ttl/622wn09/4-Stumpff.html.

 

Bottom line, as noted on this blog too often, it seems that as many wonderful articles about ESOP companies are done in local newspapers that we highlight here, the positive news is offset by writings of law professors, and big city, white shoe lawyers who seem to be living in the 80s, before the evidence became clear that Dr. Kelso was not a flim flam artist, and Senator Long was not a misled country bumpkin. As solid research evidences the vast majority of ESOPs provide wonderful wealth creation for average pay employees, and help create very special, high performing companies.