A Northern California power company is stopping government inspectors from probing a mishap that sent five employees to the hospital.

Three days ago, workers at Tohd Power & Light were injured after a defective coupling allowed gasoline to leak. The company, headquartered in New Moldova, California, fifteen miles south of San Francisco, has denied any responsibility. The gasoline from the defective coupling ignited, and according to officials at New Moldova’s Alta Strench Hospital, five maintenance workers taking lunch outdoors in the company’s motor pool suffered “first degree burns on their lower backs and buttocks.”

Investigators want to inspect the facility to determine if the public is at risk and to discover the cause of the defective coupling, but the company has refused to let them enter. CEO Danvorious Tohd says he wants to “protect workers and managers from questioning by these invasive federal agents. This is our property. I’ll be damned if my people will be threatened by a bunch of government thugs masquerading as ‘investigators’.”

Tohd says his battle is a battle for human rights: “the human rights of people, and the human rights of corporations.”

The company has stationed private guards armed with shotguns, stun grenades, and high-powered rifles at its gates. Tohd says all guards have permits for the weapons, and adds that he is acting under the authority of a New Moldova ordinance that requires companies to ignore federal and state regulations that could impede economic growth and thereby harm the residents of New Moldova, while also empowering the head of any New Moldovan company with more than 1,000 employees to appoint a militia to defend and implement the law.

Tohd Power & Light is the only company of that size headquartered in New Moldova. It made substantial donations to city council members who supported the law. Nonetheless, councillor Jake Steppinup casts the law as an idealistic cry for local liberty and Tohd’s actions as heroic resistance to oppression. “We saw the Mary Jane lovers up in Oregon could just make their own rules, and we thought we should do that here, too. People here love economic growth. Growth is the substance we want to ‘smoke’ and I think that’s a good thing. I know Dan Tohd and Dan Tohd couldn’t sleep at night, even after an hour in that 12-person jacuzzi he has, if he weren’t on the side of right.”

Yesterday afternoon, as government safety inspectors again demanded entry into the plant and were again rebuffed, Tohd, wearing a red windbreaker, climbed up a tower at the gate and spoke on a loudspeaker. His voice was heard more than a mile away. He said he’s “sick and tired of the government thinking they can abuse American citizens. I’m a citizen! I pay taxes! Well, actually I don’t pay taxes because of my shelters and deductions. But I still pay sales tax! And that’s the fairest tax of all because you’re only assessed on what you consume! The government should back off and start investigating real crime, like these guys who break into cars or rob banks.”

A bystander outside the fence who wore an orange t-shirt with “Let Tim Smoke” printed on it asked Tohd if by bank robbers he meant “rich Wall Street types who lost people’s money during the meltdown, and then begged for government help to save themselves?”

Tohd told the man to “Shut up.” Tohd then spoke to a guard, who appeared to make a phone call. Tohd climbed down from the tower, and several minutes later sheriff’s deputies arrived and handcuffed the bystander before driving him away in the back of a patrol car.

A researcher who specializes in corporate executive behavior says Tohd’s actions should be no surprise. Abraham T. Kornkeister, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, is co-author of the paper “Blow, Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks: Browbeating, Umbrage-Taking, and Childish Rampaging by CEOs at the Most Highly Profitable Companies.” In the paper, Kornkeister and his co-authors point out that despite the perception of some members of the public, many CEOs are not power-drunk manipulators. “Many heads of large corporations are decent human beings.”

Kornkeister’s research shows that CEOs at the most successful companies are often focused on profit and the accumulation of personal wealth, both of which are more important than human relationships.

One of Kornkeister’s co-authors, Gloria Foondozzle, a professor of management and organizations at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, says that for their study, ultra-powered CEOs were defined as those whose companies ranked in the top two percent in profitability within their respective sector, such as banking, phone manufacturing, or, in the case of Tohd Power & Light, electricity and natural gas distribution.

Tohd Power & Light is the second most profitable utility company in the United States, and the most profitable west of the Ohio River.

Kornkeister says that one sign of someone being an ultra-powered CEO is regular complaints of misbehavior from subordinates. He says that employees are on the receiving end of much of that bad behavior, but there is one non-employee, in almost every case, who takes the worst treatment. “The people these CEOs treat the worst are their spouses. Next worst off are the assistants of their direct reports, then middle managers (when they come into contact with them), then random delivery people, store clerks, and restaurant servers, then their domestic employees (when they come into contact with them), then their direct reports, then their neighbors, then their stepchildren, and then their own assistants.”

Almost never mistreated, the researchers found, are ultra-powered CEOs’ pets.

“The simplistic response is to call ultra-powered CEOs bad people,” says Foondozzle. “But that’s always a mistake. They are often misunderstood as being selfish or arrogant, but this is because of their relentless focus on what’s good for the company, which is, after all, a means for improving the collective good of many people. And their profits speak for themselves.”

Kornkeister adds, “Where would we be without great companies? It is companies, not artists or politicians, who are now pulling society forward, bringing us innovations and great ideas. The lone genius is long dead. We need to be very careful before we do anything that could shackle these geniuses of our age: the genius corporation.”

Kornkeister and Foondozzle’s work was funded by the Excellence Institute, a project of the US Chamber of Commerce.

Many residents of New Moldova say inspectors should be allowed onto Tohd’s property to check up on the operation.

“What if there’s an explosion?” resident Bob Darnit asks.

When questioned about public safety, Tohd says there is no danger because the plant is strategically located in a poor part of town.

Mortimer Fuckledunch, who lives in Orina Seca, about 30 miles south of New Moldova, says Tohd “should be able to do whatever he wants. It’s his company. He creates jobs. What do these ‘inspectors’ create except headaches and paperwork?”

More on Tohd Power & Light:

Utility Outsources Safety Inspections

Utility Executive Demonstrates How Average People Will Suffer if His Company Is Fined

More on life in the workplace:

Sociologist Finds Absurdity Has Critical Role in Human Power Dynamics