The Washington Post and federal investigators are hounding Robert F. McDonnell, the Republican governor of Virginia, for taking more than $150,000 in cash and gifts from the CEO of Star Scientific, Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

Gov. McDonnell, a former businessman himself, apparently just didn’t understand that politicians can’t self-deal the way CEOs do. A state’s chief executive can’t accept a $6,500 Rolex watch engraved “71st Governor of Virginia” from a CEO with a history of trouble with the law and a clear desire to get something in return. But between corporate executives, well, there’s few holds barred on such shady transactions.

Capitalist theory asserts that CEOs rise to the top based on merit and moxey and deserve million dollar pay packages. Turns out, though, capitalism doesn’t really work that way. Conniving Jonnies rule the business world. First they ditched the philosophy that corporations are equally responsible to America, shareholders, workers, customers and communities. Then they enshrined CEOs as corporations’ primary beneficiaries, thus golden parachutes awarded to failed and fired executives. In the real world, CEOs rise to the top based on cronyism and corruption.

This is documented in a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) titled “Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out Booted Busted.” IPS looked at the performance of the CEOs who the Wall Street Journal deemed in each of the past 20 years to be the nation’s 25 best paid. The number of executives is 241 because some CEOs got the best big bucks several times.