Who Keeps Screwing Us Over?

I shouldn't be surprised by now. But I still was when I read the article this morning in the Washington Post explaining that the cap on executive pay has been removed from the stimulus bill. I knew what Congress was doing yesterday by bringing the Wall Street executives in and scolding them in public was a dog and pony show. But I had not realized how profoundly full of shit these politicians are.

They make a big display of yelling at the CEOs and then the very next day they quietly remove any cap on their compensation. These people are not on our side. This is why so many Americans are so damn frustrated. Everyone in power appears to be bought and paid for. There is a circle of people in DC and NY that keep passing the money around to one another and then come and collect it from us.

I want to know - no, I demand to know - who killed this provision? Who argued for taking this cap on executive pay out of the stimulus bill? Do we have a free and strong press in this country? Or are they in on it, too? If not, then find out who did this to us?

The constant non-sensical argument is that if we cap their pay they won't want to participate in this system. Ooh, don't scare us now. So, we won't get the most incompetent and corrupt losers in America to participate in their own rescue? I'm shivering thinking about the possibility of losing out on the help of these geniuses.

We're wasting our time here. Just nationalize the damn banks already. Almost all of the top economists are now in agreement that we should take this step. The people who put the money in are the people who own the company - that's how capitalism works. I'm a die-hard capitalist. I don't want the federal government owning banks for an extended period of time. But what's worse is to continue letting these bankers rob us of our money day in and day out while we sit around like fools.

We buy it, we own it. Kick the clowns out. Run it for a limited amount of time while we stabilize the credit markets. And then sell them off in the free market. Instead of begging the bankers to loosen up credit, we take the banks and do it ourselves.

At the very least, it is unconscionable to get rid of these pay caps. On what grounds do these people think they deserve millions of dollars for bankrupting their companies? How is that capitalism? That's not capitalism, that's cronyism. They pay the politicians, the politicians pay them. They have perverted the whole system.

No way. No way. No way. We have to stop this. If we don't, I guarantee you that we will look back and realize that the bankers actually did the most amount of damage and ripped off the system for billions more after the TARP program started and we let them walk away with all the money after the companies were bankrupt.

As Joseph Stiglitz says, they are bleeding the banks right now. It's a zero sum game, every dollar they take out is a dollar we have to put in. Why are we paying them for their incompetence?

My favorite joke is when people say if we don't continue to pay these clowns millions of dollars they will take their talent elsewhere.  I literally laughed out loud after writing that. Please, have at it hoss. Take your talent wherever the fuck you would like.

Is it possible that the Obama administration is behind this move? Absolutely. First, Tim Geithner is a complete Wall Street guy. He believes in protecting the Wall Street bubble. That's why they were ecstatic when he was selected. And Obama himself is a guy who is instinct is almost always to be conciliatory. If Wall Street says this is necessary, he's going to want to reach out and appease them to get things moving. But not this time. This is a conciliatory move we cannot abide.

I voted for Obama, but I did not loan out my intellect to him. I can still make up my own mind on whether he is right or wrong. And if he is participating in this, he is 100% wrong.

One last thing, the banks say that part of the stimulus cap on pay might be retroactive and that's not fair because that's changing the rules (I love how they're complaining about fairness now). They say that the banks might pull out of these deals if we change this rule on them now.

First, great, pull out. Where are you going to get the money elsewhere? Nowhere. It's the world's worst bluff. And even if they do, they run out of money. We are forced to nationalize them and we arrive at a better result anyway. Please make our day and don't take the money.

Second, on the retroactive issue. As one of our listeners pointed out, if a bank makes an error and deposits some money into your account that isn't yours and you spend it, you know what happens to you? You get arrested! We have covered numerous stories like this on the show. The bank accidentally puts in an extra $100,000 in someone's account. They spend it and they go to jail.

Here we have accidentally put too much into the bankers' accounts. I know it's too much because they took $18 billion of it home in bonuses instead of spending it on the problem at hand. If they spend it after we notify them of the error, they get arrested. They have to give the money back. It's what they do to their customers all the time.

Now, that's my solution. But that's not even in the bill. We should get that $18 billion back. But instead all we're asking for is that they not pay their executives more than $400,000 a year for being the worst businessmen in the country. Here's what I know as a fact - that is not too much to ask for.

And if our politicians claim that is too much to ask for, then they are either the most pathetic weaklings around or they are in on the heist. Either way, if they don't put this back in the bill, they gotta go. Democrat or Republican, I don't care. If they don't understand the urgency of this, then they are not for us.

Every day we wait is another day they "bleed the banks." If there isn't a popular uprising to stop these guys from stealing our money, then we deserve what we get. The old saying goes, a fool and his money are soon parted. Are you going to be that fool?

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I especially loved this: "I voted for Obama, but I did not loan out my intellect to him. I can still make up my own mind on whether he is right or wrong. And if he is participating in this, he is 100% wrong..."


I couldn't have said it better.

by ihavenobias on 02/12/2009 02:22:53 PM EST

but I doubt Obama had anything to do with this.  So many of the people in congress take donations from the Wall street folks, and I'm sure they are just covering their own asses.  That doesn't make it any better though.

by alienufo on 02/12/2009 03:05:12 PM EST

[ Parent ]
It's that I appreciate Cenk not kissing Obama's ass and doing the Honeymoon period bullshit that far too many other people do.

And even if O is not the villain, he's (seemingly) not the hero here either.

by ihavenobias on 02/12/2009 03:08:47 PM EST

[ Parent ]

I loved this post, and that was my favorite part as well.

by Spencer on 02/12/2009 03:25:00 PM EST

[ Parent ]
of the people (like you and me, the voting taxpayer) has been axed as written in today's Raw Story feed
http://rawstory.com/news/20 08/Whisteblower_protections _stripped_from_stimulus_bil l_0212.html

So much for keeping the federal government from blowing millions in taxpayer money.

The Senate quietly stripped whistleblower protections from the final stimulus package Wednesday afternoon, as the bill's authors bragged of a bipartisan compromise. The removal is particularly significant because of the bill's $789 billion price tag.

Despite the ugly record of federal spending in Iraq -- where auditors found problems with $88 million in federal contracts, and couldn't account for 8.8 billion dollars -- senators quietly nixed the measure from the bill, without explanation.

Talking Points Memo, which cited a source close to the final bill, said the provision was removed by Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), one of the senators brokering the compromise.

"According to a person following the bill closely, Collins used today's conference committee to drastically water down the measure, citing national security concerns as the reason for her opposition," TPM's Zachary Roth wrote. In the end, the protections were so weakened that House negotiators balked, and the result was that the entire amendment was removed."

Some Republicans take umbrage with the idea of blanket whistleblower protections, saying they could damage the US's ability to collect intelligence.

Project for Government Oversight, http://www.pogo.org/
a government watchdog group, blasted the removal.

"Accountability got mugged today when congressional leaders stripped federal whistleblower protections from their compromise stimulus bill," the group said in a release.

Part of the reason for government mismanagement of massive federally-funded projects is that federal whistleblowers have few effective protections from retaliation under current law. Of 55 whistleblowers who've filed complaints with the Merit Systems Protection Board for being fired or demoted, just two have won their cases.

"Federal workers who expose lax oversight of drugs at the Food and Drug Administration, cozy relationships between FAA inspectors and certain airlines, hundreds of billions of dollars in conscious "underestimates" for the cost of prescription drug coverage, and billions of dollars wasted in no-bid defense contracts face intimidation and retaliation and often are fired or demoted," the Kennebec Journal wrote in a Wednesday editorial. "And their efforts to go through the chain of command or seek relief from retaliation by agency managers nearly always fail."

The Obama Administration hasn't spoken out about the whistleblower provision's removal. Thus far, they've been relatively accommodating to Republicans' requests -- for example, removing a provision that would have provided money for the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases.

Yet, the Administration said they'd be protectors of whistleblowers as recently as last week. During his Feb. 5 confirmation hearing, Deputy Attorney General designate David Ogden told a Senate committee that he was "a big believer" in whistleblowers.

"I think what we need is a process that encourages whistleblowing in this administration and any other administration going forward. The business of making sure that we're doing the right thing is an ongoing business," Ogden said.

The Center for American Media's Washington Independent http://washingtonindependen t.com/
bemoaned the measure's removal late Wednesday.

"It's an odd outcome, given that federal employees are often the first people to notice fraud and other abuses by government contractors, as exhibited in many of the House oversight hearings on the subject over the past few years," the Independent's Daphne Eviatar wrote. "(Remember Bunnatine Greenhouse, who lost her job after blowing the whistle on the no-bid contracts for Halliburton?)"

"The sticking point on the federal workers may be, as I explained before, the strong opposition from Republicans to providing whistleblower protection to intelligence employees," Eviatar added.

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The disappointments continue to mount whether it is the legislature or executive branch.

by gatekeeper50 on 02/12/2009 03:04:36 PM EST

when Barack Obama said, "This is America. We don't disparage wealth. We don't begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset - and rightfully so - are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers."

 

 

 

 

by Babyfishie on 02/12/2009 04:17:52 PM EST

Just tax the LIVING SHIT out of them on the back end. 

by mijoh on 02/12/2009 05:03:29 PM EST

That Cenk is starting to remove Obama's penis from his mouth (not that its all the way out, mind you). I hope to see more of this as the months progress so the show can go back to being "Rebel" Headquarters instead of "Fellatio" Headquarters! :)

by bobo1 on 02/12/2009 07:37:31 PM EST

who hasn't watched the show since the late 80's.  Cenk hasn't been taking it easy on Obama.  If you actually watched the show, you would know this.

by Spencer on 02/12/2009 07:39:58 PM EST

[ Parent ]
There's only two buttons on bobo's head, off and stupid, and the off button doesn't work.

by bfaul on 02/12/2009 07:44:45 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Cenk has been riding the Obama Fellatio Express since June! The train is just now slowing down to stop at the town Disappointment, USA! I'll be glad when he finally departs the train and comes back to reality. This was a good start from what I saw... :)

by bobo1 on 02/12/2009 09:20:40 PM EST

[ Parent ]
is not the same as fellatio.  Fool.

by jarett on 02/12/2009 09:45:36 PM EST

[ Parent ]
your name resides on the back of many a restroom stall door, the glory hole glistening with the residue of your well worn lips.  As the chief sanitary tank engineer on the slow boat to butt-cheese island it's time to give yourself a courtesy flush, because you do nothing but stink up the place.

1.  fellator  
 One who dabbles in the art of fellatio...and LOVES it.

  • Dude, bobo1 was giving this guy the most bomb ass dome last night!
  • Tell me why, bobo1, you are the biggest damn fellator?

2.  fellator  
 A man who performs fellatio. The male counterpart to fellatrix.
bobo1 became the most popular fellator in the cell block.

by gatekeeper50 on 02/12/2009 09:50:16 PM EST

[ Parent ]

"Do we have a free and strong press in this country?"

Hardly.  Most of them seem to be quivering pussies.  As a matter of fact, I feel kind of guilty for comparing the two.  What did pussies ever do that they deserve to be compared to politicians? 

by bfaul on 02/12/2009 07:40:37 PM EST

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