Americans better wake up.....

[jinjer]

Beyond AIG: A bill to let Big Government set your salary

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/polit ... 58597.html

[Tim Elston]

Beyond AIG: A bill to let Big Government set your salary

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/polit ... 58597.html

I doubt it affects the salary of anyone here; thus "your salary" is misleading. It affects the salaries of employees of those companies who have been bailed out by the US government, for as long as the US is invested in those companies. It is a perfectly proper way to assign cost to the priviledge of being bailed out. We bailed them out, and we ought to have some control over their salaries. Most of these companies are banks, and their mid-level employees often get six-figure Christmas bonuses. I'm all for holding these companies accountable for how they dole out our money. We should not have bailed them out, but since we did we deserve some control of what they do until they pay us back.

[jinjer]

But this also includes the bank teller that doesn't make six-figures. It's the principle behind the gov't know or presiding over anything private that I have a problem with. It was a poorly thought out bail out plan from the beginning and now the ramifications may run deeper than we want it to.

Jinjer

[Tim Elston]

But this also includes the bank teller that doesn't make six-figures. It's the principle behind the gov't know or presiding over anything private that I have a problem with. It was a poorly thought out bail out plan from the beginning and now the ramifications may run deeper than we want it to.

Jinjer, I understand your concern, and I completely agree that the bailout was ill-conceived. I was against it, and I am still against it. I may be proven wrong, but I seriously doubt that the bank tellers' wages will go down. This bill is targeted at controlling the moral outrage of excessive salaries and bonuses of mid-level managers at financial institutions on behalf of which we have just hocked America's future. To my mind it would be morally derelict not to control this. It would be adding insult to injury to allow this bereft industry to squander our money on their private gain in the name of private industry. That would be socializing failure and privatizing gain. That is utterly and completely wrong, isn't it? We needed to let these banks fail, but since they gladly took our money to cover their failures, they owe us! Our government owes us to hold them accountable to how they use our money! The principle of government staying out of private business was violated when those companies took our money. That was their choice! So now they need to pay the consequences. They do not have the right to sqaunder our money, and if our government were not putting teeth into controlling what these businesses do with our money, then that's more of an outrage than giving them our money in the first place!

I'm sorry, I don't mean this as something personal against you or others. I am just as angry as I can be about the stinking bailout and how these companies feel like we owe it to them and that they are God's gift to the world. They can go die the death they deserve! But if they take our money, they owe us accountability with teeth in it!

[jinjer]

I feel the same way as far as the bailout. However, be careful what you wish for others, it may come back to get you. I think the gov't should have stayed out of the whole thing. But just like the income tax was supposed to be temporary, see where we are now. The gov't thinks THEY deserve the taxes.

Jinjer

[dolfan]

Jinjer, I understand your concern, and I completely agree that the bailout was ill-conceived. I was against it, and I am still against it. I may be proven wrong, but I seriously doubt that the bank tellers' wages will go down.

Maybe the rhetorical wind is taken out of the sails by pointing that out, but we can't miss the relationship between the work of the overpaid executive and the job availability it creates for the teller. The incentive for talent to do what it does best is dampened by the very presence of government control of what that talent can create. I think people would just quit, and they probably will, when government does what it threatening to do here. Why give the countless hours and efforts to something that is going to be controlled down to the core by government? I wouldn't. I can free up my time and do other things I care about with people I would rather be with for less money if I'm going to make less anyway. And, as others like me make that call, banks will do less, and some tellers will be doing something else when they'd want to be tellers. It does matter. And, it is simply too much power. The government may be like the borrower who couldn't repay the banks -- it may have made a deal it couldn't afford. Tough. I say let the government fail.

This bill is targeted at controlling the moral outrage of excessive salaries and bonuses of mid-level managers at financial institutions on behalf of which we have just hocked America's future. To my mind it would be morally derelict not to control this. It would be adding insult to injury to allow this bereft industry to squander our money on their private gain in the name of private industry. That would be socializing failure and privatizing gain.

But, the government made that deal with the devil at the outset. Now, they're changing the rules. Incrementalism. Ford Motor Company may be the smartest-run company in America today. The failure was bought and paid for by the federal government. I say maintain economic liberty and let the government get what it paid for.

That is utterly and completely wrong, isn't it? We needed to let these banks fail, but since they gladly took our money to cover their failures, they owe us!

The money they took was taken because, in part but not entirely, government policy demanded that they make loans to people who were hopelessly unable or unlikely to pay from the get-go. There is an argument, and not one I am entirely bought into mind you, but an argument that the government giving banks the money IS restitution from the government's wrongdoing in housing and lending policy.

Our government owes us to hold them accountable to how they use our money!

Government owes me good roads and secure borders. Leave the rest to me and I'll be fine. Most of us will be at least as well off.

The principle of government staying out of private business was violated when those companies took our money. That was their choice!

Government violated it by telling those companies they must lend to certain people and that precipitated this crisis. There's no avoiding that government is the catalyst for this failure.

They do not have the right to sqaunder our money, and if our government were not putting teeth into controlling what these businesses do with our money, then that's more of an outrage than giving them our money in the first place!

Government squandered our money long ago. Generations ago, it squandered on New Deal and Great Society initiatives the money we are paying in taxes today. The money it is squandering today will never be repaid, but out great-great grandchildren will still be paying for it in one way or another.

The only solution we can truly hope for would be to restrain government in every scope. Otherwise, all this argument on all sides is academic.

[MacUser]

Our government owes us to hold them accountable to how they use our money!

What about the Government itself being responsible for the trillions that THEY spend. Where is the outrage at that? How can you expect this bloated circus to manage anything?

***************

Shining Example:
Lawmakers Have Long Rewarded Their Aides With Bonuses
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123854799133476409.html

Last year alone, more than 200 House lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, awarded bonuses totaling $9.1 million to more than 2,000 staff members, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of office-disbursement forms. The money comes out of taxpayer-funded office budgets

**************

They can go die the death they deserve! But if they take our money, they owe us accountability with teeth in it!

I wish you were talking about our government also in this. Term limits and no retirement benefits and/or special medical coverage that these Govt elites enjoy. The entire lot on all sides needs to be cleaned out.

[Shellie]

Tim Elston wrote:

priviledge

Just thought I would mention that there is no "d" in the word privilege.

[free]

Christians better wake up...Jesus is coming soon...Look up our redemption draws nigh! I can't wait to see Him!

[Full Quiver]

Tim whether it affects anyone here at this time it does affect us POTENTIALLY. Who wouldn't want to earn the big bucks. This is a joke and you are just making excuses.

[Tim Elston]

Jinjer, I understand your concern, and I completely agree that the bailout was ill-conceived. I was against it, and I am still against it. I may be proven wrong, but I seriously doubt that the bank tellers' wages will go down.

Maybe the rhetorical wind is taken out of the sails by pointing that out, but we can't miss the relationship between the work of the overpaid executive and the job availability it creates for the teller. The incentive for talent to do what it does best is dampened by the very presence of government control of what that talent can create. I think people would just quit, and they probably will, when government does what it threatening to do here. Why give the countless hours and efforts to something that is going to be controlled down to the core by government? I wouldn't. I can free up my time and do other things I care about with people I would rather be with for less money if I'm going to make less anyway. And, as others like me make that call, banks will do less, and some tellers will be doing something else when they'd want to be tellers. It does matter. And, it is simply too much power. The government may be like the borrower who couldn't repay the banks -- it may have made a deal it couldn't afford. Tough. I say let the government fail.

Do you really think that the government is going to lower teller wages? A government that is controlled by Democrats who are typically the ones who want to raise the minimum wage? And why are Republicans who are typically against raising the minimum wage all of a sudden concerned about tellers getting lower wages? Methinks that it's not at all about tellers and their wages but about a cheap opportunity to diss the government, especially now that it's not in the hands of Republicans. All the sweeter to accuse the government when it's controlled by Democrats, now that the time to defend it is gone because the Republicans are out.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet you a Lipton tea bag that this proposed legislation, if passed, will not lower a single teller's wages. Are you willing to look back in its aftermath and take an accounting? Will you eat your words if people making less than forty dollars an hour don't see a wage drop? I'll eat my breakfast if this bill does anything more than prevent outlandish, extravagant salaries and bonuses for top and middle-managers of businesses that are effectively in the trusteeship of the American taxpayer. And, yes, let people quit if they are all in a huff about losing their six figure Christmas bonuses. Let them go flip burgers or get a six-figure job with the RNC, for all I care. I don't trust Congress as far as I can puke it, much less barf Barney Frank, but if they actually make this more than a smoke screen, good on them.

This bill is targeted at controlling the moral outrage of excessive salaries and bonuses of mid-level managers at financial institutions on behalf of which we have just hocked America's future. To my mind it would be morally derelict not to control this. It would be adding insult to injury to allow this bereft industry to squander our money on their private gain in the name of private industry. That would be socializing failure and privatizing gain.

But, the government made that deal with the devil at the outset. Now, they're changing the rules. Incrementalism. Ford Motor Company may be the smartest-run company in America today. The failure was bought and paid for by the federal government. I say maintain economic liberty and let the government get what it paid for.

From what I hear, Ford isn't in play here. They haven't taken bailout money. Good for them. They aren't accountable to us for anything, and the bill won't apply to them.

And, yes, the government made the deal with the devil. The government is an agent of the devil. Wall Street and Washington: Bonny and Clod. Bush and Paulson and Frank and Pelosi gave our money away with no strings attached. Obama came along and felt whatever political pressure and said out of one side of his mouth, Hey, wait a minute, you're not living up to the bargain. You're not making loans. Instead you're giving yourselves bonuses. So hypocrite Frank and Pelosi act like they're on a moral crusade and front this bill. You call it incrementalism, Tim. I call it accountability. At least a smoke screen of it, and if it actually gets put into law with any teeth left, then I say it's real accountability. Shame on the crony government for taking our money and giving it to these leeches, but good on us for putting whatever political pressure exists to keep these banks from luxuriating off of our money.

That is utterly and completely wrong, isn't it? We needed to let these banks fail, but since they gladly took our money to cover their failures, they owe us!

The money they took was taken because, in part but not entirely, government policy demanded that they make loans to people who were hopelessly unable or unlikely to pay from the get-go. There is an argument, and not one I am entirely bought into mind you, but an argument that the government giving banks the money IS restitution from the government's wrongdoing in housing and lending policy.

I readily agree that the government mandate to make subprime loans was stupid and culpable, but I hardly concede that the loan companies didn't turn it anything less than feeding frenzy. Restitution? What a bunch of malarkey. I see that you don't own that argument, and I can appreciate that you don't, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't still stink like a Limbaugh-esque talking point. I do not know what private lobbying was done to tantalize Clinton's bright idea of mandating those loans, but I would be hard pressed to believe that it wasn't in some measure a brainchild of private industry. And I know that the 1999's Gramm-Leach-Bliley act, which metamorphized Clinton's older subprime loan sandwich into a bipartisan galactic subway system was heavily lobbied by private industry. No, the notion that these bailouts are tantamount to restitution to these financial companies is the worst sort of postmodern absurdity that the devil has ever dared fork through "righteous" tongue, and I'm not talking about yours, Tim, because at least you have enough moral light to question it.

Our government owes us to hold them accountable to how they use our money!

Government owes me good roads and secure borders. Leave the rest to me and I'll be fine. Most of us will be at least as well off.

I'm open to learning on this point, but does the Constitution say that the government owes us good roads? I remember reading that in the early history of the Republic, the Jeffersonian Democrats were against the Federal government spending money on infrastructure. This was a huge controversy. Why isn't road building the domain of private enterprise?

But that seems to be beside the point of a bailout. Do you really believe that there should be no accountability for bailouts? I presume that you are against bailouts, as I am, but when they occur, do you think that bailed out businesses should have no accountability for what they do with that money, that government has no right to hold them accountable, and that everything should still be ruled by the ideologically purist business-as-usual principle that the government can just butt out of how the money it just gave to save those businesses' fat, sloppy, greedy, stupid, theiving behinds is spent? If you believe that, I completely disagree and consider your opinion on that point hostage to rigid ideology and bereft of good both pragmatic and moral principle.

The principle of government staying out of private business was violated when those companies took our money. That was their choice!

Government violated it by telling those companies they must lend to certain people and that precipitated this crisis. There's no avoiding that government is the catalyst for this failure.

There is no avoiding that government was complicit with private enterprise. In principle is government forbidden, then, from correcting course and doing something responsible for a change? How is it possibly responsible to throw money to the wind? That would be adding the insult of a stringless giveaway of our money to the injury of the government's causal failures.

They do not have the right to sqaunder our money, and if our government were not putting teeth into controlling what these businesses do with our money, then that's more of an outrage than giving them our money in the first place!

Government squandered our money long ago. Generations ago, it squandered on New Deal and Great Society initiatives the money we are paying in taxes today. The money it is squandering today will never be repaid, but out great-great grandchildren will still be paying for it in one way or another.

So let me get this straight: Your position is that since government has been squandering our money since the New Deal it should continue to do so? Sorry, I don't get that logic. Is your position that since the New Deal spent money on the Great Society, it should never handle money responsibly and should bail out companies without accountability in order to prove the point? Something tells me you're not going to be comfortable with saying that, but I fail to see how you are saying anything but that, in the context of where you are saying it.

The only solution we can truly hope for would be to restrain government in every scope. Otherwise, all this argument on all sides is academic.

There's a point to be made there in terms of purist ideology, but while we're working that out I'm for bailed out companies not being free to squander bailout money on luxuriant salaries and bonuses. Good on our screwed up government for at least pretending to threaten some accountability. I'm not holding my breath, but if they actually pass this legislation, I'll be happy. In the mean time the so-called constitutional reconstructionists can work on the next step while the Democrats and Republicans conspire with Wall Street to rip us off in the next go-round while the partisan "righteous" cheer on their side of the thievery and boo the other.

[MacUser]

Tim,
In a nutshell.. you are saying that since they took the money they are accountable to US aka US Govt.

We in a nutshell are saying that the US.. ie; We the People... can't even hold the bloated circus we call Govt. accountable. It has run amok. This first principle has to be repaired before we can ever devise a plan to "fix others".

My example was the EXTREME Bonuses of nearly 10 Million of our TAX Money given to a few staffers. Where is your outrage.. if it's based on stealing our tax money? Why are you so quick to believe the Govt. can spin on a dime and become accountable money enforcers? Why do you not extend this same self rule principle to business?


Your personal happiness in whether someone in business is flipping burgers or not is really shallow. Especially when you don't appear to extend that same self correction as you do to Govt. Elites...

[dolfan]

Do you really think that the government is going to lower teller wages? A government that is controlled by Democrats who are typically the ones who want to raise the minimum wage? And why are Republicans who are typically against raising the minimum wage all of a sudden concerned about tellers getting lower wages? Methinks that it's not at all about tellers and their wages but about a cheap opportunity to diss the government, especially now that it's not in the hands of Republicans. All the sweeter to accuse the government when it's controlled by Democrats, now that the time to defend it is gone because the Republicans are out.

First, I don't care what Republicans want or think about it. Like one guy said yesterday, there are two parties in this country: The Party Who Wants To Be Socialists, and The Party Who Doesn't Quite Want To Be Socialists. I'm The Guy Who Wants Government To Be Cuffed, Chained, Restrained, Choked and Stopped. If AIG is too big to fail, then AFG (the American Federal Government) is too big to succeed.

I'm worried not about the Republicans wanting tellers wages to be helped. I'm worried that the teller won't have a job to earn a wage because the fat cat banker is getting soaked by the federal government and getting regulated, supervised and basically dictated-to to the point that being a fat cat banker isn't worth it and the bank itself has a talent drain and closes up. That's the teller's problem, too.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet you a Lipton tea bag that this proposed legislation, if passed, will not lower a single teller's wages. Are you willing to look back in its aftermath and take an accounting? Will you eat your words if people making less than forty dollars an hour don't see a wage drop? I'll eat my breakfast if this bill does anything more than prevent outlandish, extravagant salaries and bonuses for top and middle-managers of businesses that are effectively in the trusteeship of the American taxpayer. And, yes, let people quit if they are all in a huff about losing their six figure Christmas bonuses. Let them go flip burgers or get a six-figure job with the RNC, for all I care. I don't trust Congress as far as I can puke it, much less barf Barney Frank, but if they actually make this more than a smoke screen, good on them.

What I'll do is give forty dollars to any charity you name if unemployment doesn't exceed 10% nationally within a year. If it does do that, then I'll be right, the price of which will far exceed my paltry donation for being wrong.

And, yes, the government made the deal with the devil. The government is an agent of the devil. Wall Street and Washington: Bonny and Clod. Bush and Paulson and Frank and Pelosi gave our money away with no strings attached. Obama came along and felt whatever political pressure and said out of one side of his mouth, Hey, wait a minute, you're not living up to the bargain. You're not making loans. Instead you're giving yourselves bonuses. So hypocrite Frank and Pelosi act like they're on a moral crusade and front this bill. You call it incrementalism, Tim. I call it accountability. At least a smoke screen of it, and if it actually gets put into law with any teeth left, then I say it's real accountability. Shame on the crony government for taking our money and giving it to these leeches, but good on us for putting whatever political pressure exists to keep these banks from luxuriating off of our money.

This egg can't be unscrambled. What they did was bait these companies into accepting this money so that they could then assert the control in the name of accountability. They knew full well what they were doing. The whole strategy is to socialize commerce. Even IF they were to successfully police the use of TARP money and bailout money by these companies, they are flooding private citizens with tax burdens in the form of public debt. They are assuming full control of all aspects of corporate governance and overflowing the money supply. They are breaking us and taking us over.

I readily agree that the government mandate to make subprime loans was stupid and culpable, but I hardly concede that the loan companies didn't turn it anything less than feeding frenzy. Restitution? What a bunch of malarkey. I see that you don't own that argument, and I can appreciate that you don't, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't still stink like a Limbaugh-esque talking point. I do not know what private lobbying was done to tantalize Clinton's bright idea of mandating those loans, but I would be hard pressed to believe that it wasn't in some measure a brainchild of private industry. And I know that the 1999's Gramm-Leach-Bliley act, which metamorphized Clinton's older subprime loan sandwich into a bipartisan galactic subway system was heavily lobbied by private industry. No, the notion that these bailouts are tantamount to restitution to these financial companies is the worst sort of postmodern absurdity that the devil has ever dared fork through "righteous" tongue, and I'm not talking about yours, Tim, because at least you have enough moral light to question it.

I agree to a large extent with that -- but not wholly. My bigger point in pointing out the existence of the argument is that the government is the catalyst for this, the proximate cause. Did they work alone? No. But, their problem was bad enough, now their remedy is worse than the illness.

I'm open to learning on this point, but does the Constitution say that the government owes us good roads? I remember reading that in the early history of the Republic, the Jeffersonian Democrats were against the Federal government spending money on infrastructure. This was a huge controversy. Why isn't road building the domain of private enterprise?

That's my idiomatic way of saying open up the interior of the country for us to use and exploit freely and otherwise stay away federal government, and keep us safe from harm from without. Local government has pretty much maintained roads, except for the interstate system. I don't propose to change that by my little idiom.

But that seems to be beside the point of a bailout. Do you really believe that there should be no accountability for bailouts? I presume that you are against bailouts, as I am, but when they occur, do you think that bailed out businesses should have no accountability for what they do with that money, that government has no right to hold them accountable, and that everything should still be ruled by the ideologically purist business-as-usual principle that the government can just butt out of how the money it just gave to save those businesses' fat, sloppy, greedy, stupid, theiving behinds is spent? If you believe that, I completely disagree and consider your opinion on that point hostage to rigid ideology and bereft of good both pragmatic and moral principle.

What I truly think is that it is a mess that can't lead to anything good. If you and I jump out of a plane together in a tandem, both of us having some control beforehand and during over managing the cord that deploys the chute, we aren't going to win the situation by looking back at who was in the best position to manage it and arrange it. We're in mid-air, free fall, and we've got a mangled cord and limited prospects for survival. Before we reach the ground, we'll probably decide to wish each other well and express regret because we know that both of us are goners. With government and these big companies, the government is immortal. It has the power to overtake by force and to print money out of thin air. It isn't going to wish the corporate world well; it is going to grab it, position it under the government and land on it and then blame it for not being a good cord manager when it can no longer speak for itself as it walks away from the flattened, smashed remains.

There is no avoiding that government was complicit with private enterprise. In principle is government forbidden, then, from correcting course and doing something responsible for a change? How is it possibly responsible to throw money to the wind? That would be adding the insult of a stringless giveaway of our money to the injury of the government's causal failures.

In my view, the idea of a responsible government is like the image of a well-mannered cannibal. Since FDR, government has overconsumed us. I see no way, practically or theoretically, in which government CAN be responsible. Throwing money to the wind is exactly what the government continues to do as it talks about being responsible. The insult, as I feel and see it at least, is the government expecting me to believe that it is going to do anything truly good or right. With few exceptions, it hasn't in more than 70 years. (The one exception, and even it is arguable in some circles, was WWII.)

So let me get this straight: Your position is that since government has been squandering our money since the New Deal it should continue to do so? Sorry, I don't get that logic. Is your position that since the New Deal spent money on the Great Society, it should never handle money responsibly and should bail out companies without accountability in order to prove the point? Something tells me you're not going to be comfortable with saying that, but I fail to see how you are saying anything but that, in the context of where you are saying it.

I'm saying that government does nothing with money BUT squander it. It does nothing with power but grab it. It does nothing with freedom except to smother it. Our government has not, since 1937 or before, acted in any way truly in the public interest because the public interest ceased to be defined in terms individual liberty and was redefined in terms of federal power under the Interstate Commerce Clause.

There's a point to be made there in terms of purist ideology, but while we're working that out I'm for bailed out companies not being free to squander bailout money on luxuriant salaries and bonuses. Good on our screwed up government for at least pretending to threaten some accountability. I'm not holding my breath, but if they actually pass this legislation, I'll be happy. In the mean time the so-called constitutional reconstructionists can work on the next step while the Democrats and Republicans conspire with Wall Street to rip us off in the next go-round while the partisan "righteous" cheer on their side of the thievery and boo the other.

I won't be happy with it, but I am going to have to learn to live with it and what it causes.

[dolfan]

And, yes, the government made the deal with the devil. The government is an agent of the devil. Wall Street and Washington: Bonny and Clod. Bush and Paulson and Frank and Pelosi gave our money away with no strings attached. Obama came along and felt whatever political pressure and said out of one side of his mouth, Hey, wait a minute, you're not living up to the bargain. You're not making loans. Instead you're giving yourselves bonuses. So hypocrite Frank and Pelosi act like they're on a moral crusade and front this bill. You call it incrementalism, Tim. I call it accountability. At least a smoke screen of it, and if it actually gets put into law with any teeth left, then I say it's real accountability. Shame on the crony government for taking our money and giving it to these leeches, but good on us for putting whatever political pressure exists to keep these banks from luxuriating off of our money.

This egg can't be unscrambled. What they did was bait these companies into accepting this money so that they could then assert the control in the name of accountability. They knew full well what they were doing. The whole strategy is to socialize commerce. Even IF they were to successfully police the use of TARP money and bailout money by these companies, they are flooding private citizens with tax burdens in the form of public debt. They are assuming full control of all aspects of corporate governance and overflowing the money supply. They are breaking us and taking us over.

Just today, Politico is reporting that when CEOs last week asked Pres. Obama to streamline the process for them to repay TARP money to the government, Obama said no, that they needed to hold onto the government money to stay healthy in the same way a child on antibiotics shouldn't stop taking it just because they feel better before they finish the bottle.

Translation: No, fellas -- we've got our hooks into you and if you think you can buy your way out of it, forget it; you won't repay this loan with anything less than control by the federal government.

So, this is not about teeth in the law for accountability. This is about talons in the private property of private companies for control.

[MacUser]

So, this is not about teeth in the law for accountability. This is about talons in the private property of private companies for control.

Never waste a good crisis.