Pangloss

The government has the weight of law behind it, so clearly they're not going to pay those contracted bonuses if they enter into a new agreement that renders then void. If that's a problem then the CEO in question can sue, and the judge and the rest of us can laugh them out of court. On another front, however, a friend of mine pointed out that this cap would prevent a company from replacing a CEO with a new one at an appropriate salary level. However, they could easily write THAT contract in such a way as to provide huge dividends if the new CEO rescues the company from bailout status, which of course is the whole point. And if they can't rescue them, then they shouldn't receive big compensation anyway. That seems to fit.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pay-impact-2009feb05,0,4979583.story I don't know why they would do that (restructure their pay packages). Isn't that just begging for trouble that isn't really there? Why would a company "rethink" its entire compensation structure just because of the possibility that they might be bailed out at some point in time? And maybe more to the point, why would we care if they did? So what? It's not as if they lack incentive to become CEOs -- it's only in the event of a bailout that they would be capped. Doesn't this just give them more incentive to AVOID a bailout by doing better business? It seems that way to me. I like it. And it's not in the least bit socialistic. It's MY MONEY, and if you're going to take it from me by force, then you're darn well not going to give it away to each other instead of using it to save the company that YOU'VE failed to make successful as you were hired to do.

Ugh. I'm starting to think maybe this thread needs to be closed so we can move on.

My wife cracked me up tonight when we were watching the news about Tom Daschle. She's convinced that President Obama is going to solve the debt problem by simply appointing every member of Congress to his cabinet in succession, thereby forcing them all to pay their taxes!

Well I think Richard "bomb them back into the stone age" Armitage might disagree with you on that. I hear he's looking for a job these days, and the current administration seems to approve of his policies.................................

Well seeing as how I just touted my own definition of "failed" I guess I can hardly fault you for having one of your own. I also agree that we should have been leveraging the economic success of most of the period of the Bush administration (you know, when Dems were telling us how that was "the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression") to do something about both the debt and the deficit. Republicans (with more than a little help from across the aisle) failed to do that. Which is what makes the current litany of Republican complaints about Democratic pork so amusing. "Hey Senator McConnell, tell us the one again about how much you hate spending! HA HA HA!" <slaps knee, wipes tears from eyes>

Sounds like a good idea. I think you should post it on that White House page.

The reason I laughed in post #25 above was I was laughing at BOTH of the two previous posts. Bascule was being just as "snarky" as Mr. Skeptic (who probably did it just to point that fact out), and I didn't consider EITHER response worthy of a response of my own.

I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't getting the quotes backwards in reading the above. Isn't it funny how these turnabouts happen, whenever political winds shift?

Oh it passed the House, but that's what was so interesting about it -- moments after it passed it became abundantly clear to everyone involved that it wasn't going anywhere. It's an interesting case, actually, demonstrating that party unity can often fly in the face of both popular opinion and reasonable opposition. The Republicans may be behaving hypocritically and partisan-ly (erk, pardon my English), but they had reasonable points, and people agreed with them: (source) I may be going out on a limb here, but I don't think he would have signed it if it had also passed the Senate with no Republican votes. I think he would have said "that's not acceptable, I want you to rework it in such a manner as to reflect Republican concerns", and they would have done exactly that. (And boy would THAT have been an interesting story. It's no mistake that Obama's approval rating is astronomical and theirs is lower than the national debt.) Anyway, that's what I meant by "failed". I could have been more clear.

rofl

Well I don't think the Bush tax cuts failed, and something like 40% of the House bill was tax cuts, and their presence in the eventual bill is likely to be even higher, so clearly even President Obama likes tax cuts. A lot. But these tax cuts do operate on a very different premise from the ones undertaken during the Bush administration, and it will be interesting to see what sort of impact they have. Reduced paycheck withholding is a very rapid, direct approach, for example, and it's one that conservatives (of all varieties) cannot claim is unfair, since it only affects people who actually pay taxes. Similarly the first-time-home-buyer credit and college programs are also difficult to construe as pure welfare -- the recipient has obligations and becomes a productive member of society, contributing more to the economy in both cases. Ayn Rand may be rolling in her grave more than usual these days, but Democrats are largely doing what they said they were going to do, and if you accept the premise of a mixed economy then you pretty much have to accept the premise of a stimulus package. The devil lies only in the details. That having been said, the more I consider the particulars of the $819 billion House bill the more I'm glad that it failed. Even if it was only 20% rotten, that's still a lot of dough and it's good to take our time about these things and get them right. Most of what I heard from Republicans last week was partisan nonsense (that's cute, senator -- can you tell us the one again about how you hate spending?), but there was enough of a germ of a legitimate complaint in there that it did warrant more work. I remain behind the concept of a stimulus package, however. Never be afraid to make these people earn their keep, folks. It's your money.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKTRE50M4BM20090123 I thought at first this was an animal rights story. A big day for PETA, right? Animals finally taken so seriously that we can even hold them accountable for their crimes against humanity! Er, so to speak. But it turns out this story has a rather unfortunate twist. You see, it's not a goat that the authorities arrested at all. It's actually a man who turned into a goat in order to evade the police. Oh dear, we can't have that, now can we? Fortunately there is a bit of sunshine at the end of the tunnel: Yes, um, well... I suppose if they have any trouble with that, they can always just kill the goat and ask John Edward to communicate with it. I'm sure he'll milk that goat for all its worth!

Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009 It contains the following rough breakdown: Here's a link to the actual text of the bill (yawn) at the Library of Congress. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c111:2:./temp/~c111zFtQqA::

As I indicated, it's entirely my guess. It's something in the general neighborhood of $250 billion, and I just don't recall a larger tax break ever happening.

Oh you do not. You're a softie, we know the truth.

Not really, but it sounds like fun. I'd be interested in seeing anything you'd care to share with us.

During the campaign the Obama camp promised a 5-day review of all legislation sent to if by Congress before signing. It did not do that with the Lilly Ledbetter act. Wups. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j1h3GiUlwDI_i-AbVyV7bQdhIkUwD961M7QG0 IMO this is a minor slip-up, but I hope it fixes this and follows-through on its promise of 5-day public comment reviews of ALL legislation before signing. This is the page that the White House has set up for these comments: http://www.whitehouse.gov/five_day_review/

It's worth noting that the package includes what is, if I'm not mistaken, the largest tax relief plan ever proposed in the history of this country. Something like a third of the proposal isn't stolen spending at all, it's a direct return to the taxpayer (and only to the tax PAYER).

As far as I know this bill does not require businesses to disclose employee wages. Nor do I support such a measure.

Exactly, although I would just add that it wasn't that she didn't complain earlier, it was that she didn't know that she was being discriminated against at that earlier point in time. Once she found out, the statue of limitations had already passed from her first paycheck, so she was being discriminated against on an ongoing basis and had no recourse in court. The new law closes that loophole. It's also worth noting that the law does not stop companies from hiding the salaries of employees (nor should it). The game is, as they say, still afoot. This just balanced the playing field a little.

In a manner of speaking, yes. Although I would say that Iraq appears to be a flat-out error in judgment (on epic scale), not an example of poorly implemented policy for victory over terrorists. But I don't consider Afghanistan such an exception, not many other aspects of Bush Doctrine, nor does our new president, who is sending additional troops to Afghanistan and just got through bombing Pakistan. Why do you think he started two wars?

qft.

I agree. I think we're just getting started. And in the grand scheme of things we're about to do exactly what Bush really wanted to do but so poorly expressed and implemented it (and because the ideological deck was automatically stacked against him as a Republican) that he could not.

I'm actually not a big fan of the highly generalized argument that women don't make as much as men. It just makes too many assumptions. But this legislation really has nothing to do with that argument. It addresses a specific loophole that was utilized for the express purpose of ripping off women to aid the bottom line of companies. That's not to be tolerated, and the law makes sense. That's really all there is to it. If along the way we make a statement reminding people that this society will not tolerate inequality and unfairness, more power to the administration and Lilly Ledbetter for that. My two bits, anyway.