Well, Obama pay czar Kenneth Feinberg is using his ethically and legally questionable mandate to influence private-sector executive salaries by demanding soon-to-retire Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis return all of this year's disbursed compensation to him (and to serve the unexpired remaining period without compensation). Quite frankly, this is an abuse of power, probably unconstitutional, and unconscionable. [I say "probably" because the plainly written text of Article 1 Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids ex post facto laws "whether . . . of a civil or a criminal nature", but the Supreme Court, in its activist wisdom, decided to ignore the plain words (i.e., only criminal nature). To quote our plagiarizing President (and Governor Patrick): "Don't tell me words don't matter."]
This decision seems to be based purely on Lewis' cumulative preexisting (to TARP) compensation (e.g., stock options) and retirement package. And I don't think Lewis, whom is financially set for life, really needs that $1.5M that the Obamaian Politics of Envy is stripping. But that's not the point; I think it's a clear violation of his contract; if the federal government wanted to demand company executives work for free in exchange for government TARP money, it should have insisted on that from the get-go. It cannot ex post facto demand a salary giveback after an executive worked in good faith.
How many executives do you think would have agreed to work for free during the most challenging banking crisis in decades? As credit was beginning to freeze in the economic tsunami and its aftermath, sudden turnover of high-ranking, experienced bank managers across the board could have had a devastating effect on an already slumping economy... I make the argument that if there ever was a time bank executives earned and were worth whatever the private sector had decided was fair compensation, it was then.
How many executives do you think would have agreed to work for free during the most challenging banking crisis in decades? As credit was beginning to freeze in the economic tsunami and its aftermath, sudden turnover of high-ranking, experienced bank managers across the board could have had a devastating effect on an already slumping economy... I make the argument that if there ever was a time bank executives earned and were worth whatever the private sector had decided was fair compensation, it was then.
Let us remember what happened last October:
Last October, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ordered nine banks that the Treasury Department described as “healthy” financial institutions to surrender ownership interests to the government or else face regulatory action that would force them to surrender ownership interests to the government, according to an internal Treasury Department document.
These are the financial institutions that got the ultimatum:
Citigroup
JP Morgan
Wells Fargo
Merrill Lynch
Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs
Bank of New York
Bank of America
State Street Bank
Bank of America acquired two troubled businesses during the crisis, Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch; mergers can be challenging enough under ordinary circumstances. You want the CEO to do this for free? Obviously Feinberg thinks it's not worth paying a penny for any competent manager to run a $70B revenue corporation with over 200,000 employees. Never mind the fact that a single prescient decision made by Mr. Lewis could pay his $1.5M salary many times over...
Obama, who hired Feinberg, should eat his own dog food. Don't be hypocritical; let's start by having Mr. Feinberg pay back all his own accrued salary and agree to serve "free" for the rest of his term. Because that's precisely how much Feinberg's performance warrants. And while we're at it, Mr. President, why don't you agree to work without a salary unless you get the unemployment rate and the federal deficit back to the historical mean?
Obama, who hired Feinberg, should eat his own dog food. Don't be hypocritical; let's start by having Mr. Feinberg pay back all his own accrued salary and agree to serve "free" for the rest of his term. Because that's precisely how much Feinberg's performance warrants. And while we're at it, Mr. President, why don't you agree to work without a salary unless you get the unemployment rate and the federal deficit back to the historical mean?
Obama's Pastor?
After Obama took several months to decide on a family dog (never mind national policy issues), why should we find it so hard to understand his indecision on finding a replacement pastor whom can measure up to Rev. Jeremiah Wright? What about the spiritual development of his young Christian daughters? The rumor is that Obama had attended a few services featuring the sermons of a relative of country music legend Johnny Cash, Camp David U.S. Marines Chaplain Carey Cash. Obama reportedly likes Cash's powerful sermons, but a number of progressives are unhappy with a 2005 book (A Table in the Presence) Cash wrote, finding the touch of God in the liberation of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces during the recent Gulf War (which Obama opposed). They also think that Cash's critical assessment of the violence practiced by radical Islamic sects and the religion's history is inconsistent with Obama's Cairo address. (In the meanwhile, Obama doesn't want Cash talking to the press.)
Now where exactly were these same progressive critics when Jeremiah Wright was delivering divisive, inflammatory sermons at Trinity, which were clearly inconsistent with Obama's own political methodology? Are we to expect that Obama, as Commander in Chief, is going to apply a litmus test not only to Supreme Court judicial nominees but to military chaplains whose services he may attend? Of course, it never occurred to military-hating progressives that clergy serving military personnel might have a positive perspective on the role of the U.S. military and its missions. Cash's personal opinions are simply based on what Obama's political mentor and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore might call "inconvenient truths".
After Obama took several months to decide on a family dog (never mind national policy issues), why should we find it so hard to understand his indecision on finding a replacement pastor whom can measure up to Rev. Jeremiah Wright? What about the spiritual development of his young Christian daughters? The rumor is that Obama had attended a few services featuring the sermons of a relative of country music legend Johnny Cash, Camp David U.S. Marines Chaplain Carey Cash. Obama reportedly likes Cash's powerful sermons, but a number of progressives are unhappy with a 2005 book (A Table in the Presence) Cash wrote, finding the touch of God in the liberation of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces during the recent Gulf War (which Obama opposed). They also think that Cash's critical assessment of the violence practiced by radical Islamic sects and the religion's history is inconsistent with Obama's Cairo address. (In the meanwhile, Obama doesn't want Cash talking to the press.)
Now where exactly were these same progressive critics when Jeremiah Wright was delivering divisive, inflammatory sermons at Trinity, which were clearly inconsistent with Obama's own political methodology? Are we to expect that Obama, as Commander in Chief, is going to apply a litmus test not only to Supreme Court judicial nominees but to military chaplains whose services he may attend? Of course, it never occurred to military-hating progressives that clergy serving military personnel might have a positive perspective on the role of the U.S. military and its missions. Cash's personal opinions are simply based on what Obama's political mentor and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore might call "inconvenient truths".
Sarah Palin's New Book
I'm not sure what's in this book, which has already drawn heavy pre-sales. I've written a number of critical posts on Sarah Palin, and I don't want to simply repeat myself. But I do want to summarize here some of the reasons I will never support her for national office. It goes beyond her abysmal numbers with moderates and independents whom the Republicans will need to win back the swing states in 2012, her thin resume and limited background and expertise on national policy, the fact that she doesn't match up well with Obama, and the toxic nature of her unforced resignation in the third year of her first term and disingenuous explanation of her reasons (probably responsible for her recent fall to a distant third beyond Huckabee and Romney in the latest Rasmussen poll among likely Republican voters, despite her massive public exposure advantage over the past year; the same sample showed at least a fifth of GOP voters don't want her on the next ticket, multiple times higher than her more competent competitors); if she cannot handle the pressures of being governor of Alaska, the American people are not going to elect her to the nation's toughest job.
For one thing, Sarah Palin has come across to me as very thin-skinned and vindictive with a disproportionate reaction; this is very clear from the circumstances of Troopergate whereby the governor and her husband unsuccessfully pressured the public safety commissioner (Walt Monegan) to fire her despised former brother-in-law, state trooper Michael Wooten, and dismissed him. I also cannot remember a running mate whom proved to be unprofessional with staffers, openly questioned campaign strategy with Fox News, and then tried to make herself out to be a victim of McCain staffers looking for a scapegoat.
Then, of course, there was the disproportionate response to a bad David Letterman joke suggesting a quickie during the seventh inning stretch between a notorious baseball player and Palin's oldest daughter (an 18-year-old unwed mother whom, in fact, had taken a high-profile role with a national abstinence campaign, making herself a public figure). This is a case where the better political judgment would have been to take the moral higher ground and ignore it or simply issue an indignant release, demanding a public apology; instead, Palin rejected Letterman's offer for a show appearance so he could apologize in person, claiming Letterman's motivation was to exploit a visit for ratings. (Yeah, that's right: David was trying to take advantage of something she herself escalated; in fact, other late night comics had made prior questionable jokes about the same Palin daughter without a similar reaction.) After all, ambitious politicians hate to appear on national-audience late night shows, especially ones promising monster ratings. Feuding with late-night comedians whom make a living out of ridiculing politicians is intemperate. This was hardly worthy of a "straight talk" running mate; she unconvincingly alleged that the joke was really about statutory rape of another (little-known, underage) daughter attending the game, implied that Letterman was a pedophile, and then asserted that the kerfuffle was not about the circumstances of her own family, but that she was fighting on behalf of female victims everywhere.
Her credibility is also questionable in other contexts. For example, she repeated, on multiple occasions, even after it had been disproved, a sound bite that she had told the Congress to keep its money allocated for the Gravina Island Bridge, i.e., the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere". In fact, she supported the bridge construction during her gubernatorial campaign, the Alaskan legislature used the money allocated for the bridge for other purposes (Congress had given them that option), and she waited several months after learning that bridge project costs had doubled before cancelling the project--only after her future running mate, John McCain, in the aftermath of the Minnesota bridge collapse, once again denounced the notorious earmark on the Senate floor. The "maverick reformer" Sarah Palin got her fair amount of earmark money as mayor and governor; to quote Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally: "All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share..." (The reason this failure of the McCain campaign vetting process became an issue is because the McCain campaign was attacking Obama's liberal use of earmarks until election season.)
I don't know what's in the book, but I suspect that she will spin her high-maintenance behavior as virtuous, striking a blow for spunky, accomplished women everywhere. I don't suspect there's enough material of accomplishments to fill a Little Golden Book, never mind a standard nonfiction volume. Probably lots of pictures (hopefully no other previously unreleased beauty pageant swimsuit pictures or embarrassing T-shirts). Probably no chapter titles like "A Hockey Mom's Advice on Teenage Abstinence". Probably a lot of bumper-stick insights on policy issues we've been waiting for, e.g., "terrorists are evil, and we need to do something about them", "we shouldn't import so much foreign oil and gas", "federal deficits are bad, and we should cut spending", etc. (The devil is in the details.) I would find it amusing to see a pop-up, pull-out "Tasergate" insert of Sarah Palin going after Trooper Wooten, with Wooten pleading, "Don't tase me, guv!" And, of course, there's your own copy of a winking, nodding Sarah Palin paper doll. What's her next project? A DVD of Sarah Palin doing Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin? Or perhaps a pull-string authentic licensed Sarah Palin doll? "I just LOVE Joe Six Pack!", " Drill, baby, drill!", etc. Of course, the doll will stop working after 2.5 years of purchase...
I'm not sure what's in this book, which has already drawn heavy pre-sales. I've written a number of critical posts on Sarah Palin, and I don't want to simply repeat myself. But I do want to summarize here some of the reasons I will never support her for national office. It goes beyond her abysmal numbers with moderates and independents whom the Republicans will need to win back the swing states in 2012, her thin resume and limited background and expertise on national policy, the fact that she doesn't match up well with Obama, and the toxic nature of her unforced resignation in the third year of her first term and disingenuous explanation of her reasons (probably responsible for her recent fall to a distant third beyond Huckabee and Romney in the latest Rasmussen poll among likely Republican voters, despite her massive public exposure advantage over the past year; the same sample showed at least a fifth of GOP voters don't want her on the next ticket, multiple times higher than her more competent competitors); if she cannot handle the pressures of being governor of Alaska, the American people are not going to elect her to the nation's toughest job.
For one thing, Sarah Palin has come across to me as very thin-skinned and vindictive with a disproportionate reaction; this is very clear from the circumstances of Troopergate whereby the governor and her husband unsuccessfully pressured the public safety commissioner (Walt Monegan) to fire her despised former brother-in-law, state trooper Michael Wooten, and dismissed him. I also cannot remember a running mate whom proved to be unprofessional with staffers, openly questioned campaign strategy with Fox News, and then tried to make herself out to be a victim of McCain staffers looking for a scapegoat.
Then, of course, there was the disproportionate response to a bad David Letterman joke suggesting a quickie during the seventh inning stretch between a notorious baseball player and Palin's oldest daughter (an 18-year-old unwed mother whom, in fact, had taken a high-profile role with a national abstinence campaign, making herself a public figure). This is a case where the better political judgment would have been to take the moral higher ground and ignore it or simply issue an indignant release, demanding a public apology; instead, Palin rejected Letterman's offer for a show appearance so he could apologize in person, claiming Letterman's motivation was to exploit a visit for ratings. (Yeah, that's right: David was trying to take advantage of something she herself escalated; in fact, other late night comics had made prior questionable jokes about the same Palin daughter without a similar reaction.) After all, ambitious politicians hate to appear on national-audience late night shows, especially ones promising monster ratings. Feuding with late-night comedians whom make a living out of ridiculing politicians is intemperate. This was hardly worthy of a "straight talk" running mate; she unconvincingly alleged that the joke was really about statutory rape of another (little-known, underage) daughter attending the game, implied that Letterman was a pedophile, and then asserted that the kerfuffle was not about the circumstances of her own family, but that she was fighting on behalf of female victims everywhere.
Her credibility is also questionable in other contexts. For example, she repeated, on multiple occasions, even after it had been disproved, a sound bite that she had told the Congress to keep its money allocated for the Gravina Island Bridge, i.e., the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere". In fact, she supported the bridge construction during her gubernatorial campaign, the Alaskan legislature used the money allocated for the bridge for other purposes (Congress had given them that option), and she waited several months after learning that bridge project costs had doubled before cancelling the project--only after her future running mate, John McCain, in the aftermath of the Minnesota bridge collapse, once again denounced the notorious earmark on the Senate floor. The "maverick reformer" Sarah Palin got her fair amount of earmark money as mayor and governor; to quote Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally: "All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share..." (The reason this failure of the McCain campaign vetting process became an issue is because the McCain campaign was attacking Obama's liberal use of earmarks until election season.)
I don't know what's in the book, but I suspect that she will spin her high-maintenance behavior as virtuous, striking a blow for spunky, accomplished women everywhere. I don't suspect there's enough material of accomplishments to fill a Little Golden Book, never mind a standard nonfiction volume. Probably lots of pictures (hopefully no other previously unreleased beauty pageant swimsuit pictures or embarrassing T-shirts). Probably no chapter titles like "A Hockey Mom's Advice on Teenage Abstinence". Probably a lot of bumper-stick insights on policy issues we've been waiting for, e.g., "terrorists are evil, and we need to do something about them", "we shouldn't import so much foreign oil and gas", "federal deficits are bad, and we should cut spending", etc. (The devil is in the details.) I would find it amusing to see a pop-up, pull-out "Tasergate" insert of Sarah Palin going after Trooper Wooten, with Wooten pleading, "Don't tase me, guv!" And, of course, there's your own copy of a winking, nodding Sarah Palin paper doll. What's her next project? A DVD of Sarah Palin doing Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin? Or perhaps a pull-string authentic licensed Sarah Palin doll? "I just LOVE Joe Six Pack!", " Drill, baby, drill!", etc. Of course, the doll will stop working after 2.5 years of purchase...
