Congress moves to prohibit "unreasonable and excessive compensation" as they keep theirs

Everybody's favorite boy, Barney Frank, wants to set your salary. Not just the salary that your boss gets, but also yours.

Beyond AIG: A Bill to let Big Government Set Your Salary
It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards," according to the bill's language. That includes regular pay, bonuses -- everything -- paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I wonder if Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick and the many others will have their huge bonuses from Fannie and Freddie affected. Maybe they're just like all the tax cheats in the administration and are more equal than the mere workers that pay their salaries. And bonuses.

There's a stench in DC and it isn't even August.

UPDATE: Tom Blumer of Bizzy Blog has some interesting insights on this absolutely ridiculous idea of Barney Frank.

Obama's Cavalcade of Chat Jetting to Europe

After numerous trips over the pond to do advance work for President Obama, the kit and kaboodle is now jetting off for real now that the most picturesque backdrops and people have been found and prepared.

Cargo planes, carrying all of Obama's travel needs and presumably Michelle's closet, will flank Air Force One, as they fly, which should remind Europe of the last D-Day force to invade. In addition to all of the experts, the flying gym, teleprompters, aides and the Presidential minion, there are at least 35 vehicles, numerous helicopters to confuse our terrorist friends and Marine One so Obama won't have to use the Tube. Also part of the Flymada are staff for Mrs President, Reggie Love who handles Obama's favorite snacks and beverages for the President as well as being Obama's personal exercise buddy and tireless dialer of the President's BlackBerry, chefs to cater to his food-of-the-people menu and a medical team so Obama will not have to deal with the medical systems in Europe which he wants to emulate here in the United States.

This will number about 500 people including a palace guard of 200 Secret Service to protect Obama from his friends in all the countries he will visit to chat, summit with and just get down with his new buddies around the world.

Meanwhile in the real world, the stock market is losing billions, people are losing jobs and Barney Frank wants to start setting salaries for all of us money grubbing know-nothings.

On the bright side, Barack will be able to whisper to Michelle, "We'll always have Paris."

Obama: Dictator of Detroit, Baron of Banks & Sultan of Stocks

Tim Geithner: Court Jester

He's told Wall Street what to do. He's ordered banks to disregard the foolish lack of detail by his Treasury Secretary and now Obama is firing CEOs, talking mergers and guaranteeing warranties in Detroit. Is he the man for all seasons? No, he most certainly is not that.

I think it time that someone ask Obama, "Just who do you think you are? Dictator? President? Businessman? Wall Street wiz? Actually, who are you, because you are failing across the board."

Obama has betrayed the his base, the left, he has betrayed business, he has betrayed CEOs and he's betraying pretty much everybody else left.

People that voted for him are suddenly quiet about him. People who didn't, but wouldn't help Republicans are obviously shamed into silence, as they should be. People with children and grandchildren feel scared. People with parents and grandparents watching their savings, investments and options dwindle are angry. People involved in the stock market just want him to at least shut his mouth. Our allies are angry and confused. Hell, that pretty much leaves communists, dictators, the ignorant and the stupid left with a smile on their face.

Here, on Jenkins Hill, Obama appears to be not stupid, yes, ignorant, yes, naive, but a man with a vision that he cannot communicate or dare not communicate.

He is the Hugo Chavez of North America with all of the bravado, the swagger and the inability to convince anybody that he knows what he is doing, outside of dragging this country down. He does seem to be doing that pretty well. I guess in his relative world that is something.

It is time for Republicans to form a solid line to block and to not just say no, but to offer alternatives when he spouts off, but better yet, offer alternatives before he spouts off. It can only be Republicans that can save us from this mess and bring sanity back to Washington, DC. They must unite their members, all of them (hear that Specter, Collins, Snowe, etc.?), and they must unite their Party and they must unite the people.

That's change and hope that can save this nation.

Obama to be CEO of GM?

Why not? He's saving the world, if only in his mind, why not a tiny little concern like General Motors?

GM CEO Rick Wagoner Will Step Down... Developing...
Stipulation for feds to lend billions more to GM?
...Automaker Awaits Bailout News

We The People Stimulus Package

Bravo!

Obama' Special Olympics economics

Obama's Swedish American Model

This is what this whole "economic crisis" is really about which is why Obama has been crying wolf for so long. There really isn't a wolf and people are seeing it for what it is.

Liberal Fascism: AIG Issue Is Simply a Stepping Stone Toward More Government Control

If Congress sez it's so, It is. Isn't it?

Fiscal responsibility is a relative term to many in Congress.

Carter Obama; How incredibly appropriate

CARTER VISITS WHITE HOUSE...

One economic trainwreck learning (teaching?) from another.

Where are the fiscally responsible, ie. conservative, in Washington, DC?

Do they no longer exist or have they just lost their voice?

FDR Didn't Have BO

"This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." FDR Inaugural Speech - Inauguration Day January 20, 1933

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was many things, he shared a purposeful opaqueness with Barack Obama that allowed for soaring oratory that held very little true meaning, but FDR didn't scare the hell out of the country every time he spoke.

This administration talks of fiscal irresponsibility as they drive us deeper in debt faster than ever before and making everything worse every time they talk.

"I don't think that any economist disputes that we're in the worst economic crisis since the great depression." Barack Obama Inaugural Speech - Inauguration Day January 20, 2009

Now, after Obama has now said that, oops, guess things are getting better after all, Larry Summers, Obama's top economic advisor, blurts out that we have an excess of fear:

Summers: 'Excess of fear' must be broken
President Barack Obama's top economic adviser said Friday the nation's economic crisis has led to an "excess of fear" among Americans that must be broken to reverse the downturn.

"Fear begets fear," Lawrence Summers, the president's director of the National Economic Council, told a forum.

"It is this transition from an excess of greed to an excess of fear that President Roosevelt had in mind when he famously observed that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself," Summers said. "It is this transition that has happened in the United States today."

Excess greed to excess fear. Is this another Jimmy Carter idea that it's our fault that we believed Obama and minions and are feeling a malaise?

This is a rocky road we find ourselves on and it is going to get rockier.

Councils, Czars, Commissions, Special Assistants Clogging Government and Spending Our Money

When ever DC wants to pose a PR stunt to address the polling problem de jour they start with committees, commissions, councils, etc. They accomplish little if anything, but they give a nice face to the cold hard largeness of the federal government. It's kind of like trying to make a meat cleaver seem like a fine scalpel. It may seem nice, but if it does anything at all, it mangles what ever it strikes.

Most of these window dressings at least look like a window dressing that will pull people in. Look at the list below and ask yourself what is wrong.

“Opportunities their mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers never dreamed of”

The White House Council on Women and Girls:
The Secretary of State; Hillary Clinton
The Secretary of the Treasury; Tim Geithner
The Secretary of Defense; Robert Gates
The Attorney General; Eric Hilder
The Secretary of Interior; Ken Salazar
The Secretary of Agriculture; Thomas J. Vilsack
The Secretary of Commerce; Gary F. Locke *
The Secretary of Labor; Hilda L. Solis
The Secretary of Health and Human Services; Charles E. Johnson 1
The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Shaun L.S. Donovan
The Secretary of Transportation; Raymond L. LaHood
The Secretary of Energy; Steven Chu
The Secretary of Education; Arne Duncan
The Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Eric K. Shinseki
The Secretary of Homeland Security; Janet A. Napolitano
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations; Susan Rice
The United States Trade Representative; Ronald Kirk
The Director of the Office of Management and Budget; Peter R. Orszag
The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Lisa P. Jackson
The Administrator of the Small Business Administration; Darryl Hairston 2
The Director of the Office of Personnel Management; Kathie Ann Whipple 3
The Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors; Christina Romer
The Director of the National Economic Council; Lawrence Summer
The Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Melody C. Barnes

* designate
1 Acting Sec, appointed by George W Bush
2 designate – nominee, Karen Gordon Mills
3 acting director

This is just putting a face on another special interest group to win elections. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars and a waste of government bureaucrat's valuable time.

It is Washington, DC as usual which is at its worst.