Daily Archives: 3/18/2009

Current events - national, Politics

Bonuses

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You walk into the office one day and take a phone call:

Your boss: “Bob, the company’s in the news. We’re in trouble.”

You answer: “Well, duh! Like “60 Minutes” has a crew in the lobby!”

Boss: “Here’s the deal. The Feds are going to bail us out. We want you to hang around and patch things back together with us.”

You: “No way, dude! I already got a gig as third assistant vice president at the Cayman National Bank. With bennies. I’m not passing that up for this “maybe”.”

Boss: “We’ll make it worth your while. We’ll sign a contract. You stay past the end of the fiscal year and we dump a clean million into your pocket. That beats laundering drug money for the Colombians.”

So you sign the contract. And you hang around past the magic date. And when it comes time to collect, you find that YOUR personally negotiated deal is now subject of breathless commentary on the national news and the same congressmen your company payed off before didn’t stay bought and now they’re wanting to cancel YOUR contract.

That’s what’s happening, folks. AIG. Going under big time. The Feds announce the bailout. At the same time, a lot of executives are planning bailouts of a different nature. The high muckey-mucks of AIG need to retain what they perceive as “talent”, so they have to meet the market for the managers and executives they think will be able to pull them out of the mess.

CONGRESS thinks the same thing, although perhaps Congress has a view just a tiny bit colored by AIG dollars showing up in re-election coffers. Accordingly, Congress writes a clause in THE LAW THEY PASSED which excludes contracts written before the bailout from oversight.

And then somebody calls “FOUL”, and Congress, the same slick, smarmy bast*rds that wrote the loophole into law in the first place, they start back-pedaling big time, and the result is what you see here.

All bonuses are NOT ‘performance” bonuses. Some are “retention” bonuses, made to keep ‘talent’ around when things look shaky around the corporate offices. I know. I have a friend who just got one for exactly that reason. And despite the fact that strategic decisions might be made which adversely affect the future viability of the company, i.e., the company ain’t making money, the criteria to pay the bonus is not “We make lots of money.” It’s “You hang around until the calendar says March 1.” (or whatever).

Now, if you and I have a contract for me to perform a task (like hanging around for a few months) and that task is NOT illegal, then that contract is binding. If I do my part and you DON’T do your part, me, I’m getting a lawyer, and you’re gonna pay me AND my lawyer. That’s the way it works here. It’s called “rule of law.” And even dimmocrats like “rule of law” unless they’re like ACORN or trying to get re-elected or something.

Do we REALLY want to start letting the Federal government start messing with contracts based on their own ideas as to whether or not a person is worthy (by congressional or popular definition) of the remuneration thereof? Today we let the camel’s nose under the edge of the tent because these guys are the evil du jour, greedy Wall Street banker types. But what about tomorrow, when the evil before us is the executives of oil companies. Or the month after that, when it’s the executives from Big Food.

And then the whole stinkin’ camel’s in the tent and EVERY pay package in the land has to run past the approval of the Federal Commission on Pay and Remuneration, the local office of which is chaired by the former president of your local ACORN chapter and they decide that ol’ Cajun’s mental gyumnastics are NOT worth as much as that noble janitor that cleans the offices in the evening because it’s like, NOT FAIR because Cajun is one of those winners in life’s lottery and we should SHARE the wealth.

There are countries like this. The Soviet Union WAS one of them. East Germany WAS one of them. Do you want AMERICA to be one of them?

Current events - national, Local politics, Politics

How earmarks work

Just in case you might need a refresher, let’s look at this article:

Old Problems Resurface in New Earmark Rules

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and RON NIXON
Published: March 18, 2009

WASHINGTON — The fight over earmarks is not over.

For all of President Obama’s promises of reform, a close look at just three of the more than 9,000 earmarks contained in the $410 billion spending bill that he signed last week shows just how hard it will be to clamp down on lawmakers’ pet projects

. . .

Even earmarks for nonprofits can be complicated, as evidenced by the $190,000 secured by Ms. Landrieu for the Lake Area Community Center, a nonprofit group founded by her brother Martin.

Ms. Landrieu, in an interview, said she had been aware of her brother’s support for the center but not that he personally had incorporated the nonprofit group. Still, she said, she would have backed the earmark.

Of course she would have backed the project. She’s buying votes, just as sure as if she’d pulled up on the corner with pockets full of $20 bills. The fact that this particular project is her borther’s, well, as we say down here in Louisiana, that’s “lagniappe“.

As they say on on the infomercials, though, “But wait! There’s more!”

The project does not seem to violate ethics rules that bar senators from requesting earmarks in which they or an immediate family member has a “pecuniary interest.”

It is unclear if a 20-day review by the Department of Housing and Urban Development would have found that the project was defunct and kept it out of the budget bill.

“That project is not off the ground at all,” Mr. Landrieu said in an interview. “There is no funding for it, other than the federal money that has been talked about.”

Yeah! Not only is it HER BROTHER’S PROJECT, but nobody else has put up a stinkin’ dime of money except for OUR tax dollars generously donated by Miz “Katrina Mary” Landrieu.

Officials said that projects could always fall apart, and that agencies routinely verified the status of recipients before releasing money. Ms. Landrieu’s office said HUD would not be likely to release money for the project.

Mr. Landrieu said it would be unfair for critics to suggest special treatment.

Yeah, I’m certain that there will be a really stringent verification process once somebody gets a phone call from a Senate office building number.

And “unfair”? Dearie me! Unfair is that the lady’s brother sets up a bogus “foundation” and nobody sees fit to donate a dime, yet Miz Senator Landrieu thinks it’s worth $190,000 of my hard-earned dollars.

He continues to protect his sister:

“To put the message out or to suggest that you know an earmark is set aside because I was involved in something is a little bit misleading,” he said. “Mary, as my sister, and as a U.S. senator, was extremely interested in helping that neighborhood to recovery, not just that neighborhood but every neighborhood in New Orleans.”

Actually, she’s worried about her continued re-election, and she darned well knows that dumping Federal dollars into the New Orleans area cesspit is the only way it will get done. And her family has been ruling royalty in New Orleans for generations.

Ms. Landrieu said that she supported further reform of the earmark process but that lawmakers often had a better grasp of local needs than agency officials in Washington.

“We have to be careful about just jumping to the conclusion that agencies know better and that federal bureaucrats who have never stepped in a place know better than officials who have literally campaigned there door to door,” the senator said. “On the other hand, there have been some gross abuses to the system.”

Yeah, heaven forbid that somebody dump thousands of Federal dollars into the wrong neighborhood where they might be spent by –gasp!!– Republicans!

History

Today in History – March 18

1850 – American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo.

1871 – Declaration of the Paris Commune; President of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, orders evacuation of Paris. Germany kicked French butt and quite naturally Paris fell completely apart.

1895 – 200 blacks leave Savannah, Georgia for Liberia where, out from under white rule, they will bring forth a utopia of fairness and opportunity. That pretty much describes Liberia today, right?

1931 – First electric shavers go on sale in US by Schick. I still prefer blades.

1940 – World War II: Axis Powers – Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom, like Germany really needs help kicking French butt.

1968 – Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency. Officially, an ounce of gold was $35. Now an ounce of gold is $1000 and the Federal Government is printing dollars like it’s the end of the world. This will end well.

1992 – Leona Helmsley is sentenced to 4 years for tax evasion and becomes qualified for a cabinet post in the Obama administration.