I like a president who pleads for common sense.
Here’s the story, headlined in the New York Times: “Obama Calls for ’Common Sense’ on Executive Pay.”
The president announced a salary cap for top executives working for companies garnering the greatest gobs of booty under the most recent federal bailout. The cap? Half a million bucks.
President Obama allayed a few qualms, right away. He said that “This is America, we don’t disparage wealth.…” And he said, “we certainly believe that success should be rewarded.”
But he does talk about the “height of irresponsibility” in Bush administration bailouts, with execs taking huge bonuses after running their companies into the ground. Who wasn’t sickened by this? Obama sees it as common sense to make sure we don’t reward massive failure with the usual rewards of success.
Still, America is also about respecting contracts. Those corporations had negotiated very explicit contracts with their execs regarding the big bucks. And — surprise, surprise — Congress wrote up the law on the gargantuan bailouts without requiring those contracts be renegotiated.
And consider: Do we really want our politicians setting non-government salaries?
This is all a side issue, though. Take the bailouts themselves. Where’s the common sense there? They do reward failure. They will not help the economy. If our leaders had acted according to common sense, the whole salary issue wouldn’t even have come up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “New Prez Pleads for Common Sense”
How about honoring the American public’s contract to get us energy efficient-On-shore off-shore oil drilling to stop paying OPEC $700 billion dollars annually. What about WPA infrastructure projects?
Ah yes, good old socialism. The government giveth & the government taketh away. That’s after messing up the entire situation in the first place.
Why oh why has You-Tube removed the video of Barney (there’s nothing at all wrong with Fannie & Freddie’s bottom lines & anyone who says there is, is a racist bigot conservative wealthy Republican who only wants to deny poor Americans a chance at the American dream) Frank, as he spoke those words in Congress?
The video is still available on Canada You-Tube. Now does one wonder why the Canadians have this revealing video up, but we here in the nation that championed freedom for all, has an organization that cooperates with someone who does not want the public to be able to view this evidence that perhaps, just perhaps, it was NOT Republicans who screwed this up, but perhaps it falls into the laps of hyper partisan Democrats. Mr. Frank even had a lover at one of these organizations during the times they were being investigated & their financial status was under review. Now that “might” have nothing at all to do w/ this. Yep!
It “might.” Then again, that relationship made it awfully easy for Frank & co. to communicate on the issues at hand, so investigations either could not get off the ground, or data was ready just in time for investigators to get, just the right info that cleared or provided investigators with a set of books that showed Fannie & Freddie were healthy as a newborn!
Now I’m sure none of our esteemed members of Congress would resort to such shenanigans! Right? Right?
Oh well, another day, another trillion dollar bill to the taxpayers to solve problems even Bush warned about as early as 2000.
Gosh, that cowboy sorta figured that complex one out, didn’t he?
What’s to prevent the clever CEOs from reorganizing/downgrading their positions to circumvent Obama’s declaration??
I agree with you on this one. BUT contracts can be re-written and if a company draws from bailout money, then some restictions MUST be put into play. There are many ways to reward an executive OTHER than by salary alone and to me $500,000. a year is a pretty good income. A company shouldn’t be able to play both ends against the middle and that’s exactly what they are doing when they accept bailout funds. If he was THAT GOOD OF AN EXECUTIVE he shouldn’t be asking for tax payer’s money!
No bailouts. Sounds great to me.
President Obama has a mess on his hands. He knew it going in, as did Mr. McCann, who didn’t get in.
Lets face it; “common sense” is not so common anymore.
If these CEOs want bailout money, (which they should not get) it is their choice to take the offer and limit their income to the $500,000.
That sounds like a whole new contract to me.
If they were as concened about their companies as they were about lining their own pockets we probably would not have a problem.
Sincerely,
Timothy James Maki
Failing to include wording that would deny executives bonus’s, etc is not the fault of the people.
Congress must be held accountable and made to restore all of the bonus money, etc.
I want my $46,000.00 credit that I have with the I.R.S. in cash, with interest and penalties paid to me.
I am sure there are others who would prefer to get their credit back in cash.