Somewhere in hell, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin are smiling.
The story below is worse than disturbing. Worse than depressing. It’s downright bone-chilling. Byron York has this piece in today’s D.C. Examiner [h/t Bizzy Blog]:
Beyond AIG: A bill to let Big Government set your salary
By Byron York | Chief Political Correspondent 3/31/09
… [I]n 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.
The Pay for Performance Act??? You have got to be kidding me. This is more Orwellian than the “Fairness” Doctrine. When the heck has the federal government, at least since FDR, favored paying anybody according to their performance? The entire government education system, with the Democrat Party being beholden to the teachers’ union, is a hotbed of good pay regardless of performance!
I would say that the Democrats can’t really think that the American people are that stupid, but you know what? I think they really do think that. And you know what else? Given that the American people actually elected these pieces of excrement, I pretty much agree with that belief.
York continues:
The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.
In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is “unreasonable” or “excessive.” And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate “the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates.”
The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.) …
Tom at the Bizzy Blog says:
Besides the utter outrageousness of the news itself, the story leads to the question of how the establishment media will handle it. Whitewash it? Minimize its significance? Ignore it? Given the fact that the news is over a week old, I vote for a continuation of Door Number Three. […]
Geez, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to extend Geithner’s reach to:
- Any company with a Small Business Administration loan.
- Any university with students who have borrowed money from the government to attend (i.e., almost every institution of higher learning in the US).
- Any company whose employees use government services (i.e., an interstate highway or a subsidized mass-transit ride) to get to work.
That is, it’s not a very far trip to controlling everyone’s earnings.
Well, at least the self-employed won’t be affected … Don’t count on that either. Tax Cheat Tim will probably want to control hourly rates and prices paid to vendors too.
BizzyBlog exit question: Is it OK to call them Socialists yet? (/sarc)
Oh no, Tom. This is worse than socialism. This is totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and fascism all rolled into one.
I’d like to know where are all those “Bush=Hitler” liberals/Democrats who for eight years were filling the streets from NYC to San Fran denouncing the supposed trampling of the Constitution by the Bush administration?
Where are all my liberal/Democrat friends who trekked to D.C. to denounce President “Chimpy McHitlerburton” for not letting unlawful enemy combatants (or whatever the f**k you’re supposed to call them these days) at Club G’tmo get habeas corpus rights, a taxpayer-funded lawyer, and access to our civilian courts?
Where are all my liberal/Democrat friends who lashed out against the Patriot Act, which was supposedly eroding all of our civil liberties?
You’re nowhere, aren’t you? And it’s easy to see why, really. For one thing, your caterwauling over Bush’s “indiscretions” was all a farce; you just didn’t like Bush, so you bought into every leftist fantasy that every step he took was somehow unconstitutional or freedom-suppressing. Second, you love the fact that other Americans who you believe deserve it are getting their rights and their economic freedom trampled on by a power-hungry Democrat president and a power-hungry Democrat Congress. Admit it, dear liberals/Democrats. You love the idea of other Americans, private citizens who have not broken any law (not that I approve of their bonuses, but that is entirely beside the point) getting it up the ass by this completely out-of-control federal government. Because they deserve it, don’t they? Those evil rrrrrrrrrrrich people deserve it. You know I’m right.
For every one of you who crapped on Bush for eight years but have nothing to say about this unprecedented governmental power grab: Shame on you. Every single one of you.
When it’s your ass Dictator Obama and the dictatorial Democrat Congress come for, because they decide one day that you earn too much, don’t come crying to me. I’ll be in New Zealand.
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