1. Between them, the fired CEO's of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will receive $23.9 million in salary payments. You can read the story here. The best part of the story is this: "Syron's (Freddie Mac's former CEO) package, Schmidt (an 'executive compensation consultant') said, is 'very unusual' because it allows him to receive $8.8 million in cash to replace stock grants and options that are now worth little or nothing. Representatives of Fannie and Freddie declined to comment." (Added emphasis is mine).
Now, let's make sure we all heard this correctly...the man fired for running Freddie Mac into the ground and sticking the U.S. taxpayer with an enormous debt is eligible for $8.8 million in cash because his stock grants and options are in the tank. And what about all the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae stock that was in my 401k? I'll just bet that I'm in line to get my $8.8 million. I'm glad I still believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and a government that cares about its citizens...at least, the ones that are already rich and powerful.
2. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that the budget deficit will grow to $407 billion this year, a jump of $246 billion from 2007. Read about it here. The story attributes the huge jump in the deficit to "a substantial increase in spending and a halt in the growth of tax revenues." Wow. What a surprise.
Yes, if you are running the government, you can cut taxes on the wealthy, spend countless billions on a useless war in Iraq, dismantle the regulatory structures that used to protect the citizens from outrageous economic activity, and rescue the greedy bastards who have ruined the economy...and still maintain the fiction that all is well. As Mel Brooks so well said in The History of the World, Part I: "It's good to be the king!"
If you're not mad as hell, there's something wrong with you. If you aren't letting your elected reprehensives know you're mad as hell, they'll keep right on ignoring the problems of the average American and running the country into the ground.
Do you have any idea what we could do with 407 billion dollars? What we could do with the 23.9 million dollars the disgraced CEO's of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are getting? The crumbling infrastructure we could repair? The schools we could adequately fund? The essential regulatory structures we could replace? The Social Security system we could keep solvent?
If you're not voting for Bilbo's Reformed Republicratic Party, vote for Nobody. Nobody is the real candidate this year.
Have a good day. Get mad. Really mad.More thoughts tomorrow.
Bilbo
7 comments:
Great! I get to start my day off by getting mad...no wait, I'm ending my day. Never mind.
ARGH! I just want about $50,000 of that 23.9 million and my troubles would be gone.
Let me smack that SOB
Bilbo, take care of the Mistress, will you? How hard could it be to divert 50K to a different project? Besides, when the DC accounts see 'Mistress' on the check, no one will give it a second thought.
Your 'Nobody' sign is a super one!
You always have interesting posts.
Of course I'm mad, but if I sit and complain about it all day, what good does it do? We need to get a few signatures turned in to our Senators & tell them we won't allow illogical things like the budget deficit & paying off billions of $ to 2 CEO's who were responsible for the cos bankruptcy! If you read my comments on your platform # 2 on tax reform, you'll see that I've included the waste, fraud & abuse that our government is involved in or has allowd to happen. I'm just fed up with the system. I can only pray that the newly elected official come November will do a better job?
John - it's okay to be mad all day long...I am!
Andrea - I'll see what I can do, but see my response to Mike below...
Mike - I never thought of it that way before...I'll bet I could do that! But it would surely raise a red flag because $50K is such a miniscule number ... we need to think of billions, here.
Jean-Luc - he's the perfect candidate!
Tulsi - thank you very much for the comment! I hope you'll be back often!
lacegem - that's why I keep writing and e-mailing my elected reprehensives. You should see my marvelous collection of "thanks for your opinion, now get lost" letters...
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