Actually, I meant that punitive taxes on bonuses is bad economics, not bonuses themselves. My point is most of these financial companies crawled into bed with big government a long time ago and they deserve whatever they get. Same for all the big healthcare companies that tried to cut deals with Obama to aid his takeover of the healthcare system. Let the Dems stick it to them good and hard and maybe they’ll think twice before they sell out again.

As for honoring the sacred contracts with these guys, one of them didn’t think twice about arbitrarily cutting out the variable compensation and slashing vacation time for senior managers at my company even though they were usually agreed to in offers of employment. And how many times have I seen sale people cut loose a couple months before getting a big commission payout? Too many to count.

Incidentally, most of what these guys did to get that good performance was 1. lay people off and/or convert them to contractors, 2. take advantage of a favorable yield curve and 0% interest courtesy of the Fed, and 3. ride a big run up in the Dow.

I’ve been in the banking industry going on twenty years now. I’ve gotten just far enough up the ladder to get an eyefull of how the executive suite sausage gets made. Trust me, your energies would be better spent arguing the cause of liberty for small businesses, families, and individuals.

Second, I know a lot of Conservatives smarter than you who think the first TARP was absolutely the right thing to do. It’s one thing to say you disagree. It’s another to say that someone voting for it is them betraying Conservatism. You sound as deluded as those Liberals who live their entire life in a collegiate bubble and don’t understand real world consequences to their ideas.

Third, you can bite me with the whining about the CEO salaries. The company I worked for went bankrupt. The company who owned it pulled their backing and left us all out of work and we were owed thousands (I was a low level employee and got screwed out of $1500). The people who made that decision all made sure that they were paid before the rest of us and we had no say in the matter (I got a bunch of letters about bankruptcy sales, but never saw a dime of what they owed me). If banks took taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy, then CEO’s who were expecting huge bonuses can go to hell. If they hadn’t taken the money then it’s their business (even though they’re willing to lie, cheat and steal to maximize their personal profits at the expense of everyone else). Once they took my money (or whatever was left of it) to bail their asses out, they forfeited their rights to their previous contracts.

I am so sick of Republicans sucking up to people like CEOs and pretending that they’re unethical behavior doesn’t screw over thousands of us who have absolutely no recourse (and no million dollar nest egg to fall back on).

You can officially kiss my ass.

CEO bonuses are not “bad economics”!! they are a matter of contract law! you signed a contract with a bank or mortgage company, do you think they should be able to come to you in a year, or ten years, and say that circumstances have changed and therefore they will amend your contract and your interest rate will now be 3 or 5 points higher? of course not. they are also incentives, rewards for good performance and profits, they are not random. also, bonuses such as we see today came about as a response to Clinton era salary caps.

As for taxing CEO bonuses, sure they’re bad economics, but most those clowns have been giving to and voting for Dems for years now. Not to mention a lot of them run their companies like extensions of the nanny state – one big bank pays employees to buy hybrid cars for goodness sake. My company won’t even buy plastic cups for the water cooler anymore (not green you see). They crawled in the cage with the big gub’ment crocodile – might do them some good to lose a hand at this point…maybe it will scare them straight.

Anyway, men and women of conviction, political courage, and intelligence are pretty rare in the Republican congressional ranks (just wait until they get back in the majority and see how many of them revert to type), so conservatives should support Ryan and those like him even if their voting records aren’t 100% pure.

Actual Republicans, on the other hand, have to get elected. And they’d have to answer to the public if too many major banks collapsed or their local economies were completely devastated, destroying families and entire counties. You can call it cynical, but given that Republican Congressmen have to actually look the people in their districts in the face when things go wrong, I’d say that the pundits are the cynics.

http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/