Fool's Gold.

     GOP Confederate General Rush Limbaugh, defending AIG bonuses:  

 

    "A lynch mob is expanding: the peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters of AIG, demanding heads. Death threats are pouring in. All of this being ginned up by the Obama administration." Limbaugh later claimed, "This $500,000 limit on executive pay -- let me tell you why it won't work. New York City will die. New York City needs a whole bunch of people being paid a whole lot of money, so they can tax their butts off, so that the city can maintain its stupid streets, potholes, and welfare state. Without the super wealthy in New York, it's over. ... This -- it's just a populist ruse. It's just designed to people go, 'Yeah, yeah!' "

     You might as well go get Kurt Russell in there, put a fence around the whole country, and turn it into a prison, because that's what it would be. Escape from New York, did you see the movie? That's what it would be if you start limiting the pay of people whose taxes pay the freight in that city. That's why it's never gonna happen." 

     A caller to Limbaugh's show disagreed with Big 'n Sweaty, saying he didn't think "tanking" should be rewarded. He said he'd be happy to be paid what Big 'n Sweaty claimed were "pretty small" salaries:

CALLER: Oh, I would love to earn about 200, 250,000 a year. That would be perfect.

LIMBAUGH: You want to earn 200,000.

CALLER: Yeah --

LIMBAUGH: Two-fifty a year.

CALLER: -- that's right.

LIMBAUGH: Well, no, you want to earn 249,999 so you don't get the tax increase. (editor's note: click here to see how that strategy helps explain why Republicans can't seem to do anything right. ) So, you -- but, you want to earn 250. All right. Do you know what? And I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Nathan -- the only person stopping you is you. There's 250 -- he hung up. Damn it, he hung up. Right?

Nathan, if you're -- there's $250,000 out there for you, Nathan. If you really want it, you really want to earn that kind of money, it's out there... 

There it is. The titular head of the GOP Confederacy has spoken! You have your orders, Dittoheads; now go on out there bright and early and get your $249,999.99!

It's somewhere "out there."

Contract Hit.

From Salon.com's Glen Greenwald:

Larry Summers, Sunday, on AIG’s payment of executive bonuses:

We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system.

Associated Press, February 18, 2009:

The United Auto Workers’ deal with Detroit’s three automakers limits overtime, changes work rules, cuts lump-sum cash bonuses and gets rid of cost-of-living pay raises to help reduce the companies’ labor costs, people briefed on the agreement said today.

The UAW announced Tuesday that it reached the tentative agreement with General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. over contract concessions, as GM and Chrysler sent plans to the Treasury Department asking for a total of $39 billion in government financing to help them survive.

Concessions with the union are a condition of the $17.4 billion in government loans that the automakers have received so far.

Apparently, the supreme sanctity of employment contracts applies only to some types of employees but not others. Either way, the Obama administration’s claim that nothing could be done about the AIG bonuses because AIG has solid, sacred contractual commitments to pay them is, for so many reasons, absurd on its face.

Read the rest here.