RSS Feed
Email Alerts
Facebook
“Cause in the real world they’re shutting Detroit down ... while the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town.”
— From a John Rich song
•••
We’re living in historic times.
Something has to change and soon
Much like we read and hear about the Great Depression or when Pearl Harbor was bombed, we are indeed in historic times.
Years and decades from now historians will look back at this time in our country’s history when our economy was struggling and struggling mightily.
It can no longer be debated. Only someone so completely out of touch with reality would continue and try to deny we have a serious problem today. Banks are closing on an almost weekly basis. Hard working Americans are concerned about their savings. People who have worked for the same company for years, showing unmatched loyalty and dedication, are being shown the door with nothing but a kick on the way out.
In return, our federal government has decided to reach into our pockets once again and take more of our hard-earned money for million, and in some cases billion, dollar companies who failed on their own.
We then see on the news how these companies (some of them anyway) decide to give sickening bonuses to executives who drove the company in the ground. Unbelievable.
Perhaps the only thing more unbelievable is the fact that they are some who actually defend the action of giving bonuses from taxpayer funds to executives who make more a month than most honest Americans make in two years.
I heard Atlanta yakker Neal Boortz taking up for the bonus pay for executives recently. I’m not sure what has happened to Boortz through the years. The talk show host was at once time something refreshing on the airwaves. He was a Libertarian who stood against government waste and defended taxpayers.
These days, Boortz is nothing more than a shill for the Republicans. You never hear him talk about anything of a Libertarian persuasion. He talks about class warfare although it’s him who is biased against anyone who is not a millionaire. He hates unions although without them many hard-working Americans would never make a decent wage. (Ask someone who isn’t in a union how much their take home pay is compared to someone who is in one.)
It’s funny to me that a millionaire several times over like Boortz defends giving millionaire executives bonuses. What’s baffling is that he defends doing it with taxpayer dollars, something he has always preached against.
Yes, these are historic times. However, I foresee things getting worse. Until Americans break out of the mold of thinking we have to vote Republican or Democrat nothing is going to change. You have cities like Detroit crumbling at its foundation. The only people in that city making money now are the professional athletes.
Unfortunately, these times are historic for bad reasons. Fat cats continue to get fatter. The working man continues to get shafted. Politicians — as usual — continue to not get the job done even though we continue to send the same people back to office.
When and where will it end? I can only hope sooner rather than later. No doubt history will tell us these were some of the scariest economic times in our country’s history.
Chris Bridges is an editor with Mainstreet Newspapers. E-mail comments about this column to chris@mainstreetnews.com.
Years and decades from now historians will look back at this time in our country’s history when our economy was struggling and struggling mightily.
It can no longer be debated. Only someone so completely out of touch with reality would continue and try to deny we have a serious problem today. Banks are closing on an almost weekly basis. Hard working Americans are concerned about their savings. People who have worked for the same company for years, showing unmatched loyalty and dedication, are being shown the door with nothing but a kick on the way out.
In return, our federal government has decided to reach into our pockets once again and take more of our hard-earned money for million, and in some cases billion, dollar companies who failed on their own.
We then see on the news how these companies (some of them anyway) decide to give sickening bonuses to executives who drove the company in the ground. Unbelievable.
Perhaps the only thing more unbelievable is the fact that they are some who actually defend the action of giving bonuses from taxpayer funds to executives who make more a month than most honest Americans make in two years.
I heard Atlanta yakker Neal Boortz taking up for the bonus pay for executives recently. I’m not sure what has happened to Boortz through the years. The talk show host was at once time something refreshing on the airwaves. He was a Libertarian who stood against government waste and defended taxpayers.
These days, Boortz is nothing more than a shill for the Republicans. You never hear him talk about anything of a Libertarian persuasion. He talks about class warfare although it’s him who is biased against anyone who is not a millionaire. He hates unions although without them many hard-working Americans would never make a decent wage. (Ask someone who isn’t in a union how much their take home pay is compared to someone who is in one.)
It’s funny to me that a millionaire several times over like Boortz defends giving millionaire executives bonuses. What’s baffling is that he defends doing it with taxpayer dollars, something he has always preached against.
Yes, these are historic times. However, I foresee things getting worse. Until Americans break out of the mold of thinking we have to vote Republican or Democrat nothing is going to change. You have cities like Detroit crumbling at its foundation. The only people in that city making money now are the professional athletes.
Unfortunately, these times are historic for bad reasons. Fat cats continue to get fatter. The working man continues to get shafted. Politicians — as usual — continue to not get the job done even though we continue to send the same people back to office.
When and where will it end? I can only hope sooner rather than later. No doubt history will tell us these were some of the scariest economic times in our country’s history.
Chris Bridges is an editor with Mainstreet Newspapers. E-mail comments about this column to chris@mainstreetnews.com.
Defined tags for this entry: Chris Bridges, Opinions
Related entries by tags:
- OPINION: Math 123: Failed policy masquerading as progress
- OPINION: Ludlow signs off for last time
- OPINION: Enjoying the simple pleasures
- OPINION: A little bio info goes a long way
- OPINION: Trying week for all involved
- OPINION: All in all, 2010 not a bad year
- OPINION: 25 things you probably don’t want to know about me
- OPINION: Family makes holidays special
- OPINION: ‘Dandy’ Don a trendsetter in broadcast booth
- Thankful for lessons learned
news is about the who, what, where, and when. and if you can get the why that's even better. but to speculate on the why and forget the rest is simply mindless parroting of the single source news we seem to have fallen into from the associated press.
Fact 1. The bonuses to aig were written into the employees contracts long before the federal government decided to "stimulate" the company. fact 2. the stimulus bill had a clause written into it that allowed any written contract to be honored as long as it was written before the feb. 09 date. fact 3. We have a legal way to brake a contract between a company and its employees. It is called bankruptcy.
yea i suppose it made a good country song, to join in the witch hunt where Chris Dode lied about having taken part in the line in the stimulus package, which put a date to the contracts, which aig was legally bound to pay, or get sued. Then the Acorn bunch of liberal terrorists carted busloads of protesters to these employees homes. Americans who did a job, and was paid for it. Americans who negotiated a contractual amount for their time to sit in a failing company, and close it down, and when the job was done, they would be out of work. so they negotiated a severance package for themselves.
am i getting through to you yet???
the Government took your tax money, and my tax money and wasted $800,000,000,000.00 of it. they wasted it on bridges, parks, zoos, and of course millions went to acorn. but all you seem to be able to do is complain about someone who did their job, and got paid what was agreed upon. You are mad because they make more than you do sitting there in Podunk north east ga, wishing you made that kind of money so you could go anywhere but there.
Lets see, what would happen if acorn decided that news paper reporters should only make $3.00 per hour. and they came for your paycheck. would you give it back??? i doubt it.
you refuse to see the forest for the trees. It isn't that you can't. I'm quite sure that you can. You simply refuse to.
aig had a contract with its employees. if it could not honor said contract, bankruptcy was the only option. That is until the government stepped in, and gave them taxpayers funds. Now that the company had the funds to meet its obligations, and when they did, and the story got out, the politicians started getting flack for their wasteful spending in a bill that they did not even read before they passed it. In order to save their own jobs, they also participated in the mass witch hunt of aig. passing unconstitutional legislation (bill of attainder) to punish those aig employees who had done nothing wrong at a rate of 90% on the bonuses that they received. We in this country have courts to punish those who brake the law. congress is forbidden by the constitution from doing this.
So in closing, report what actually happened. stop singing the stupid country song.
Congress passed a bill they didn't read.
I worked for a fortune 500 company, one of the largest
financial institutions in the U.S. In the early 2000's The 'executive' board decided to send 15 THOUSAND jobs
to India in the ruse of savings. These jobs paid 50K+
per year!! The CEO received over 60 MILLION in
compensation (this did not count the BONUS!!!). In the
guise of poor poor corporate America, can't find qualified
employees, will in turn bring these jobs back but bring
the foreigners with them!! Pay for their housing, cost of
living allowances, per diams, even renting them vehicles
for transportation!! All while they are poor mouthing
to the taxpayer, raising interest rates on their customers
and forclosing on their homes!! And you open your mouth
defending these money grubbing drebs (expletive inserted).
I am not spewing my opinions, I KNOW what my company did!
Before I was told Farci was a much better languange than
Engish (AKA LAYOFF/RIF/FIRED), I was one of 5 REPEAT -
1 OF 5 caucasions out of 48!! The rest, Filapino, Indian,
and Chinese!!!
lets put the blame for this mess where it belongs. congress.
AS for Boortz, what he defends is contractual obligations. It didn't matter where the companies got the money they had, they were required to pay the bonuses to the executives under contract law (by the way that provision was put in the bailout bill by the democrats).
But I'm sure you feel that companies should have violated the contracts, then been sued by the people who were not paid, then failed under bankruptcy after paying civil judgements.
As far as Boortz take on unions, ask why you pay 35,000 for a new car. I bet you can find the answer in the janitor who makes 30+ dollars an hour at the GM or Ford plant. That is why those companies are failing. As the economy slowed, car sales slowed, however union wages continued to climb under wage agreements the unions had.
I bet if the Barrow Journal had declining sales and you had to cut salaries you would have a different take if the writers were in a union. It's easy to talk bad about people and things when you have such a narrow uninformed view.
found a way on how to get richer send all the jobs overseas where labor is cheaper as companies started doing this little by little our country started failing now the people who made the rich richer are out of jobs and don't have the money to buy the products they put out. I think if these companies were forced to bring jobs back here then you would see the economy flourish, but who am I to say I am a laid off textile worker.
blaming the evil rich people is part of the problem. If the textile mill you were laid off from was loosing money, then they lay off employees. We have the second highest buisness tax in the word. When tax is lowered, buisness grows and creates more jobs.
Apparently we need such a high tax to pay for all the social programs we are getting.
Do you spend more in child care and gas to get back and forth to a job that dose not cover the cost of your gas and child care? no. that would be silly wouldn't it. why then would you expect a buisness to continue to operate simply to provide you with a job, if the owner of that buisness was loosing money.
You can not force a company to do anything. because they can always close the buisness down, and fire everyone. I have long held the belief that if you continue to tax the "evil rich" sooner or later they will become tired of being taxed for their success, and they will eventually move. I present Rush Limbaugh as an example. When New York recently decided to raise taxes on the rich to cover budget short falls, Rush told them to drop dead. Rush had a condo in New york and when there were hurricanes in Florida, he would go to new york to work until the storms had passed.
Basically the "evil rich" can afford to move. If we continue to punish them for succeeding, they will. Who then will we have to blame for our economic woes?
" Quote, "If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city," unquote. That's from Aristotle.
a pure lie! Georgia, has lowered it's corporate taxes,
read your own paper, and where are the jobs? HUM? You
have no idea on what you're talking about!!
I say tax corporations 90%!! Give them a valid reason to
poor mouth the taxpayer!!
Now i understand. OK, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
And i would like to thank you for the opportunity to voice my own.
bush had nothing to do with oil prices. OPEC raises them when they don't like what we do. and like an idiot in an abusive relationship, y'all seem to think if we are just nice enough to them they will change. but just wait till we burn the toast again, and they will go back up. morons.
drilling now would not put gas at our pumps for but waiting 4 more years till we fire this new useful idiot will make it 14 years. how wonderful is that.
lets not fix anything, lets all just blame the other side, and sit around complaining.
i know when the midterms com up, anyone on my ballot that voted for anything without reading it is fired.
are you watching what your congressmen are voting for now??? y'all keep saying that he has not been in office long enough, but he has, bills are being voted on now, last week, last month, and you better start paying attention.
shall i give you some to look at? ok how about these.
hr 645.
hr 875.
are you listening to what they say. Clinton said that Iran exaggerates, when the report came out that they had 7,000 centrifuges.
the director of homeland security said it would be better to have all us citizens get a new drivers license with a rfid chip in it, rather than build a border fence.
they are so backward thinking from anything that makes sense it is maddening.
lets give amnesty to 12 million illegals, but we are still not going to secure the border.
if your in a basement that is flooding, you stop the leak before you start bailing out the water. you don't start putting up new wallpaper without fixing the leak.
He forgets that the great man of uaw are similarly making two to three times the usual high paid rates.
He forgets that some of the socalled high paid execs actually did earn what they got while I agree that a great many are ripping us off.
Nowhere near as much of ripoff as that whcih we get via our own government.
They are spending us into a black hole that will result in 'real' revolution or at least real civil war. And will likely result in a fullblown ignoring of the constitution and not just the rewrite the demos have been doing for decades.