2008 US Election

Never have I even inferred that. Hence the use of "misguided belief."

And never have I said anything different. I have even opposed an at-the-time-popular opinion on this board that we SHOULD go to war with Iran.

We're not the world's policemen. Just because we don't want them to have nukes doesn't mean we should be the ones to take them away.

Just because there's a board full of idiots somewhere spouting insane rhetoric doesn't mean the who Republican party is full of those idiots. I could post dozens of stupid things said by Democrats and you all would have a problem with taking it as representative of Democrats everywhere.

Adrian

A little humor is not unwelcome here fortunately. I just got this cartoon in my e-mail and I thought that it would be good for those people who always accuse the Democrats of "tax and spend"



For those who don't know - those presidents are:

Ronald Reagan 1980-1988
George Bush Sr. 1988-1992
Bill Clinton 1992-2000
George W Bush 2000-present

Clinton may have gotten a blowjob on the job but he didn't screw the American people.

I agree and whoever takes over next has one hell of a big deficit after Bush news today !!!!

Dawn

I'll be the first to say that the Bushes have abandoned conservative principles. Cutting taxes and spending like there's no tomorrow is no way to behave.

That said, Obama's plan to spend excessively and raise taxes isn't going to help the economy either. My only consolation when watching him torpedo the economy will be watching his supporters wail and pointing and laughing.

Adrian

I'm sure a lot of you have seen or have been Rick Rolled. I saw this video a couple of weeks ago and laughed pretty hard.


Ryan

Yeah, that was hilarious. Someone really put the time into that.

Adrian

You really can be an asshole.

Have you read the headlines the past few days. The republican "hands off" policy hasn't done too well has it? A very few have gotten richer than god - and our entire economy has suffered. The following article says it all very nicely.


Need a Job? $17,000 an Hour. No Success Required.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: September 17, 2008

Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust? If so, then you may not be earning up to your full potential.

You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, the longtime chief of Lehman Brothers. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993 and 2007.

Last year, Mr. Fuld earned about $45 million, according to the calculations of Equilar, an executive pay research company. That amounts to roughly $17,000 an hour to obliterate a firm. If you’re willing to drive a company into the ground for less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers at (212) 526-7000.

Oh, nevermind.

I’m delighted to announce that Mr. Fuld (who continues to lead Lehman since it entered bankruptcy proceedings this week) is the winner of my annual Michael Eisner Award for corporate rapacity and poor corporate governance. The award honors the pioneering achievements in this field of Mr. Eisner, the former Walt Disney chief.

This isn’t a plaque that will simply gather dust in a closet. It’s a shower curtain to commemorate the $6,000 one that the former C.E.O. of Tyco purchased and billed to his shareholders.

So, Mr. Fuld, you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve picked out a lovely green vinyl number for you. Only $14.99! Why, I saved you $5,985!

Perhaps it seems frivolous to be handing out shower curtains to chief executives when we’re caught in a deepening economic crisis. Well, it is.

But one of our broad national problems is rising inequality, and it is exacerbated by corporate executives helping themselves to shareholders’ cash. Three decades ago, C.E.O.’s typically earned 30 to 40 times the income of ordinary workers. Last year, C.E.O.’s of large public companies averaged 344 times the average pay of workers.

John McCain seems to think that the problem is that C.E.O.’s are greedy. Well, of course, they are. We’re all greedy. The real failure is one of corporate governance, which provides only the flimsiest oversight to curb the greed of executives like Mr. Fuld.

“Compare the massive destruction of wealth for shareholders to what he gets at the end of the day,” said Lucian Bebchuk, the director of the corporate governance program at Harvard Law School. A central flaw of governance is that boards of directors frequently are ornamental and provide negligible oversight.

As Warren Buffett has said, “in judging whether corporate America is serious about reforming itself, C.E.O. pay remains the acid test.” It’s a test that corporate America is failing.

These Brobdingnagian paychecks are partly the result of taxpayer subsidies. A study released a few weeks ago by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington found five major elements in the tax code that encourage overpaying executives. These cost taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.

That’s enough money to deworm every child in the world, cut maternal mortality around the globe by two-thirds and also provide iodized salt to prevent tens of millions of children from suffering mild retardation or worse. Alternatively, it could pay for health care for most uninsured children in America.

Do we truly believe that C.E.O.’s like Mr. Fuld are more deserving of tax dollars than sick children?

Perhaps it’s understandable that C.E.O.’s are paid heroically when they succeed, but why pay prodigious sums when they fail? E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief of Merrill Lynch, retired last year after driving the firm over a cliff, and he walked away with $161 million.

The problem isn’t precisely paychecks that are huge. Baseball stars, investment bankers and hedge fund managers all earn obscene sums, but honestly — through arm’s-length transactions. You and I may gasp, but that’s the free market at work.

In contrast, boards pay C.E.O.’s after negotiations that are often more like pillow talk. Relationships are incestuous, and compensation consultants provide only a thin veneer of respectability by finding some “peer group” of companies so moribund that anybody shines in comparison. The result is what critics call the Lake Wobegon effect, which miraculously leaves all C.E.O.’s above average. Indeed, one study of 1,500 companies found that two-thirds claimed to be outperforming their peer groups.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the great economist, once explained: “The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.”

There are widely discussed technical solutions to C.E.O.’s overpaying themselves that we should move toward. We can also learn from Britain and Australia, which offer shareholders more rights than in America, redrawing the balance between shareholders and management and curbing pay in the process.

As for Mr. Fuld, unfortunately, he had no comment for this column. At $17,000 an hour, it probably wasn’t worth his time.

the neocons have absolutely tanked the economy and yet people will still vote for them. bailing out banks and investment companies isn't really keeping with the whole laisez faire ideals of conservatism....

it's very disheartening given that statistically speaking the vast majority of enlightened voters (there's a polisci buzzword for the day) vote on the basis of the present governments performance.

if the US didn't buck this trend for whatever reason the cons wouldn't have a hope in hell of winning this election.

It's a tough call, but I don't think the government should be bailing companies out for bad business practices. Yeah, it'll hurt. But it's not the government's job to pay.

The reason I will point and laugh at Obama is a reason I'll point and laugh at anyone: Promising a bunch of deluded people to fix a problem with something that'll make it worse. If Obama got up on his podium and said "I will not bail out failing businesses, and promise to cut government spending in half, and you can hold me to that" I WOULD VOTE FOR HIM. No. He promises to fix economic problems by upping taxes to help pay for massive social programs.

Adrian