Politics: Bailouts, Social Security, and McCain

Blame Boards of Directors for Financial Mess - A commentary from CNN that lays some of the blame for the banks that are failing or need bailouts on board of directors that rewards themselves and CEO's regardless of performance. I happen to agree with the idea. For CEO's and boards members they get "golden parachutes which usually pays them tens of millions of dollars regardless if they run a company into the group or not. Where you would get fired for incompetence, they get rewarded. Your continued employement and ability to meet your responsibilities requires you to do your job and do it well, theirs do not. Failure is rewarded nearly as much if not more then failure. Even in failure they can often get hired elsewhere. Long story short, there is no incentive to succeed. Long story short, if companies anywhere want to survive in the long term, they need to treat their executive leadership the exact same as their employees. Reward success, penalize failure. If a CEO demands a golden parachute for "guaranteed bonuses" then a new CEO is required. The example begins at the top and currently for most companies the examples are of laziness and reward for failure. It’s no surprise when that infects an entire company and eventually kills it.

Privatizing Social Security Still Good? - Remember when Bush wanted to privatize Social Security and McCain supported it. Does it seem like such a good time now considering the beating the market took (which means SS would have also lost millions?). For something that important, does it still look like a good idea to leave it up to the whims of the market?


What $700 Million Could Buy - A write-up on what the cost of bailing out the banking idiots could be better used on. Buy 3.5 billion laptops? Give 23 million free college education, or triple R&D spending on alternative energy. This list is rather long on what better things that money could be spent on then bailing out the rich of their own greed.

McCain and His 13 Cars - In never ceases to amaze me how stupid people can be. Obama is still labeled an "elitist" and McCain isn't. Yet how many houses does Obama own? 1. McCain? Too many for him to keep up with. Number of cars Obama owns? 1 Number for McCain, 13. Call me crazy but if you have that kind of money you sure are not a member of the "average joe" club. I don't think I ever even met someone that owns that many cars.

Thank You John McCain - A thank you to McCain for the helping create the last eight years of Bush "leadership".