OBAMA'S DIVISIVE TALK
licentissimus
NOT GOOD FOR ANYONE
By: John David Powell
Barack Obama’s steady decline in the polls this week may mean the
American people are tired of the president’s divisive campaign
rhetoric after nearly a year into his administration. The Rasmussen
Report’s daily tracking poll shows 53 percent of Americans disapprove
of his performance in office.
With an economy shaking, unemployment rising, and two wars draining
our nation’s human and financial resources, Mr. Obama prefers to use
the divisive language of the campaign trail in hopes of gaining public
and political support for economic policies rather than to provide the
leadership his supporters sorely hoped he possessed. He demonstrated
this us-versus-them style during his interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes
this past Sunday when he used the term "fat cats" to describe banking
executives in line for rather substantial, and contractual, year-end
bonuses.
As a victim of the tanking economy, one would think I would be the
first to shake my fist at another’s paycheck and bonus. I worked for
the last ten years for a state university system, the last two years
assigned to a division that receives the bulk of its funding from
investments. University administrators instituted a series of
reductions in force that eliminated my position, which effectively put
me on the streets at the start of the Christmas season with salary and
benefits to expire in a few weeks. Administrators cited my salary as
the reason for their decision. My experience, institutional memory,
and contributions to the university had no value to the
administration.
Ken Feinberg is the Obama Administration’s special master for
executive compensation. He distributed $200 million to Vietnam vets
suffering from Agent Orange, and most recently he administered the
September 11 Victim Compensation Fund by putting a price tag on the
lives of those who died.
"Dollars are a surrogate for worth," he told Time Magazine. "When you
start talking about dollars, what people hear is a ruling on their
overall integrity and value to society. It gets difficult." Indeed,
especially if value to society is a key factor in compensation
calculations.
The people who collect your trash every week don’t make enough money
to take European vacations, but their value to society rises rather
rapidly when they don’t pick up the trash for several weeks.
How much value do you give a person who operates on your heart or cuts
into your brain? Just before you go under the knife, ask if your
surgeon makes $40 million an hour. That was the pay rate for Floyd
Mayweather, Jr. in his welterweight title defense two years ago. His
take was $20 million for a 10-round fight.
Tiger Woods, whose value to society is free-falling these days, made
$110 million just from selling his name last year. And Ricky Gervais,
creator of "The Office" franchise, gets $50,000 every time the U.S.
version of the show airs.
Mack Brown, head coach of the University of Texas football team, will
get $5 million next year. Someone asked me if that were fair. He
should be paid what the market allows, I answered. The UT football
program is one of the few in the nation that pays for itself. It
provides incalculable public relations and marketing for which UT
doesn’t shell out a dime. In fact, UT gets paid every time they’re on
television. And what’s the value of three hours of national television
exposure?
Thanks to changes in federal compensation guidelines, approved by
Congress, the number of federal employees earning more than $100,000
annually, increased from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first 18
months of the recession, according to a USA Today study of the federal
salary data base. And that’s before overtime and bonuses (by the way,
I’ve never figured out why public employees get bonuses for doing the
public’s work).
And speaking of bonuses, the president forgot his Wall Street
executives kept their bonuses when they joined the administration in
January. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that the White
House merely "encouraged" them to "review" their compensation
packages. A Citigroup executive took his bonus, but donated it to
charity and, one assumes, wrote off the contribution.
Watching the president Sunday brought to mind Winston Churchill as he
prepared his country for the possible German invasion of the island
after the fall of France. "The massacre on both sides would have been
grim and great," he noted in his memoirs. "I intended to use the
slogan, ‘You can always take one with you,’" he wrote. He realized,
though, the British people needed strong, positive rhetoric, and
leadership, and not cheap slogans and weak performances from His
Majesty’s government.
Barack Obama is not a Winston Churchill, but current and coming
battles demand more than empty and divisive rhetoric from the chief
executive.
"Published originally at EtherZone.com
Deaf Power
On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:46:22 -0800 (PST), licentissimus
<licent...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>OBAMA'S DIVISIVE TALK
HOOWWWWWWWWWLLLLLLL!
HOOOOOOOWWWWWWWLLLLL!
Just keep on howling into the moon!