• In the current national and world financial meltdown, you can hardly tell the victims from the perpetrators...especially since they all want a handout.  A front-page article in today's NYTimes tells how Washington Mutual for years gave out loans based simply on a palpable pulse and nothing else.  Real estate developers - those enthusiastic builders of McMansions all around us -  are getting in line, like "Oliver", wanting "some more".  Even some Crocodile Dundee from Down Under is bemoaning his town's financial losses after years of investing in exotic "market instruments".  And then there are the "victims" of Bernie Madoff's $50 Billion Ponzi scheme, those who could "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" as long as Madoff was sending them double digit dividends - as opposed to every other investor - a man who appears to have had a sense of humor by naming his 50 ft. yacht "Bull".  Get it?  If you ignore gravity, you fall.  And if you ignore common sense, you fail.  And you should fail.  Actions must have consequences in order for society to self-police. 
• "Education Reform" continues to be an oxymoron...as long as the Democratic Party remains a wholly owned subsidiary of the benighted Teachers Unions.  Read the WSJ and this web-site for regular reports on this sad subject.
• "Health Care Reform" ideas now fill nearly two of my grocery - sized boxes, with no realistic proposal in sight.  Plenty on that subject throughout this web-site, going back to the mid-70's. 
• Today the NYTimes published a major article on the Catholic priest shortage.  Here is another self-inflicted wound by the Church hierarchy: decades of clergy sex scandals and their even more damnable cover-up; questionable theologic bases for continued insistence on un-married priests and only male priests; alienation of large numbers of the laity due to intransigence regarding hormonal birth control, and timidity regarding all-out attacks on the abomination of abortion.  Our Faith is Divine.  But our Church hierarchy is all too human. 
• Hamas / Gaza / Israel.  Anti-Semitism, in its most virulent form in the crazy Middle East, continues to be the "canary in the mine", warning of coming disaster. 
• The Taliban is taking over Afghanistan, as we plan to send 30,000 more of our men into a meatgrinder with no discernable end-game.  As in the role that "gangs" play in our inner cities, you can't beat something with nothing, whether it be the lack of a family structure here or the lack of an effective central government there.  If the Taliban has any redeeming social value there, let's negotiate.  If not, let's totally and permanently destroy opium production there, implement a Marshall - type plan for the people of Afghanistan, and kill anybody who resists our efforts.  And why do this?  Because a stable Afghanistan is definitely in our own national self-interest. 
• Meanwhile, the NYTimes has recently been addressing the status of our armed forces, especially the critical state of our Army.  Some good suggestions.  But here again, our supposed leaders cannot bring themselves to deal with reality.  What we need, and have needed for the last 5 years, is a fair Draft: a two or three year program depending upon whether the draftee is suitably educated on presentation...or whether he or she needs a first year of remedial education.  Now, there's a win-win situation.  Too logical?

Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.

The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.

Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.

The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.

Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services committee and a long-standing critic of executive largesse, said the bonuses tallied by the AP review amount to a bribe "to get them to do the jobs for which they are well paid in the first place.

"Most of us sign on to do jobs and we do them best we can," said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. "We're told that some of the most highly paid people in executive positions are different. They need extra money to be motivated!"

The AP compiled total compensation based on annual reports that the banks file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 116 banks have so far received $188 billion in taxpayer help. Among the findings:

_The average paid to each of the banks' top executives was $2.6 million in salary, bonuses and benefits.

_Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, took home nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top five executives received a total of $242 million.

This year, Goldman will forgo cash and stock bonuses for its seven top-paid executives. They will work for their base salaries of $600,000, the company said. Facing increasing concern by its own shareholders on executive payments, the company described its pay plan last spring as essential to retain and motivate executives "whose efforts and judgments are vital to our continued success, by setting their compensation at appropriate and competitive levels." Goldman spokesman Ed Canaday declined to comment beyond that written report.

The New York-based company on Dec. 16 reported its first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999. It received $10 billion in taxpayer money on Oct. 28.

_Even where banks cut back on pay, some executives were left with seven- or eight-figure compensation that most people can only dream about. Richard D. Fairbank, the chairman of Capital One Financial Corp., took a $1 million hit in compensation after his company had a disappointing year, but still got $17 million in stock options. The McLean, Va.-based company received $3.56 billion in bailout money on Nov. 14.

_John A. Thain, chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $83 million in earnings last year. Thain, a former chief operating officer for Goldman Sachs, took the reins of the company in December 2007, avoiding the blame for a year in which Merrill lost $7.8 billion. Since he began work late in the year, he earned $57,692 in salary, a $15 million signing bonus and an additional $68 million in stock options.

Like Goldman, Merrill got $10 billion from taxpayers on Oct. 28.

The AP review comes amid sharp questions about the banks' commitment to the goals of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a law designed to buy bad mortgages and other troubled assets. Last month, the Bush administration changed the program's goals, instructing the Treasury Department to pump tax dollars directly into banks in a bid to prevent wholesale economic collapse.

The program set restrictions on some executive compensation for participating banks, but did not limit salaries and bonuses unless they had the effect of encouraging excessive risk to the institution. Banks were barred from giving golden parachutes to departing executives and deducting some executive pay for tax purposes.

Banks that got bailout funds also paid out millions for home security systems, private chauffeured cars, and club dues. Some banks even paid for financial advisers. Wells Fargo of San Francisco, which took $25 billion in taxpayer bailout money, gave its top executives up to $20,000 each to pay personal financial planners.

At Bank of New York Mellon Corp., chief executive Robert P. Kelly's stipend for financial planning services came to $66,748, on top of his $975,000 salary and $7.5 million bonus. His car and driver cost $178,879. Kelly also received $846,000 in relocation expenses, including help selling his home in Pittsburgh and purchasing one in Manhattan, the company said.

Goldman Sachs' tab for leased cars and drivers ran as high as $233,000 per executive. The firm told its shareholders this year that financial counseling and chauffeurs are important in giving executives more time to focus on their jobs.

JPMorgan Chase chairman James Dimon ran up a $211,182 private jet travel tab last year when his family lived in Chicago and he was commuting to New York. The company got $25 billion in bailout funds.

Banks cite security to justify personal use of company aircraft for some executives. But Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., questioned that rationale, saying executives visit many locations more vulnerable than the nation's security-conscious commercial air terminals.

Sherman, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said pay excesses undermine development of good bank economic policies and promote an escalating pay spiral among competing financial institutions — something particularly hard to take when banks then ask for rescue money.

He wants them to come before Congress, like the automakers did, and spell out their spending plans for bailout funds.

"The tougher we are on the executives that come to Washington, the fewer will come for a bailout," he said.

Revive traditional justice: String up Somali pirates

• Reviewing the news reported by the NYTimes on Dec. 7, we find the following: a) credit-rating firms like Moody's, and supposed Federal watchdogs like the SEC, the Congressional committee of Barnie Frank and the Senate committee of Chris Dodd, gave new meaning to the "fox in the chicken-coop" analogy: those chickens never went into the foxes' lair - too comfortable where they were; b) "Obama vows public works on vast scale": and where is he going to get the estimated trillion dollars to pay for it...this is just a variation of FDR's "All we have to fear is fear itself" comment, by FDObama; c) U.S. troops in Afghanistan: what's our "in game" and what's our "out-game" while feeding our children and grandchildren into a meatgrinder?  All of this - and more, to follow - smacks either of criminality or of "THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE DOING".  More proof of this is in the just-leaked Federal draft report on U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq. 
• While Main Street is finally starting to re-discover the word SAVE, our media continues to drip with calls to spend,spend,spend...and don't pay until two thousand whatever. The NYTimes regularly devotes a glitzy publication called the NYTimes Style Magazine to this siren song.  Oil is not our only addiction; and we had better solve both quickly.  This sick society cannot get better on ever-increasing doses of opium.  Here's a better idea for shopping, a blast from the past, the "lay-away plan".  You put your desires and needs on hold until you can pay for them. What a concept!. 
• In the same NYTimes edition noted above, one editorial is entitled "The Deluder in Chief".  Granted, things don't look good for our President who seems to have already left office.  But for anyone to attempt to write the Coda on George Bush's Presidency before at least five or ten years of research and revelations have surfaced has no knowledge of history...and only a blood-lust. 
• Losing one's job is rightly considered "Capital Punishment" by workers.  But the most painful part of the sentence is losing one's health care coverage.  Instead of re-carving the Health Care wheel into a rectangular block of wood, the first priority at this time should be insuring continuing health care coverage for all those without a job.  This would have to be done at the Federal level, by those with the "$700 Billion" and the "$14 Billion" who own the printing presses at the U.S. Treasury.  And it could be done through existing programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Husky, etc.  You dolts in Washington: "Is anybody there?  Does anybody care?"
• And then there are my two perennial favorite topics: Public Education, and "Abortion, Morality and Ethics", otherwise called "The Culture Wars", for which I keep separate categories on this web-site.  The latter will be the subject of more extended treatment soon, including the central...and not always helpful...role of the Roman Catholic Church.  Regarding the former, we learn once again that "Students lie, cheat, steal, but say they are good" (see the Survey reported by AP national writer David Crary, in The Day (www.theday.com) Monday Dec. 1, pA1).  We see never-ending reports of the "system" failing its wards.  "But Wait - There's More": see "Lessons From 40 years of Education 'Reform', by Louis Gerstner, Jr. (in WSJ Monday Dec.1, 2008, Opinion, pA23).  And finally there's news from none other than that cesspool of Teacher Union emanations, Washington D.C.  God Bless Michelle Rhee, the new head of those schools, as reported in Time, Dec. 8, 2008.  And we can receive some ironic solace from the decision (a no-brainer) of First Parents Barack and Michelle Obama to send their kids to private school.  Choice is wonderful, isn't it?