Don’t miss the latest dispatch from our friend Michael Yon, who is travelling throughout Afghanistan right now.
I am no fan of overinflated CEO pay packages. For example, I have written previously about the pigs in Yahoo’s executive management and their obscene use of stock options.
What bothers me even more is lazy, inept reporting by the MSM, who so obviously don’t understand free markets or basic economics. Case in point, this headline from ABC News,
Exxon Chairman Gets $400 Million Retirement Package Amid Soaring Gas Prices
April 14, 2006â?? Soaring gas prices are squeezing most Americans at the pump, but at least one man isn’t complaining. Last year, Exxon made the biggest profit of any company ever, $36 billion, and its retiring chairman appears to be reaping the benefits.
Tom Blumer at BizzyBlog says,
yes, I think itâ??s excessive, regardless of how great a CEO he was â?? BUT itâ??s the shareholdersâ?? problem to fix, not the governmentâ??s.
That is certainly true. Executive compensation is the job of the board of directors and the shareholders they work for. When the pork loving patriots on Capitol Hill, from both sides of the aisle, were talking about a windfall profit tax on oil companies, I said NO for the same reason. Since when does the government get to decide what is excessive profit?
What gets me is the way this is being reported by the MSM. According to ABC News, it is as if Lee Raymond’s retirement package and total compensation is a result of one year’s operating results. This is so simplistic, so transparent, that it is just sad. They make it seem like we pay $3 a gallon at the pump to pay for Lee raymonds country club membership. There is much to criticize about executive compensation, but what the media is doing in the case of Lee Raymond is pure politics.
When Lee Raymond joined Exxon, John F. Kennedy was President. He started as a a production research engineer and rose steadily through the ranks. We are talking about a 43 year career. By the time Raymond took over as CEO in 1993, Exxon’s was already the largest market cap company in the world, at $89 billion. With Raymond retiring in 2006, Exxon’s market cap is $375 billion. Not a bad run, for Raymond, or those he works for, the employees and shareholders of Exxon.
Criticize executive compensation all day long and you’ll get no objections from me. What I object to is the politically motivated and uninformed reporting. To do so properly would require actual work, research and analysis. You won’t see that coming in the MSM when they can just run with stories like Exxon CEO is rich because he gauged you at the pump.
The Washington Post has a fascinating profile of the liberal blogosphere. What they found was childish insults, paranoia and seething rage.
It’s a pretty sorry lot if you ask me.
We are so fortunate to have people like Sgt. 1st Class Juanita Wilson serving in our military. To read this story is so incredibly humbling. To think of her sacrifice, courage and spirit is awe inspiring.
Thank you and God bless Sgt. 1st Class Juanita Wilson .
HT: Sister Toldjah
Good for the Washington Post. They published the following op-ed by Wade Zirkle, executive director of Vets for Freedom. Mr. Zirkle served two tours in Iraq with the Marines before being wounded in action.
Troops in Support Of the War
By Wade Zirkle
Earlier this year there was a town hall meeting on the Iraq war, sponsored by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), with the participation of such antiwar organizations as CodePink and MoveOn.org. The event also featured Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a former Marine who had become an outspoken critic of the war. To this Iraq war veteran, it was a good example of something that’s become all too common: People from politics, the media and elsewhere purporting to represent “our” views. With all due respect, most often they don’t.
READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE.
UPDATE: Murtha responds.
I think that the GOP has put the last nail in their own coffin by failng, last Thursday, to impose even moderate spending discipline led by appropriations Comimittee Chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis of California who ignored the advice of fiscal conservatives on the Republican Study Committee led by Rep. Mike Pence to sunset useless federal agencies and at least vote on a line-item-veto provision.
I agree with Kevin that if Republicans are no longer the party of limited government and can’t even pass modest spending reforms and extension of the 2003 Bush tax cuts which have been enormously successfull in generating sustained economic growth, low inflation, and record low unemployment, then Republicans deserve to be in the minority.
The only way for Republicans to maintain their political majorities in Congress is by acting like the conservative Republicans they were elected to be. We did not elect Republicans to spend like Democrats. Yet they continue to ignore their base who has been warning them for the past few years that govenment spending is a very real concern for average voters.
If they continue to spend like Democrats and tax like Democrats (failure to extend the tax cuts will result in tax increases) we may as well get the real thing- liberal Democrats themselves.
I can’t understand for the life of me how Hastert and the boys in Congress fail to see the hand writing on the wall. We want significant spending cuts, permenency and simplification in the tax code, closed borders, and common sense immigration laws enforced. If the GOP does not arise from their slumber soon, it’s move over Denny and make room for Speaker Pelosi in November.
What’s up with Hillary Clinton? Last week she was stealing lines from her beloved hubby’s old speeches,
Hillary steals husband’s best lines
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right about America,” Mrs Clinton, former first lady and currently junior Democratic senator from New York, said in the peroration of a speech to a Hispanic group this week .
Sound familiar? It was. Scroll back to Bill’s first inaugural address and his peroration then, to which Hillary was obviously listening very closely. “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America,” the 42nd President told the nation on 20 January 1993.
And now this week she is starting to steal his mannerisms?