To:\u00a0 President Barack Obama<\/p>\n
From:\u00a0 Mitch Berg – American, Citizen, Accidental Constituent<\/p>\n
Re:\u00a0 Geese and Ganders<\/p>\n
Mr. President,<\/p>\n
As a person with an innate notion of common sense and right and wrong, I don’t disagree <\/em>that it’s really, really bad PR for Wall Street firms and banks that are asking for government bailouts to be giving out nearly $20 billion in bonuses.<\/a><\/p>\n The tongue-lashing you gave them…:<\/p>\n Summoning reporters after a closed meeting with Mr. Geithner, Mr. Obama blasted earlier news that Wall Street had paid out $18.4 billion in bonuses, calling it “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful.””There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” he said. “Now is not that time.”<\/p>\n The tough talk suggested a firmer stand from the administration in its oversight of banks. But it also had a political purpose: eliciting support for an expensive and unpopular bailout program that will likely require more cash from Congress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n …makes political sense.<\/p>\n On the other hand, the bonuses are <\/em>attempts to retain top “talent” at firms that do <\/em>drive this nation’s economic engine.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 Wrong?\u00a0 I’m not sure.<\/p>\n But it’s certainly no worse than the hundreds of millions – billions – your administration is planning to give to ACORN<\/a>, the National Endowment for the Arts<\/a>, global warming cultists<\/a>, unions<\/a>, and Trojan-brand condoms – none of which brings a single job to this nation (other than, I suppose, at Trojan – although I suppose you know that recessions actually help <\/em>the market for contraceptives, among other less-clinical goodies<\/a>).<\/p>\n If I didn’t know better – and as a bitter, gun-clinging Jesus freak, you just know <\/em>I don’t, right? – I’d almost thing you were trying an FDR-like bit of populist displacement, to focus the people’s attention on these (ill-timed) bonuses via the lens of your friends in tingly-leg media, to drown out questions about the pork your “stimulus” plan is shoveling.<\/p>\n Please get back to me.\u00a0 Thanks.<\/p>\n That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To:\u00a0 President Barack Obama From:\u00a0 Mitch Berg – American, Citizen, Accidental Constituent Re:\u00a0 Geese and Ganders Mr. President, As a person with an innate notion of common sense and right and wrong, I don’t disagree that it’s really, really bad PR for Wall Street firms and banks that are asking for government bailouts to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,59,64,69],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-4114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-pork-patrol","category-president-obama","category-socialism","tag-open-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38808,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114\/revisions\/38808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}