The Salary Cap: Payback's a Killer, Fatboy

I was sitting here in the football room with CNN's early-evening news show on in the background, listening with one ear and I kept hearing "socialism" as part of the conversation as if somebody had discovered something under the rock from under which one of those banking executives had crawled. Are the federal bailouts socialist in theory? Sure. Socialism for bankers, for auto magnates, for wall street millionaires.

I heard some pained conversation about President Obama's requirement that some of the failed executives receiving stimulation money cap their salaries at $500,000. Commentator Jack Cafferty asked if that was fair, if the government had the right to tell business people what to pay themselves.

The answer to that one's simple, too: under normal circumstances, no; under these socialist circumstances, you betcha. Ever hear of the government giving anybody money for anything without having some strings on how it is spent? Would you want the government to simply give billions to these bozos and say, "We trust you. Do with it as you will"? Bet you don't.

Executive pay in 1980 was 40 times what an hourly worker earned. Today, it's 400 times that much, according to Forbes. That's obscene. It also pisses off a whole lot of Americans who are in the mood to demand something of substance from people who've been living off the cream and leaving the rest of us the skim. Payback's a bitch, boys.