Some animals are more equal than others

It is one thing to chase an evil incompetent smirking son of priviledge from the White House and elect a decent president, but there are more, a lot more, where he came from and something must be done about it eventually.

From the Huffington Post (click through for more juicy robber baron audio)

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.
Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.
Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.
"This is the demise of a civilization," said Marcus.
"This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm watching this happen and I don't believe it."

First, they destroy the economy through greed and ignorance. Then they belly up to the public trough demanding the taxpayers bail them out. Then they take that money and use it to expand their empires, fund executive perks, line their pockets and make sure the poor get poorer. -Fuck these "I'm all right, Jack"-asses.

From the New York Times

By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that
is, when the bonuses arrived.

Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year. That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.

(snipped for length, go read the whole thing)

On Wall Street, where money is the ultimate measure, some employees apparently feel slighted by their diminished bonuses. A poll of 900 financial industry employees
released on Wednesday by eFinancialCareers.com, a job search Web site, found that while nearly eight out of 10 got bonuses, 46 percent thought they deserved more.

And yet, when someone suggests that the progressive income tax could be a little more progressive after eight years of tax cuts for the rich, he's derided as a socialist who is engaging in class warfare. Sometimes I really wonder, in light of things like this, why there aren't angry pitchfork-and-torch wielding mobs in the streets of America