I make more profit from the advertising on this website than the Atlanta Journal-Constitution makes from publishing a newspaper. Now that's a bit scary, isn't it? But .. give them credit. They're trying some new things to turn things around: Looking for a new conservative columnist, for instance. Mallard Fillmore in the comics and that Wall Street Journal two-page insert on the weekend might help.
Unbeknownst to me some of the people that I work for (who just happen to also own that newspaper) have made inquiries over the years about the paper publishing a Neal Boortz column once or twice a week. The suggestion has been met with howls of what could be either laughter or outrage, usually followed by the phrase "no way in hell."
What if they did publish a column? Well, here is what might have run yesterday. Instead it was published on Townhall.com. Read the comments ... a few people actually liked what I wrote:
Off With Their Heads Neal Boortz Monday, March 23, 2009
This is nuts. I mean, really folks ... we have gone bat-guano insane over this AIG bonus brouhaha. You're being manipulated. The wealth-envy is being stoked. What we have here is a phony outrage wholly generated by the political class to take the minds of the dumb masses (if you're reading aloud, do so slowly) off of the spectacularly irresponsible bailout, stimulus and budget bills that have been passed in recent months. We have an anti-capitalist Democrat party working with a president who thinks that America's greatness is based in government, together with no small number of Republican sycophants, spending this country into oblivion ... and looking for ways to distract your attention in the process.
NO ... I'm not saying that the AIG employees who got these bonuses necessarily earned them. I'm still waiting to meet the man who actually earned every dollar and benefit he has received from his employer. We call him Sully. The Financial Services Division of AIG is a basket case. The fact is, though, AIG had a contractual obligation to pay those bonuses, and failure to do so would have been actionable. A good trial attorney would manage to get double the amount due plus fees. All of the wealth envy and moaning about the evil, disgusting, putrid, worthless rich won't make those contracts void. The decision to pay those bonuses pursuant to the legally enforceable contracts was the right one.
More disgusting than the bonuses, however, is the political reaction to them. If ever there was a time for pitchforks and torches -- this should have been it. Not because of the AIG bonuses ... but because of what transpired in the Congress last week. For the first time that I can remember the Imperial Congress of the United States has passed a law establishing a confiscatory tax to be levied on certain individuals -- not for the purpose of raising revenue -- but strictly for the purpose of punishment. The political class has determined, without the benefit of due process or a trial, that the actions of the AIG employees in accepting these bonuses was a crime, and that crime shall be punished by seizure of the money. Legislation to single out and punish someone without due process is constitutionally forbidden. But who cares? What does the Constitution mean any more anyway?
Saturday night I had to sit meekly, as is my custom, while three fellow CNN panelists blathered on about how these bonuses were paid entirely with bailout funds. Say what? By what magic accounting trick do these rocket surgeons determine that the entire bonuses paid to these AIG so-called "executives" were paid from the very bailout funds that amounted to only nine-hundredths of one percent of the dollar amount of the bonuses paid? Oh, wait! I can answer that myself: It's the same accounting process that causes Chuckie Schumer to declare that "we shouldn't quibble over $200 million dollars" of taxpayer's money spent when the discussion is congressional earmarks, but who then starts spinning around on his eyebrows when a private business fulfills a legal obligation to pay $175 million due pursuant to an enforceable contract.
Thanks to generations of government education, inexorably leading to a populace with only rudimentary thinking skills, most Americans don't readily see the danger in government hosting a popularity contest in which the masses decide who does and who does not deserve to keep what they have earned. Maybe a few news bulletins from the not-so-far future might yank your chain a bit:
"Democrat Congressman Barney (Sylvester) Frank announced today the introduction of legislation calling for a 90% tax on all income in excess of $500,000 paid to any person who foments political dissention on the public's airwaves."
Think about this. If these hacks can use this "public's airwaves" idiocy in order to control what someone says on a radio show, who's to say they couldn't use the same fiction to control income? They control what the radio station can make by limiting commercial minutes and demanding fealty to the "public's interests," so why not extend that control to all on-air personnel? Thank goodness this one wouldn't apply to me. I neither foment dissention nor do I meet the salary cap.
Here's another:
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi dispatched a delegation of flying monkeys this afternoon to deliver a message to the media that she was calling for legislation to establish a 90% tax on all book royalties payable to tall blond women weighing less than 110 pounds."
OK .. got ya to smile. You can come up with your own "punish them with taxes" ideas and put them in the comments section.
The point here is that we have set the precedent whereby is now OK to single out private individuals, demonize them for political advantage, and then march them to the IRS guillotine for a financial beheading. Madam LeFarge for Treasury Secretary. At least she's not a tax cheat.
The Obama administration is ironing out the details of his plans to increase government oversight of executive pay. I'm not just talking about the top TARP recipients .. I am talking about all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies.
Officials said the proposal would seek a broad new role for the Federal Reserve to oversee large companies, including major hedge funds, whose problems could pose risks to the entire financial system.
It will propose that many kinds of derivatives and other exotic financial instruments that contributed to the crisis be traded on exchanges or through clearinghouses so they are more transparent and can be more tightly regulated. And to protect consumers, it will call for federal standards for mortgage lenders beyond what the Federal Reserve adopted last year, as well as more aggressive enforcement of the mortgage rules.
The officials said that the administration was still debating the details of its plan, including how broadly it should be applied and how far it could go beyond simple reporting requirements. Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.
One proposal could impose greater requirements on company boards to tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to ensure that compensation was aligned with the financial interest of the company.
Did you hear about these protesters in Connecticut over the weekend? Some protestors went to the houses of AIG executives in Connecticut and they came up with this brilliant battle-cry ...
"Money for the needy, not for the greedy!" Now there are some brilliant government-educated ignoranuses for you.
Are these people really this brain dead? There is no doubt that these were Obama voters. If you heard some of the comments from the protesters, they spoke of "sharing the wealth" and moaned about the size of the houses. (That's called wealth envy, by the way.)
And then we find out this little piece of information about these protests. They were organized by The Connecticut Working Families Party. And guess what? It turns out that this party was jointly founded by ...... ACORN! Imagine my surprise.
"Helicopter Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late-night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U. S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.
As an aghast world -- from China to Chicago and Chihuahua -- watches, the circus-like U. S. political system seems to be declining into near chaos."
Would you like to read the rest of the column? You can find out why they call him "Helicopter Ben" Well ... here's your link! (Who needs a newspaper when you have Nealz Nuze?)
You may remember that last month Obama unveiled his budget for 2010. And guess what it included? More government! He proposed spending $3.6 trillion, which is more than 25% of our GDP. And that number will only grow so long as Obama is in the White House.
It gets worse, folks. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that "Obama's policies would cause government spending to swell above historic levels even after the costly programs to alleviate the recession and shore up the financial system have ended. The result, the CBO said, was that by 2019 the US national debt would be about 82 per cent of GDP - about double where it is today."
How about that? You voted for this guy because he looked cool and enjoys basketball. You voted for him because he appeared on all of your favorite magazine covers and was praised by your favorite TV and movie stars. And, of course, you voted for him because of that magical word "change!" Working out pretty well, isn't it?
Obama, of course, is saying that the CBO has it all wrong. HE, based on his immense government and management experience - which he has been displaying so brilliantly - says that he will cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. The ONLY way that will happen is if the House and Senate are turned over to a new breed of Republican and a stop is put to this idiocy.
Here in Atlanta, Georgia, home of the Mothership News/Talk 750 WSB, we have some racial chips on some shoulders in the state government. On Friday, about two dozen black Georgia lawmakers apparently stormed out of the Georgia House. They did so because they were angry that a white Congressman blocked a proposal to make Barack Obama an honorary member of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.
State Representative Austin Scott says that he blocked the proposal because the wording would have put the full chamber on the record and it declared Obama as a man with an "unimpeachable reputation for integrity." After Democrats balked at revising the wording, Scott blocked the proposal.
But naturally, this automatically turned into an issue of race. Some black lawmakers saw this as a snub to the nation's first black president. State Representative Al Williams says, "It drips with racism .. I call it just like it is." Al Williams is an idiot who couldn't define the word "racism" if his per diem depended on it, and it doesn't.
There are still some backward minds out there who think that any amount of "disrespect" (to use the vernacular) shown PrezBO is evidence of racism. Unfortunately this one is in my back yard.
Senator Kent Conrad says that the AIG bonuses should be returned or those employees should be fired. I'm going to try to get him on the show today. He will avoid me like the plague.
Barney Frank believes that another way to punish AIG executives who received bonuses is to sue AIG. This is the same Slobbering Barney who has not spent one single day working in the private sector (except for a student-teacher gig at Harvard) in his entire life.
There is more chatter about tax-cheat Tim Geithner being asked to step down. Barack Obama isn't biting.
Joe Biden's economic advisor says that the House's bill to tax the bonuses of AIG employees at 90% may have "gone too far." Gee, ya think? The Obama shoot-from-the-hip plan.
Hugo Chavez had some thoughts for Barack Obama: "He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he's a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality."
If you enjoy Neal's daily chat with Jamie Dupree, you'll love Jamie's Blog! Check it out for analysis of the campaigns and goings on in Washington D.C.
Belinda Skelton, Cristina Gonzalez and Laura Nunemaker assist in the daily preparation of Nealz Nuze!
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Did you hear about these protesters in Connecticut over the weekend? Some protestors went to the houses of AIG executives in Connecticut and they came up with this brilliant battle-cry ...
Here in Atlanta, Georgia, home of the Mothership News/Talk 750 WSB, we have some racial chips on some shoulders in the state government. On Friday, about two dozen black Georgia lawmakers apparently 
