A SALUTE

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have convinced 38 other billionaires to give away half their wealth to charity. Gates and Buffett started "The Giving Pledge" earlier this year; it's a campaign to get the richest people to donate to the charitable causes of their choice, either before or after their death. Others taking the pledge include Michael Bloomberg, Barry Diller, Larry Ellison, T. Boone Pickens, David Rockefeller, George Lucas, Ted Turner, and Ronald Perelman. The U.S. has about 400 billionaires; the 40 who've made the pledge are worth more than $230 billion combined.

Read it at Beltway Beas

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/?cid=hp:cheatsheet5#cheatrow_18753

I am so touched by all of this. Really.

I mean just think if the powers that be had just left Madoff alone, they might have talked him into giving away half of the 60 billion dollars he stole and we could have free medical care for all our citizens.

If we could just get all the people who robbed Quick Marts to return half of the cigarettes and money they stole, think of all the extra monies Jerry's Kids would have.

If we could just get all the Columbian Cocaine Kings to return half of the monies they made killing high school kids in Manhattan and Detroit and Chicago and LA, we could build public libraries in every major city in the United States.

If we could just get all the drug companies who enable tens of millions of drug addicts in this country to return half of their profits, we could have mass transit in this country.

If we could just get all the oil companies who have destroyed half of our coasts and half of our wild life refuges to return half of their profits, we could make our fishing industries healthy again and send half of our nation's children to Yale and Harvard.

If we could get all the liquor companies to return half of their profits, we would have thousands of new free drug and alcohol clinics built all over this nation.

 If we could get all the computer companies to return half of their profits, every single child in America could have their own computers.

HEY, I GOT AN IDEA, WHY NOT TAX ALL THE PROFITS OF THE CAPITALISTS FIFTY PERCENT AND WE COULD HAVE A COUNTRY THAT WORKS!!!

AND EVERYBODY THAT NEEDED A JOB COULD HAVE A JOB!!

If these bastards had been paying their fair share in taxes and if they had been plaything the game by the rules, THEY WOULD NOT HAVE THE 500 BILLION DOLLARS IN ESTATE MONEY TO BEGIN WITH.

But we are supposed to be so grateful to T. Boone Pickens and all the other robber barons in this country who probably should have been put in prison long ago and had all their property confiscated and distributed to the victims of their capitalist bullshit.

With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners. Now, the federal authority on banker pay says that nearly 80 percent of that sum was unmerited.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23pay.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Yesterday, we brought you the insurance company that wouldn't insure a 17-pound infant because he was too heavy. Today, we bring you the investment bank that manages to double its bonuses during the worst recession since the Great Depression.

On Thursday, Goldman Sachs will announce the firm's bonus payments for 2009. Analysts expect the bonus pool to mushroom to $23 billion -- double the bonus pool paid to employees in 2008. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs said that it had put aside $11.4 billion for bonuses during the first half of the year.

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/goldman-sachs-2009-bonuses-to-double-2008s-23-billion-could-buy-115-million-iphones-or-send-460000-to-harvard/

A lawsuit filed against investment bank Goldman Sachs by a shareholder alleges that the company spent more money on corporate bonuses than it earned in 2008.

Shareholder Ken Brown's lawsuit is one of two suits filed against the company this week over its controversial decision to hand out billions of dollars in bonuses even after it was accused of playing a central role in the financial collapse of 2008 and receiving $10 billion in direct aid from the US government.

In his lawsuit (PDF), Brown states that Goldman Sachs gave out $4.82 billion in bonuses in 2008, despite earnings of only $2.32 billion that year. The lawsuit alleges that the company spent 259 percent of its income in the first quarter of 2009 on compensation.

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/lawsuit-goldman-bonuses-bigger-earnings/

(CBS)  One of the recipients of the taxpayer bailout is still struggling. CitiGroup said Monday it plans to cut 53,000 jobs by early next year, one of the largest layoffs ever by an American corporation.

And what about the big bonuses Wall Street executives count on at this time of year?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/17/eveningnews/main4612647.shtml

In a report to be released on Friday, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master for executive compensation, is expected to name 17 financial companies that made questionable payouts totaling $1.58 billion immediately after accepting billions of dollars of taxpayer aid, according to two government officials with knowledge of his findings who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the report.

The group includes Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and the American International Group as well as small lenders like Boston Private Financial Holdings. Mr. Feinberg's report points to companies that he says paid eye-popping amounts or used haphazard criteria for awarding bonuses, the people with knowledge of his findings said.

unmerited.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23pay.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

As the Republican National Committee put it recently:

WE STOLE OUR MONIES FAIR AND SQUARE AND WE WANT MORE MONEY AND LESS TAXES NOW!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaGjFF3Cyk&feature=related