Right After Obama Deals With CEO Pay…

14 Apr, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Barack Obama is hitting one of the Socialist Left’s favorite talking points,

Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is proposing legislation that would set transparency measures on executive compensation packages.

He wants shareholders to have a nonbinding vote on executive pay, which doesn’t mean that a cap will be placed on CEO income, just that stakeholders would be allowed to express their position publicly on what used to be classified matters.

…”This isn’t just about expressing outrage,” Obama said at a news conference, according to the AP and Bloomberg news reports. “It’s about changing a system where bad behavior is rewarded so that we can hold CEOs accountable, and make sure they’re acting in a way that’s good for their company, good for our economy, and good for America, not just good for themselves.”

You know, this may sound a little controversial to conservatives, but I think that maybe, just maybe, we should get on board with the idea of limiting CEO pay.

No, no, we should definitely get on board with it…right after we limit a few other people’s salaries. For example, is there any reason a lawyer like John Edwards should ever make more than say, $50,000 for a single case? How about retired members of Congress and their family members? Should any of them ever be able to make more than say, $75,000 a year in lobbying? What about Presidents, like Bill Clinton, for example? Should he really be able to make more than $25,000 a speech? Then there are the movie stars — why should anyone make more than $50,000 for doing a movie?

If Barack and the other socialists want to play this game, let’s give them a taste of their own medicine and see if it still seems like fun to them. My guess is that their interest in this would wane rather quickly if it meant that their biggest supporters had their salaries limited, too.