The Tyrant's Plan To Take Over Is Rolling Out

Remember back when I said this:

Remember the repeated predictions (most recently here) of the government controlling private industries who accept bailout money?  You may be thinking that won't necessarily affect you or your job, or that it's just a right-winger scare tactic.  Well, our very own Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill is demonstrating beautifully exactly how that will work in real life:

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill — mad as hell and not going to take it anymore — called Wall Street executives "idiots" Friday and proposed limits on some of their salaries.

Her proposal would force companies taking federal bailout money to limit compensation for any employee to what the President of the United State currently earns: $400,000 a year.

"Is that so unreasonable?" McCaskill asked. "It's eight times the median household income in the United States of America…I don't think that sounds like a bad deal."

There's a crucial point in here that's easy to miss at first glance - did you catch it?  Her plan would 'limit compensation for any employee...'

Guess what?  The legislation is here now. (h/t Michelle Malkin)

It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards," according to the bill's language. That includes regular pay, bonuses -- everything -- paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."

I know what you're thinking: but that's just for companies that received bailout money.  That alone is an absolute disaster for private industry as far as I'm concerned, but strictly speaking, that's true.  But there's a major, major problem.  See if you catch it in this article:

Wells Fargo & Co's (WFC.N) chairman lambasted the U.S. government for imposing new curbs on lenders that receive federal bailout money, and called the federal plan to subject big banks to stress tests "asinine."

In remarks after a speech Friday at Stanford University, Chairman Richard Kovacevich said the fourth-largest U.S. bank should not be lumped with weaker rivals in being forced to adhere to new rules governing such matters as lending and pay.

Wells Fargo took $25 billion of capital last year from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program at the behest of regulators including then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, but has said it did not need the money. It was one of nine original TARP recipients.

Like a growing number of rivals, the San Francisco bank is now complaining about TARP, including a provision that lets Congress unilaterally impose new restrictions on recipients.

Did you see it?  Wells Fargo 'said it did not need the money'.  Wells Fargo was forced to take TARP funds by the federal government.  At the time, the idea put forward was that singling out a couple of banks for assistance would cause consumers to run away from those banks, so the government essentially locked those banks' execs in a room and forced them to accept the money.  As Wells Fargo Chief Executive John Stumpf put it later, "The basic message is we're all in this thing together."

So, putting these things together, the obvious question is: what's stopping Obama from forcing 'bailout' money on any company in any industry?

After the events of the past few days, I would venture to say that the real motivation behind TARP was to create a way for the federal government to take over all of these banks and thus the entire financial industry.  Just ask Rick Wagoner how a government takeover of GM worked out.

Welcome to the Era of Obama, in the United States of soon-to-be-Socialist America.

There's my two cents.