Palin's Apparent News Media Phobia

What is it with modern-day Republicans? McCain/Palin want to serve in the highest offices in the land, but they don't want to answer questions about just how they would go about it, given the staggering mess Bush and Cheney have made, with a lot of help from the GOP cover-up congress.

Americans are fools if they vote for people who feel they deserve respect and deference when they haven't done a damn thing to earn respect (lying does not earn my respect). Continuing to tell the same lies, even after those lies have been debunked over and over again, does not beg deference. If anything it makes me want to slap both of them into next Tuesday.




Why is Sarah Palin granting so few interviews?

Sunday, September 21, 2008; B06

JOHN McCAIN selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate 23 days ago. Since then, Ms. Palin has not held a single news conference with the national media. She has answered only a handful of questions from voters and reporters. She sat down for a lengthy discussion with one nonpartisan interviewer, ABC's Charles Gibson, and granted another interview to conservative Sean Hannity of Fox News, as well as a sit-down with People magazine and some interviews with Alaska media. Where Dick Cheney made the rounds of five news shows the weekend after he was tapped by George W. Bush, Ms. Palin has not turned up on a single Sunday program.

Mr. McCain's selection of an inexperienced and relatively unknown figure was unsettling, and the campaign's decision to keep her sequestered from serious interchanges with reporters and voters serves only to deepen the unease. Mr. McCain is entitled to choose the person he thinks would be best for the job. He is not entitled to keep the public from being able to make an informed assessment of that judgment. Ms. Palin's speech-making skills are impressive, but the more she repeats the same stump speech lines, the queasier we get. Nor have her answers to the gentle questioning she has encountered provided any confidence that Ms. Palin has a grasp of the issues.

"Retreat is defeat in Iraq," as she told Mr. Hannity, is a slogan, not a vision for how to proceed. On Russia, Ms. Palin said, "What we have got to commit to also, especially when we talk to Russia -- no Cold War. We have got to know that our mind-set needs to be opportunity for pressure and diplomacy and sanctions if need be as we keep our eye on a country like Russia." What sanctions does Ms. Palin have in mind?

Her answers on issues of domestic policy were hardly more reassuring. Asked what was behind the financial meltdown, Ms. Palin cited "the corruption on Wall Street," with no explanation of what corruption she was referring to. Asked whether the government had made the right call in bailing out Fannie Mae and AIG, Ms. Palin floundered: "Well, you know, first, Fannie and Freddie, different because quasi-government agencies there where government had to step in because the adverse impacts all across our nation, especially with homeowners, is just too impacting. We had to step in there. I do not like the idea, though, of taxpayers being used to bail out these corporations. Today, with AIG, important call there, though, because of the construction bonds and the insurance carrier duties of AIG. But, first and foremost, taxpayers cannot be looked to as the bailout, as the solution to the problems on Wall Street."

Meanwhile, Mr. McCain, who once referred to the media as his base, has himself become inaccessible. He promised to hold weekly news conferences as president but has not held a news conference as a candidate in more than a month. A candidate who stiffs the media on the campaign trail isn't likely to perform better once in office.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

CEOs In This Country Need To Be Taught A Lesson!

It may well take the people to teach them. They are not as invulnerable as they think they are!


Fat Cat CEOs Strike Back at Congress
By Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati, AlterNet
Posted on April 13, 2007,
Printed on April 28, 2007

http://www.alternet.org/story/50395/

Does CEO pay in the United States need anymore fixing?

The 160 corporate CEOs who make up the Business Roundtable -- the nation's single most influential business lobbying group -- don't appear to think so. The Business Roundtable is currently leading the corporate charge against congressional efforts to legislate new checks on executive compensation.

Executive pay reforms already in place, the group's president assured Congress last month, are more than adequately addressing the concerns Americans may have about corporate behavior.
"A wave of reforms over the past five years," the Business Roundtable's John Castellani testified, "has resulted in improved investor confidence in our corporations, growth in the stock market and continued shareholder returns."

CEOs in the Business Roundtable do have one more reason -- unmentioned in Castellani's testimony -- to feel comfortable with today's executive pay status quo. They're making out like bandits.

In 2006, Business Roundtable execs took home paychecks that added up to a $9.9 million median. The comparable take-home for major corporate CEOs overall, according to just-released Wall Street Journal data: only $6.5 million.

Business Roundtable chief executives are doing even better compared to average Americans. In 2006, the CEOs who belong to the Business Roundtable saw their pay jump 10.6 percent, nearly three times more than the average wage increase of 3.7 percent that went to typical U.S. white-collar workers.

All these executive pay numbers actually understate the real pay gap in today's Corporate America. These totals, for instance, don't count the value of the towering stashes of deferred pay and pension dollars that await top execs on their retirement day.

At least 10 CEOs, researchers at the Corporate Library note, are now set to collect over $50 million in pension and deferred pay when they make their exit. AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre will walk off with $158.4 million, Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray Irani another $124 million.

We know all this because last summer the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency that regulates publicly traded companies, announced new regulations that require corporations to reveal more about what they pay their top executives.

The powerful Business Roundtable publicly supports this new SEC disclosure standard -- and regularly trots out this support to demonstrate its credentials as an enlightened and responsible voice in America's corporate community. But the Business Roundtable has steadfastly opposed any efforts at CEO pay reform that go beyond disclosure or any other reforms already in place.

Two such congressional efforts are now before lawmakers.

In the House, Rep. Barney Frank's Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act has already gained the approval of the Financial Services Committee. This legislation, if enacted, would give shareholders the right to take a "nonbinding" advisory vote on CEO pay plans.

In the Senate, lawmakers have passed -- as part of the minimum wage increase compromise package -- a tax code change that sets a $1 million cap on the amount of annual compensation corporate executives can have "deferred" and shielded from income tax.

Deferred pay arrangements recently helped Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli and Pfizer chief Henry McKinnell walk off with severance packages worth about $200 million each.

McKinnell chaired the Business Roundtable from November 2003 through July 2006. His executive pals at the Roundtable are now working to deep-six the Senate deferred pay cap. At last month's House hearing on executive pay, Business Roundtable president Castellani tagged the Senate deferred pay cap and the House shareholder vote proposal as equally objectionable.

Objections from the Business Roundtable carry considerable weight. The CEOs who constitute the Business Roundtable membership lead companies that employ over 10 million workers and account for "nearly a third of the total value" on U.S. stock markets.

This enormous Business Roundtable clout on Capitol Hill, if truly focused on ending the corporate pay abuses that have average Americans upset and alarmed, could make a real difference. That's a difference that CEOs in the Business Roundtable, so far at least, apparently don't feel they can "afford" to make.

Sarah Anderson, the director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and Sam Pizzigati, the editor of the Too Much online weekly and an associate fellow at IPS, are among the co-authors of the new report "Selfish Interest: How Much Business Roundtable CEOs Stand to Lose From Real Reform of Runaway Executive Pay."

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50395/

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.