Please, corporate apologists, spare us the nonsense about "the market" determining the pay of America's Feudal Corporate Lords. American business operates within a legal and regulatory framework that is pretty freakin' far removed from a hypothetical buyer and a hypothetical seller meeting as equals in some marketplace. It is, rather, the constantly-changing product of an ongoing POLITICAL struggle among competing social interests.

Some of what you call "the market" is the result of working men and women risking and even giving their lives and their health in the struggle for things like fair wages, humane hours, and safe job sites. Others, such as the privilege of operating within the corporate form, and the whole slew of tax breaks and regulatory exemptions, are the result of bills purchased and rulings sold through the lobbying efforts of the rich and powerful.

Your arguments might be tolerable if we were talking about a $2.1 million payout. After all, even a Corporate Lord has gotta eat. But $210 million? I say it's time for the new Congress to mend the CLEARLY malfunctioning marketplace for these celebrity CEOs by raising the top tax rate back to 70% (or higher). And yes, the health of the American economy is very much the business of every citizen, as long as we are still a republic.

Remind me, what, again, are the terms of the minimum wage debate taking place as we speak? An increase of $5 an hour to $7 an hour right away, versus over two years. Yes, it's exactly this kind of imbalance that led to the demise of the Bourbons.

LeCastor's recent posts perfectly illustrate all that's wrong with America today. Starting with the silly notion that a CEO is solely responsible for profitability, and that the people who actually do the work have nothing to do with a company's bottom line. More to the point of this discussion, which began with a payout of $210 million, profitability & value appear to have no effect on the fabulous compensation of America's Corporate Princes. Succeed, fail, break the law; hell, who cares? -- none of it matters, as they're enriched in any event. There IS no risk. Except, of course, for the workers whose jobs are destroyed and benefits extinguished due to poor executive performance. But in the neo-republican class warfare of the post-Reagan-Bush Sr. era, workers, like voters, no longer matter.

$5 or $7 an hour -- if you're lucky -- on the one hand, versus $210,000,000, on the other, regardless of how much a Corporate Prince screws up. Substitute "commander in chief" for "CEO" and "troops" for "workers" and anyone who has ever worked a day in America should have a fairly good idea of what is going on in Iraq, where the mission consists of protecting Bush-Cheney's legacy from the disastrous consequences of THEIR actions.

I was wrong: the minimum wage passed by the new Congress (and opposed by Bush Jr.) will increase to $7.25 not immediately, but only in 2009 -- and if it's not vetoed. I wonder if the Corporate Prince who just received this $210,000,000 on top of his already exorbitant salary votes Republican and perhaps even contributes the party that thinks $7.25 per hour in 2007 is just too damn generous for a working man or woman. After all, the Republican party doesn't merely practice class warfare. The Republican Party IS class warfare.

The most interesting aspect of the "surge" is the public emergence of its think tank author, Fred Kagan. To my knowledge he is the first hitherto unknown neo-con who has dared to step before the TV cameras since the magnitude of the disaster in Iraq (and Lebanon, etc.) became apparent in red-state America. Mr. Kagan has provided us the rare opportunity to see the sort of person who could create and perpetuate this war. It would be superfluous to note that this armchair strategist, so calm when it comes to the deaths of others, like Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, et al., has never actually fought in any war, and declined to join the military personally. If he has been to Iraq, his adventure most likely will have been confined to the well-trod path of Baghdad Airport to Green Zone, and quickly out again.

He doesn't speak Farsi, and doesn't think it's important to learn it. He's never actually been in Iran. (The interview doesn't say; but I'll assume the interviewee would have mentioned it had he been there.) He clearly doesn't understand the first thing about the role of religion in the popular support for an otherwise odious regime among poorly educated people (in Iran, as well as the United States.) And he's an armchair strategist who seriously believes invading Judeo-Christian armies will be "greeted as liberators" by the Muslims.

Clearly, this guy has a bright future under Bush-Cheney -- and I compliment Salon on its prescience in interviewing the future head of the coalition provisional authority in Tehran.