The most frequent justification for extreme CEO (and other executive) pay goes something like, "under the control of CEO X, the shareholders of the company increased their wealth by $5 billion dollars, so CEO X is justified to his $500 million pittance--it's only 10% of the value he gave to the company!"

This argument neglects the fact that there's fierce competition for CEO jobs, and I've never seen any data indicating that when a company has a CEO opening that the second choice among qualified candidates would, on average, make the company any less money. Considering the competition for these jobs, it seems that companies could pay their CEOs far, far less and still get excellent quality.

As I recall, salon.com's own TableTalk was a superb resource for finding all of the information about what was going on during the recounts. There were tens of thousands of posts there covering every twist and turn of the recounts--it should be useful for historical purposes.

Anne in NYC: "I feel really sad for these girls – I don’t think they’ve got any idea how hard this is going to be and what they’ve almost certainly given up."

This raises the question of what they have given up. Perhaps the girls in MA didn't have much to give up. What's there to hope for today in the Bush economy for most people? If there's nothing to give up, their actions make more sense.

If you watch what happened leading up to Paris' statement, it's clear that was not planned. She wasn't pressured by the family to do that--nobody expected her to speak, and they weren't prepared for her to do so. I find it shocking that anyone would say that allowing a daughter to speak at her own father's funeral is somehow exploitative.