Look Who Hates Entitlements
Now I know how Gregor Samsa must have felt.
It’s a terrible thing, waking up in the morning to realize that overnight you have metamorphosed into a conservative. How do you face your family?
I was shocked…shocked, to realize suddenly that I hate entitlements. It’s conservatives who preach against entitlements, right?
But there’s Boeing — feeling entitled to the $40 billion refueling tanker deal? They’re running full-page ads saying it’s not fair they didn’t get it.
And Billary is entitled to the White House?
John McCain is entitled to a free pass?
Stanley O’Neal steered Merrill Lynch into $27 billion in writedowns, and he’s entitled to a $160 million golden parachute?
James Cayne piloted Bear Stearns down from $170 a share to $2 a share, so he’s entitled to walk away with $40 million cash compensation plus $60 million more from selling his stock? That entitles him to a $26 million apartment in the Plaza.
And then the Fed arranges a Bear Stearns rescue, so you and I are entitled to pay for the whole mess with our tax dollars – even though the shareholders already paid for it with losses. That entitlement is so good we pay for it twice.
Logging companies are entitled to cut-rate leases for decimating old growth timber on Federal parklands?
Oil and gas companies are entitled to very cut-rate drilling leases? And then the oil company stooges in the Bush Bureau of Land Management forget to collect even that pittance?
Hedge fund managers are entitled to count billions of dollars of income as capital gains so that they can pay a lower tax rate than your mailman?
And conservatives are still entitled to wail in pious outrage against entitlements?
They cheat people who really need welfare, and then they turn out to be the biggest (and least deserving) welfare recipients of all.
I just looked again. I haven’t turned into Kafka’s cockroach after all.
They have.