Normally I’m not interested in what other people get paid, particularly when those “other people” are well-established businesscritters.  It’s like lifting in the same gym as the football team’s offensive line: you’re better off comparing yourself to “you, last week” (or month, or year) than to someone else.  In particular, bitching about someone else’s salary smacks of sour grapes and petty envy.

I am, however, utterly unable to resist this:

• U.S. plans $500,000 cap on executive pay (NYT)

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm. “And you know these companies that are in trouble are not going to pay much of an annual dividend.”

Isn’t that a fuckin’ tragedy.

But it turns out that I’m taking that “$500,000 is not a lot of money” quotation somewhat out of context:

Mr. Reda said only a handful of big companies pay chief executives and other senior executives $500,000 or less in total compensation. He said such limits will make it hard for the companies to recruit and keep executives, most of whom could earn more money at other firms.

“It would be really tough to get people to staff” companies that are forced to impose these limits, he said. “I don’t think this will work.”

In other words, companies that didn’t fuck the dog over mortgage-backed securities and the like, and that aren’t sucking at the teat of government, will be able to hire better executive staff than the ones that over-leveraged on tulips subprime mortgages.  Wait, I have an image for that:

You beg the government taxpayers for money, you get money on the government’s terms.  If you don’t like the government’s terms, don’t take their our money.  This isn’t hard.

(Hat tip: Megan McArdle)

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Next, we have this rather dubious statement from Rep. Pelosi:

Five hundred million Americans?  Really?

Wikipedia must be lying to me when it claims that the United States’ population is only slightly over 305 million.  That’s the problem with these Web 2.0 user-content things — they don’t check with the Proper Authorities before publication and end up reporting non-Congressionally approved “facts”.

(Is anyone else annoyed by the “Sky is falling, sky is falling, ask no questions, pass the bill, we need it now or the world will end” hysteria attached to all this corporatist socialist bullshit?  We heard it with the 2008 Stimulus Act; we heard it with pretty much every Fed rate decrease; we heard it with TARP; we heard it with the auto bailout; and now we’re hearing it again.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.)

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Speaking of the new stimulus bill, we find this fascinating leap of reasoning:

• Is the stimulus anti-Christian? (Salon)

The problem, apparently, is the notion that stimulus funds shouldn’t be spent on religious facilities:

No funds awarded under this section may be used for… modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities (i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission.

So, Rich Uncle Pennybags Sam isn’t going to help you build or renovate a church.  Shock and fucking horror.  You’d think that the theoconservatives would be pleased: after all, weren’t those cockvomits screeching pre-election about how Obama teh muzlim was going to build a mosque in every neighbourhood and a madrassa in every city?  Well, not so much: there’s whining to be done!

“What the government is doing is discriminating against religious viewpoints,” Mathew Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, told Fox.

What, by not giving handouts to absolutely everyone?

It gets better:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “Democrats are looking for every opportunity to purge faith and prayer from the public square. This will empower the ACLU with ambiguous laws that create liability for schools, universities, and student organizations. This is an attack on people of faith and I don’t think Americans will stand for it.”

The ACLU?  Where’d that come from?

It turns out that this “attack on people of faith” is simply standard federally-issued boilerplate.

Moreover, the Supreme Court saw absolutely no problem with it as far back as 1971. And the language doesn’t prohibit funds from going to religious schools; it just means they can’t use it on any of their facilities that are use primarily for religious purposes. Nor would it mean that public schools would have to keep things like Bible studies out of any buildings renovated with stimulus funding. This isn’t some secret, either — it’s legal principle dating back decades.

There are plenty of problems with the stimulus bill, but this isn’t one of them.

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Let’s have something a bit different:

• The F. Scott Fitzgerald Super Bowl controversy that wouldn’t die (Deadspin)

I keep hearing that newspapers are in financial trouble.  Maybe it’s because they’re paying people to pull shit like this:

Pete Dougherty of the Albany Times Union and Ted Cox of the Chicago Daily Herald both took the opportunity in print to slam Flanagan’s use of an F. Scott Fitzgerald line, used during one of her sideline reports on Sunday. The quote, “There are no second acts in American lives,” was used in a pregame piece about the resurgence of Kurt Warner. Said Dougherty: “Ugh … we’re watching a football game, not dissecting American history.”

History… literature… same shit, different pile, amirite?  Rick Chandler nails it:

No, that would be American Literature, Petey. And would you prefer the wit and wisdom of Michael Irvin or Emmitt Smith? This is why newspapers are dying, boys; you’re pandering to people who aren’t smart enough to read.