A plea for help

I'm being serious here. No sarcasm. This is a legitimate question that I'd LOVE for anyone and everyone to weigh in on, because honestly, I want to understand.

Criticism of Wall Street and corporate bonuses, which I'm not taking a position on for the purpose of this blog, has reached a crescendo. Everywhere you turn these days, someone ... from the general public to the media to Democrats ... are demonizing any CEO or any company that pays millions (or billions) in bonuses.

Heck, one executive recently was raked over the coals for more than a week over his extravagantly remodeled office.

That's fine and great. If someone ... or everyone ... wants to hold these people to certain standards in these tough economic times, particularly when they're receiving taxpayer-funded government bailouts, more power to them.

More power to the media, too, for expressing its collective outrage.

What I'd like to understand is why then are few in the general public, even fewer in the media, and no one at all on the Left side of the political aisle, expressing similar outrage over some of Barack Obama's Cabinet appointments?

I'd suggest there's a serious double-standard, dare I say a heaping portion of hypocrisy, in what's going on in Washington D.C. when:

A man (Tim Geithner) who failed to pay two years' worth of taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars can become Secretary of the Treasury ... in other words, the head of the IRS, the person who will oversee you and I paying exorbitant penalties, possibly losing our homes and/or businesses or even going to jail for doing the same thing.

Another man (Tom Daschle), another acknowledged tax cheater (only because he got caught), is nominated as Health Secretary ... a man who has spent his political career bemoaning the "tax gap" in America, in which those who pay the most taxes anyway are allowed tax incentives or tax breaks that prevent them from paying even more ... or criticizing corporations for operating or moving overseas to escape the world's second-largest corporate tax rate.

A woman (Hillary Clinton), who along with her husband, have received hundreds of millions THAT WE KNOW ABOUT from foreign governments in a plethora of dealings ... and many others whose details remain hidden despite Obama's claim of "more transparency in government" ... can become Secretary of State, a job in which she'll play a major role in shaping foreign policy.

A man (Eric Holder), who as deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton, not only played a major role in the pardon of federal fugitive Marc Rich (a huge Democrat donor, by the way), but also the pardons of FALN terrorists despite the objections of the FBI and Justice Department, not to mention pleadings from surviving family members an associates of those murdered by those terrorists, can become Attorney General.

The list goes on and on. And what about all the lobbyist ties these and others in the new administration have, when Obama SPECIFICALLY claimed he'd put an end to such practices, let alone the appointment of such people to his "team"?

I asked earlier "where's the outrage" ... heck, where are the QUESTIONS? Why is no one even talking about this stuff? Why is the media giving this guy a complete pass on EVERYTHING, and, more important, why are WE giving the MEDIA a pass on not doing its job?

If you have any input, I'd truly like to be enlightened.

(Imported from Feb. 2, 2009)