Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
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June 28, 2006
WB: Wage Earner

Billmon:

Ordinarily, I’m sympathetic to the argument that public officials should be well compensated — because if the voters don’t pay up, somebody or something else will. (In Rep. Jefferson’s case, his freezer.) Also, congressional salaries basically suck. You could cover the entire payroll in both houses for about $90 million, which is less than what Dennis Kozlowski took home in one giddy year as Tyco CEO.

If one man can get paid that much money to drive an enormous, heavily leveraged organization straight into the ground, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to pay 535 people the same amount to do likewise. They’re just as good at it as he was.

Wage Earner

Posted by b on June 28, 2006 at 04:04 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Richard Jenrette, the co-founder of Donaldson, Luskin and Jenrette, insisted on staging his closings at propitious astrological moments. Picture, therefore, a roomful of suits and secretaries assembled in a Manhattan conference-room at 2 a.m. on a given Sunday morning in mid-August, at the mere say-so of astrological charts as construed by Jenrette and the wizards to whom he deferred.
No one ever suffered from dealing with Dick Jenrette.

Posted by: alabama | Jun 28 2006 8:25 utc | 1

p.s.: that previous comment belongs with Billmon’s “star-crossed,” which hasn’t yet been posted here. Sorry for the mixup.

Posted by: alabama | Jun 28 2006 8:29 utc | 2

Sounds like a good way to disorient and control people, too.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 28 2006 8:43 utc | 3

alabama, long time old friend, welcome back

Posted by: annie | Jun 28 2006 8:55 utc | 4

Perhaps someone with a keener interest in the machinations of the one party and less cynicism may care to peruse the voting roll Billmon linked to and prove the cynics wrong who suspect that the only members of congress who voted no, happen to be those in districts with shall we say “uncertain majorities” come this November?
After all not only did more dems vote in favour of the congressional pay rise than voted against it, more rethugs than dems voted nay!
It saddens me somewhat that Billmon forgot that not so small point when he made his post. Maybe he wasn’t trying to put the dems in the best possible light given the exposure that he had already given to this issue, but it could be interpreted that way.
Fine blogger n all that Billmon is, he would save himself a lot of heartache and gain a great deal of credibility and let go that last little thread linking him to the corrupt and irrelevant Demowhateverthepollsaythisweek Party

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 28 2006 12:31 utc | 5

Why did Billmon purge moonofalabama ?

Posted by: citizen k | Jun 28 2006 13:09 utc | 6

citizen_k, you can re-live the saga starting here. Follow back to the long thread at b’s stalinist fruitcake link at the top of that post for the beginning (or end, depending on how you look at it) of it.

Posted by: mats | Jun 28 2006 13:35 utc | 7

I’ll read up on Jenrette.
Thanks, Bama.
You got me confused as hell there.
Guess I was thinking of Rita J. or something. Mind on the Curb, I guess.
One of the financiers I always liked best was Commodore Vanderbilt. Lived on a large scale. Created a brokerage firm for the spiritualist Victoria Woodhull. Rumor on the Street, to borrow a phrase from Charlie Barron, was that Commodore and Victoria weren’t counting railroad shares when they went into the back office.
Victoria, in the early 1870s, became the first woman to run for President of the United States.
Citizen K:
As you have a well-develped sense of humor, you might enjoy these vignettes.

Posted by: Henry Clews | Jun 28 2006 13:59 utc | 8

mats – that is a classic. Man must have fruitcake all the time!
There’s a ship
The Stalinist Fruitcake Freighter
with a red flag on its masthead
will be coming in
You gentlemen can say, “Hey Billmon, finish them posts!
Get blogging! What’s wrong with you! Earn your keep
here!
You toss me your tips
and look out to the ships
But I’m counting your winks
as I’m cutting the links
Cause there’s nobody gone to click here, honey
Nobody
Nobody!
———
Henry Clews – Cornelius Vanderbilt always seemed a made up character to me. Nice stories. Thanks.

Posted by: citizen k | Jun 28 2006 16:50 utc | 9

From: The Dept of Meta-textuality
To: see list below
The following barflies should report immediately for processing at the Albert Gonzalez Annex Dept of Truthiness Black Lodge (room 3-D) in order to clarify ideological identifications stated when the moon of alabama was in uranus. No coercion will be applied. The dept. of truthiness has other ways of making you talk.
(c.f. you will be required to read Gullible’s Travels.)
This list was compiled by synchronious data mining by the C. Jung Run encryption service and the pulling there of out of said planetary aspects.
Xena, Warrior Princess
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Annie Lennox
Vermeerista!
Lucrezia (aka Lucrecia) Borgia nee Borgia
Quigley, Joan
Quigley, Down Under
Crazy Cora
Dr. Tongue
Dr. Demento
Dr. Fu Manchu (please bring your marmoset after sedating and caging…its bites have been recorded)
Walter Mitty
Walter Cronkite
Walter Reed
Erasmus
Erasmus Darwin (please bring your work, Zoomania, for inspection re: your discussion of the properties of cannabis in same)
Laura Palmer
David Lynch
Special Agent Dale Palmer
William Donovan
James Butler Hickock
Paris Hilton
James Hilton (in re: inspiration for a certain 1960s girl band)
Lutecia Cesarium
Mudhoney (the group is excluded at this time)
Russ Meyer
Bettie Page, RN
Zeppo et freres
If you feel your name has appeared on this list in error, god will sort them out. we have hundreds of smiling assistants waiting to answer your questions.
There is no safety in numbers, or anything else. –James Thurber

Posted by: adrian messenger | Jun 28 2006 17:22 utc | 10

Inasmuch as “Moon of Alabama” still is in Whiskey Bar’s blogroll, I don’t think “purged” is the right word – maybe “demoted” (put back among the ordinary rank and file)?

Posted by: mistah charley | Jun 28 2006 18:38 utc | 11

i agree mistan charlie. i think it’s best described here
For all his verbalism, there’s always been something remarkably non-verbal about the barkeep’s way of writing, and about his way of doing business. He’s never been very diplomatic, and rarely acknowledges any role that MoA may play in his thinking. This being the case, it’s quite useless to speculate about his motives for doing what he does, and still less so to take offense at his occasional rudeness (rudeness, with a twist of perverse cruelty, being an integral part of his character armor). And so perhaps the most sensible way to consider his latest action is this: the barkeep wants to be by himself, and uninvolved with other people. And why not? At least he’s done us the courtesy of including us in his more-or-less infinitely long blog-roll., and I’d be surprised if he were to object to the continued posting of his ruminations hereabouts. Might we not simply thank him for his contribution to our development, and proceed on our independent way?

Posted by: annie | Jun 28 2006 18:51 utc | 12

Alas for legend! Ms. Woodhull, after decades spent as an interesting and worthy (albeit slightly cranky) person, married a titled Brit, did a political u-turn, and spent her later years in social climbing and trying to convince newspapers to throw away their files on her earlier speeches and activities. Just another self-aggrandizer.

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Jun 29 2006 3:33 utc | 13

@TGVWYCI:
Guess she should have died starving in a gutter.
More satisfying ending for the purists, all around.

Posted by: TGP | Jun 29 2006 4:00 utc | 14

@TVicious:
Ms. Woodhull, I doubt, was too much cranky.
She was about it, all the time.
She was a very strong woman.

Posted by: TGP | Jun 29 2006 4:15 utc | 15

The rich and powerful are very fond of astrology. There is something so traditional, long standing, systemic and wholistic about it. Also, it is horrifically complicated, and experts charge a lot … Absolutely staggering amounts, actually.
An astrologist named Tessier got her doctorate from the Sorbonne no less for her thesis (doctorate) on astrology. It was touted as a sociological study of but really it was apologetics for. All these top profs seriously discussing this stuff. Created quite a scandal. Power and money talk.
Would never have happened for the more lower class kinda spiritist or other fads – such as numerology, which the French are quite keen on. Beliefs in Angels (divorced from any established religious doctrine) just doesn’t hack it.
Hope that was of some interest.

Posted by: Noisette | Jun 29 2006 15:28 utc | 16

It isn’t the “rich” part that detracts from her memory, it’s the fact that she disavowed all her earlier principles (even criticized people for holding them) and tried to get people to forget she ever held them. If she lived today, she would be a political consultant to Bush.

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Jun 29 2006 21:53 utc | 17

Barbara Ehrenrich on the little piggies on the hill.
REPEAT. there is NO, NON, NONE NADA ZIP ZILCH, ZERO evidence that raising the minimum wage creates unemployment.
The last time it was raised, 1997, was, in fact, a fairly plum year,
ESPECIALLY compared to the last six pig outs at the repuke crony buffet (invite only. must be a govt contractor who hires govt whores when they are on the other side of the revolving door.)
Jeeez, I HATE these shitheads sooo much. I could tell so many stories about ppl I know who have more integrity and intelligence than every single one of the handjobbers in congress who did not vote for this increase…and this increase is not enough, even so, but at least it’s a start.
Including many ppl who provide care to the disabled, who makes their lives meaningful and make their family’s lives possible.
May all their grandchildren be born dead.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 30 2006 18:09 utc | 18

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