Saturday night I had to sit meekly, as is my custom, while three fellow CNN panelists blathered on about how these bonuses were paid entirely with bailout funds. Say what? By what magic accounting trick do these rocket surgeons determine that the entire bonuses paid to these AIG so-called "executives" were paid from the very bailout funds that amounted to only nine-hundredths of one percent of the dollar amount of the bonuses paid? Oh, wait! I can answer that myself: It's the same accounting process that causes Chuckie Schumer to declare that "we shouldn't quibble over $200 million dollars" of taxpayer's money spent when the discussion is congressional earmarks, but who then starts spinning around on his eyebrows when a private business fulfills a legal obligation to pay $175 million due pursuant to an enforceable contract.

Thanks to generations of government education, inexorably leading to a populace with only rudimentary thinking skills, most Americans don't readily see the danger in government hosting a popularity contest in which the masses decide who does and who does not deserve to keep what they have earned. Maybe a few news bulletins from the not-so-far future might yank your chain a bit:

"Democrat Congressman Barney (Sylvester) Frank announced today the introduction of legislation calling for a 90% tax on all income in excess of $500,000 paid to any person who foments political dissention on the public's airwaves."

Think about this. If these hacks can use this "public's airwaves" idiocy in order to control what someone says on a radio show, who's to say they couldn't use the same fiction to control income? They control what the radio station can make by limiting commercial minutes and demanding fealty to the "public's interests," so why not extend that control to all on-air personnel? Thank goodness this one wouldn't apply to me. I neither foment dissention nor do I meet the salary cap.

Here's another:

"Speaker Nancy Pelosi dispatched a delegation of flying monkeys this afternoon to deliver a message to the media that she was calling for legislation to establish a 90% tax on all book royalties payable to tall blond women weighing less than 110 pounds."

OK .. got ya to smile. You can come up with your own "punish them with taxes" ideas and put them in the comments section.

The point here is that we have set the precedent whereby is now OK to single out private individuals, demonize them for political advantage, and then march them to the IRS guillotine for a financial beheading. Madam LeFarge for Treasury Secretary. At least she's not a tax cheat.