Frank Rich Agrees (sort of)

by Armadillo Joe

Frank Rich in today's NYTimes:

EVEN among pitchfork-bearing populists, there was scant satisfaction when the White House sent the C.E.O. of General Motors to the guillotine.

Sure, Rick Wagoner deserved his fate. He did too little too late to save an iconic American institution

[...]

Yet few disputed [...] that Wagoner was a “sacrificial lamb,” a symbolic concession to public rage ordered by a president who had to look tough after being blindsided by the A.I.G. bonuses. Detroit’s chief executive had to be beheaded so that the masters of the universe at the top of Wall Street’s bailed-out behemoths might survive.

[...]

Those on Wall Street who took the money and ran are beyond the reach of the guillotine. Most of their successors are too new to their jobs to merit beheading

[...]

Change is hard. Change is traumatic. Sending a juicy C.E.O. — or six — to the gallows is at most a crowd-pleasing opening act to the heavy lifting of reform and rebuilding we still await.

To which I'd like to add: "No really, go ahead. Try to please us."

The Op-Ed also included this cartoon, further proof of the "pitchforks & torches" zeigeist these plutocratic cockroaches have no idea swirls around them. It could consume not only the Wall Street Masters of the Universe who drove our economy onto the rocks, but their enablers in the Obama Administration and perhaps the Administration itself, if this crowd doesn't get a little retribution: