There’s nothing like a good bluff to really stick in someone’s face. Of course, it’s still not as good as throwing down four aces, standing up and doing a fully on shimmy–>firestarter touchdown dance celebration. Random, I know. But that’s basically the kind of hand Congress was holding Wednesday, when the big wigs from GM and Ford rolled up to the Hill and asked for a couple billion dollars in bailout money.
Please bear in mind that they had the audacity to fly there in private planes. Instead of, oh, I don’t know … driving.
During a hearing Wednesday, a member of the House Financial Services Committee told Rick Wagoner of GM and Alan Mulally of Ford that reducing their annual salaries to $1 would be an important symbolic gesture as they lobby for $25 billion in loans funded by tax dollars. Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca worked for that wage when his company was bailed out by the government in the 1980s.“I’m willing to do what I’ve been doing,” Wagoner said, saying he has already accepted a significant wage decrease and given up other forms of compensation. But he stopped short of saying he would accept a $1 salary.
Mulally said: “I understand your point about the symbol. But I think, not just for me, but we’re trying to fill a skilled and motivated team.”
Don’t get me wrong — I’d be hard pressed to work for a dollar a year too … unfortunately, I also don’t make several million bones a year (Brahsome’s not that lucrative yet). On the other hand, I’m not up to my eyeballs in debt while trying to run a failing motor vehicle company either.
In awesome news, the current GM of Chrysler, Robert Nardelli, had the stones to say he would drop his salary to a dollar. Which, yeah, only makes Mulally and Wagoner look more like assholes. Grow up, gentlemen, and start trying to save this country please.
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They could fly their jets to Las Vegas to check out the new Criss Angel and Cirque collaboration entiled “Believe!” It has been the talk of the town ever since I started working with Cirque. One of my associates who got to see the show wouldn't stop talking about stunning the visual effects were. I got to see some of the behind the scenes footage on youtube.com/cirquelasvegas and was nothing short of impressed. It was nothing like I'd ever seen before.