The AP is reporting that Barack Obama has leveled a blistering attack on Wall Street corporate greed.  According to Obama, the $18 billion in bonuses distributed to corporate executives last year during the taxpayer bailout was “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful.”  Our new president used his podium yet again to lecture “the folks on Wall Street” on the merits of “restraint” as well as “discipline” and “responsibility.”

If our new president is concerned about “restraint, discipline, and responsibility” he might start by first revising his heralded “stimulus bill” -- a bill that includes the following projects designed to “jump start” the economy:

Amtrak                                                1 billion dollars
National Endowment for the Arts         50 million
Global Warming Research                    400 million
Digital TV Conversion Coupons           650 million
Smithsonian Museum modernizing       150 million
“Education”                                           66 billion
New cars for the federal government     600 million

And so on. The Wall Street Journal correctly labeled this nonsense a “political” stimulus bill, or, in other words, a “40-Year Wish List” for Democratic interest groups. One might add to this list close to $200 million for Obama’s inauguration.

Are we supposed to think that because Obama and the Democrats are siphoning this money from present and future American taxpayers this is “good greed?” Apparently the Kool-Aid drinkers think so.  

Regarding leaders who claim the “altruist” mantle, Ayn Rand famously said: “A dictator is regarded as moral, since the unspeakable atrocities he committed were intended to benefit ‘the people,’ not himself.”  In the socialist mindset then, corporate executives are regarded as criminal but dictators who enslave their people in the name of altruism are considered virtuous.  

A strange mindset indeed.