A Stitch in Haste

They came first for the baseball players ... And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a baseball fan.

And then they came for the Wall Streeters:

The heads of three companies implicated in the mortgage crisis have been asked to explain how they collectively received hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation while their companies were losing money.
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The committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has held several hearings on the issue of high executive compensation. Last December it looked at large, publicly traded companies that hire compensation consultants who are receiving millions of dollars from corporate executives whose compensation they were supposed to assess.
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Republicans on the committee questioned the need for the hearing, saying it falls outside the panel's primary role of investigating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.
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Waxman's committee also recently held a highly publicized hearing where lawmakers questioned pitcher Roger Clemens, who denied charges from a former trainer who said he had injected the all-star with steroids and human growth hormones.

For once, I think the Republicans have it right. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has absolutely no mandate to investigate anything other than the federal government itself. Otherwise, let's be intellectually honest and rename it the House Fishing Expedition and Gratuitous Harrumph Committee.

To review:

--There is no government involvement in the determination of CEO salaries in the financial sector.

--There is no allegation of any crime or tort, by anyone at any company at any time.

--People who don't like the way a company's executives are compensated are perfectly free not to do business with, work for or invest in such companies. Why is that not enough veto power?

Maybe someday the "Oversight" Committee and its activist legislator ninnies will get some much-needed oversight themselves. Someday.

More thoughts from Hodak Value.