The John Sydney McCain Memorial Crappie Award

This one was easy...

Earlier today, I wrote a post concerning the finger-pointing going on in D.C. over the spectacle of AIG giving millions of dollars in bonuses to executives who were so good at their jobs that AIG needs billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts to remain open for business.

In that post, I linked to a HuffPo post that quoted Jon Kyl on the bonuses. When appearing on Fred Thompson's radio show, Kyl opined -

"If the contracts are stupid contracts, if they committed them to do things that weren't right, or went way overboard, because taxpayers have put a bunch of money behind AIG, certainly we have the right to be asking those kinds of questions."

In other words, he was saying the even if the contracts were bad, they have to be honored.

Now journey back four months or so to his sentiments regarding the auto industry, from one of his weekly columns (advocating bankruptcy) -

Unfortunately, these companies can’t do that [adequately cut costs] voluntarily because they have labor union agreements and other contractual obligations. The unions are not going to make the concessions sufficient to enable these companies to compete. The only way to address their problems is under an existing code in our bankruptcy laws known as Chapter 11.

So for his shamelessly hypocritical reverse inward pike with a twist (wealthy corporate con artists should get a free pass; union workers should get screwed), Senator Jon Llewellyn Kyl will be providing gainful employment to the latest John Sydney McCain Memorial Crappie Award.

Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers summed it up best with the title of his blog post regarding Kyl's (and most Reps') sentiments regarding bail outs:

"Congress bails out those who shower before work, but not those who shower after work"

Turns out that not much has changed in Rep attitudes toward working class Americans in spite of the change in Presidential administrations (and the landslide losses in the Presidential and Congressional elections that precipitated the change in Presidents).