So remind me again Republicans - why were auto industry bailouts bad, but banking bailouts good?

Last fall, at the height of D.C.'s bailout mania during the waning days of the Bush administration (and yes, into the beginning of the Obama administration), there was strong support in Congress for bailing out the white collar banks whose irresponsible and even fraudulent practices helped precipitate the deepest U.S. economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Yet, when the auto industry came calling, with its hundreds of thousands blue collar manufacturing jobs, the Republicans in Congress, led by AZ's own Jon Kyl, expressed outrage at the mere thought of bailouts for them.

Fast forward to today, when Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General for the State of New York, released a report on the bonus practices of bailed-out banks. (warning: the .pdf file is rather large; if you are using a dialup connection, it may take a while to download in its entirety.)

From the New York Times' article on the report -

The Wall Street millionaire club had nearly 5,000 members in 2008.

At least 4,793 bankers and traders were paid more than $1 million in bonuses last year even as profits at the biggest banks dwindled and they accepted tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, according to a report released on Thursday by the New York Attorney General’s Office.

Something tells me that of all the things that these "bankers and traders" might have bought with their bonuses, none of them bought even a small amount of shame.

Back to AZ later...