As the country slouches ever closer to depression and it begins to appear that the US may not have any manufacturing base anymore (what else do we make her besides cars?), the  thieves who run our government continue with business as usual. From "Today's Papers" in slate magazine for 12/15:

The WP fronts a look at how a last-minute change in the language of the $700 billion bailout package may end up making it more difficult for the government to make sure that companies that receive money from the government adhere to limits on executive compensation. At the behest of the Bush administration, lawmakers changed a sentence in the plan to specify that only firms that received money through selling their toxic assets to the government would be subject to penalties for breaking the rules on executive compensation. Now that the Treasury Department has decided to inject capital directly into the troubled firms many worry that there is no enforcement mechanism to make sure companies stick to the limits on executive compensation.