Salary caps - good for the goose, good for the gander

"Good for the goose, good for the gander" is a saying I heard often from my mom & dad. I've been thinking a lot about the idea of salary caps and I have to say it bothers me.

The idea is that companies that take bail-out money (banks, auto companies, etc) would cap salaries of their CEO's etc at $500,000. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I would NOT be affected by this cap and probably won't be affected for at least the next 2-3 years.

But I got to wondering, if this is good for bank and auto CEO's, why not for other people? I saw this article that writes about two college presidents that make $900,000 and $1.4million. Seems like those colleges take scholarships handed out on the federal level, shouldn't they be capped also? (I'm ignoring the football coaches, as that will start a different argument).

More importantly, how about politicians? Well, the president is typically the highest-paid official, his salary is only $400,000. But if you tack on his expense account, travel account and entertainment account, he's over the cap at $569,000. Reckon President Obama can afford a $69,000 pay cut?

And how about past politicians? Remember, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. According to an April 2008 article, the Clintons made about $20million in 2007. Now since there's two of them, they would be capped at $500,00 each, so they get a cool $1million. Shouldn't they give $19million back to the government (in fairness, they did pay about $5.1million in taxes and typically gave around 10% to charity - that means they are only $12million away from this cap).

Let's not stop with education, business and politics. What about sports? Seems that Tiger Woods makes about $227million, LeBron James $40m and A-Rod $35m just to name a few. (thanks to Sports Illustrated for the reference). And if we look at the left coast (Hollywood), George Clooney rakes in $15m (paltry compared to Tom Cruise's $25m) according to bankrate.com.

Once we dictate what CEO's can make, why not stop there? Why not establish salaries up and down the line? We're already dictating the minimum wage. It's the middle class that's left out of the picture.

Ok, my opinion should be clear, but just to be sure: I'm against salary caps.

Election time

Is it just me or has this election gotten nasty? I'm used to all of the nasty commercials and such. I expect that. This is my 8th presidential election (and as many non-presidential elections) and those type attacks come every year.

But what has surprised me are the actors & actresses that have gotten nasty. Oh sure, Tom Cruise and a few others threatened to leave in 2004 if W. was elected (they didn't). But it just seems that more of them have turned out this time.

What makes it worse is that they lose credibility. I love the skits on SNL and (until recently) I liked some of the light night sketches. David Letterman's "Great moments in presidential speeches" took jabs at President Bush's speech patterns. Very humorous. But lately, I've grown to wonder more about how Letterman really feels.

In the past, I've avoided watching light night TV when a political candidate was on. I've made two exceptions: 1) I watched former President Carter on Leno and 2) I watched McCain on Letterman. I was disappointed in both cases.

Two other actors who have lost credibility are Tina Fey and Martin Sheen. I loved Fey's skits on SNL, even the ones poking at Gov. Palin. But after watching her comments on Letterman, I can no longer watch her. She is no longer (probably never was) objective and has no credibility. Same thing with Sheen.

What about you? Have you seen actors and been swayed for/against them because of their credibility? What about businesses?