Screw the Big Banks and the Corporate Welfare Pony They Rode in on

We spent $5 BILLION tax-payer dollars bailing-out Citigroup and Bank of America and what have we gotten in return:

• Citigroup just agreed to pay $285 million to settle a civil fraud complaint that it misled investors in a $1 billion derivatives deal tied to the United States housing market, then bet against the investors as the housing market began to show signs of distress.

• Bank of America Corp just reported a third quarter profit of $6.2 billion.

• BOA just announced that two of its former executives, Sallie Krawcheck and Joe Price, will receive a salary of $850,000 and a payment of $5.15 million and a salary of $850,000 and a payment of $4.15 million respectively. Meanwhile, BOA maintained its CEO’s salary of $950,000 plus $9.05 million in performance-based stock awards this year.

• Bank of America recently Announced That It Was Laying Off 30,000 People. The layoffs come after a decision by Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Citigroup earlier this year to “outsource IT and back office projects worth nearly $5 billion this year to India, as they seek to lower costs."

• Late last month, BOA announced that it would start charging a $5-a-month fee simply for consumers to use their debit cards for purchases.

Thank God I belong to a credit union. There are no milion dollar bonuses paid out to CEO's and investors. There were no bailouts for the credit unions. The interest rates on car and small business loans are lower and the branch mangers are in the same tax bracket as most of the state employees that entrust them with their life savings.

I empathize with the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. While the big banks made risky, disingenuous investments with our money they continued to payout seven figure bonuses to CEO's that are taxed at half the rate of their $9 per hour bank teller. They they spent millions of dollars and man hours hiring "robo-signers" to sign forclosure letters on hundreds of thousands of Americans who could not keep up with their mortgages due to no fault of their own.

Why is it okay for the CEO of a financially-troubled bank to receive a $5 million bonus while teachers, nurses, cops and firemen take 10% pay cuts and lose the right organize?

In 2010 160 police officers lost their lives in the line of duty (an increase of 37% in one year). So far this year 74 firefighters have been killed protecting us. And how many times have we heard about teachers and other school officials being gunned down while educating our childrend? How many hedge fund managers have made the ultimate sacrifice? How many CEO's take a bullet each year while on the job?

Now cops and firemen have to worry not only about their lives, but about their position getting cut as local governments become cash-strapped as the GOP refuses more stimulus packages.

While ACT scores and the percentage of students taking college entrance exams rise in Wisconsin, teachers take a pay cuts, lose benefits and collective bargaining rights. If corporate America played by the same rules as public employees, big bank CEO's and Wall Street investors would be eating out of garbage cans and begging teachers and nurses for hand-outs and cops not to arrest them while they sleep on a park bench at night.

But the reality is that we have corporate lapdogs like Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson who would rather see a flat tax that greatly benefit millionaires by reducing their taxable income than finance a $43 billion dollar stimulus designed specifically to return teachers and first responders back to the work place - our schools and streets.

The GOP is willing to let Main Street go to hell while Wall Street reaps unwarranted rewards for their unbridled greedy actions.

It is okay for Paul Ryan to drink $350 bottles of wine with millionaire hedge fund managers while our cops and teachers struggle to buy $150 worth of groceries to feed their entire family for a week.

Shame on the GOP for being the corporate puppets that they are - it is time to bail out the people that really work for a living . . .

It is a time for outrage . . .