We keep giving Claire McCaskill Best Ofs (last year's was Best Celebrity, for the first-term senator's strong debut in the national media) because she can't keep her mouth shut. This year, the recognition is in honor of her January ripping of Wall Street execs who, after taking federal bailout money, handed out $18 billion in employee bonuses. "We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer," McCaskill said in a speech on the Senate floor. "These financial institutions, on the brink of extinction, come to the American taxpayer for hundreds of billions of dollars. At the very same time, they think they're going to buy a $50 million corporate jet. They're going to pay out $18 billion in bonuses. They paid an average of $2.6 million to every executive at the first 116 banks that got tax money under TARP. They don't get it. These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses .... What planet are these people on? What could they be thinking about?... It's time for everyone to realize that we must have our financial institutions survive, but not with a culture that thinks it's OK to kick the taxpayer in the shins while they drink champagne and fly in fancy jets." Headline of the week, pretty much everywhere: "These people are idiots."
