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LIMITING CEO PAY….Henry Blodget says the provisions of the bailout plan limiting CEO compensation are “toothless”:

The plan ostensibly prohibits golden parachute payments to CEOs and other “C-level” execs at bailed-out companies. However, it really only prevents payments on severance deals that are struck AFTER the bailout (specifically, it prohibits these deals completely). There is nothing about cancelling the severance payments that the executives are ALREADY contractually entitled to. What this means in practice is that bailed-out companies will have trouble hiring the best talent…because why would you work at Bailed Out Company A when you could go across the street and get a fat severance deal? It also doesn’t mean the companies can’t pay their CEOs $500 million a year. IN ADDITION: There’s another absurd section that makes all compensation above $500,000 for the three highest paid employees at the company not tax-deductible for the company. This is LUDICROUS. It means the company can pay the executives anything it wants and that the penalty for this will be exacted on the company and its shareholders. (Unless we’re mistaken, Americans are furious that CEOs make $50 million a year for running companies into the ground, not that the $50 million is tax deductible).

Unfortunately, this sounds about right to me. Sometimes symbolic stuff like this can be important, but it’s symbolic nonetheless. The plain fact is that there’s very little in this bill to genuinely limit executive compensation, and probably very little that could have been in the bill. It’s better than nothing, but only barely.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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