Overreaching

Is it possible that even those of us who sounded the alarm about Barack Obama actually underestimated just how far to the left he'd govern? The latest ill wind blowing from Washington suggests that Obama wants to regulate the compensation of, as Hot Air headlines puts it, "pretty much everyone".

The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.

Those "other companies"? Well, here's where "pretty much everyone" comes into play:

The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving federal bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It was that "publicly traded companies" line that really made me sit up and take notice. That covers an awful lot of companies. How many? According to this link, it's around 15,000. That's a whole lot of employers who just might find it more convenient to relocate outside the US.

This kind of overreaching by Obama and his Marxist comrades constitutes class warfare waged by the administration against the nation's top earners. When Obama breezily talked about wealth redistribution, everyone just assumed he was referring to simple confiscatory taxes on the evil rich. I don't think anyone dreamed he'd go this far.

And for anyone who's thinking that even a Democrat-controlled Congress will never go for this, it may not matter:

Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.

Is this the kind of change anyone had really hoped for?