WHEN IS CLASS WARFARE JUST PLAIN COMMON SENSE?

CNBC POSTED A POLL on their "Squawk On The Street" module questioning whether one felt better about job security after hearing the President's SOTU speech last night. Here's one comment that struck a chord with me from a commenter called Youknowme:

I don't feel better about job security, but I do have more hope than I did a month ago. At least he's beginning the long road of reform that we need in compensation (because CEOs simply don't deserve 300 times more than they made 20-30 years ago). What are they, supermen? Last time I checked they need their middle managers and working class to run operations. Their so called "leadership" is incredibly inflated. I understand that having a competent CEO is important to the company's success but that doesn't mean that the CEOs now are 300 times better and smarter than the ones 20-30 years ago.

However, gimme a liddwe time here..im finkin...im finkin..and it's urting my widdle bwain...

A valid point, one I have been making for nearly two decades now. As much as I admire our "objectivist" philosopher for her vigorous stand against the pernicious methods and goals of the Communists, Ayn Rand just doesn't account for the perils of excessive greed or pure evil and the snarling matrices of aggressive fascism possible in her worldview, and of course this is due to the same flaw as other grand illusions, the flaw generally known as human nature. Man is simply not always as moral as our idealists would prefer. A quick glance at their own flawed lives should be enough to put the question of perfect morality to rest.

We all know by now it was the banks with grins and government nudging who created this financial mess, yet the individual players are paying few if any reciprocating personal penalties for these mistakes. This disconnect from the cause and effect realities dominating our own lives tends to exacerbate the irrelevancy most of us are feeling with regards to this administration.

The economy is frozen tundra, so it appears that the American people have yet begun to fight.

ROCKEFELLERS RIP EXXON

As someone who actually spent quality time among the Rockefellers working for the minimum wage of $1.65/hr during my years as a teenager on offshore Cumberland Island, GA, this story warmed my heart. I spent several years in manual labor doing an odd assortment of jobs learning the construction trade from the time I was fourteen up through my senior year in highschool on the island where my pop worked as a master carpenter. Cumberland remains accessible to this day either by boat or by small four or six-seater plane, the latter to land on an old field requiring one or two flyovers to chase the feral cattle and horses from their grazing pasture, and is primarily under the authority of the National Park Service now.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several branches of the Carnegie-Rockefeller clan were building "summer cottages" for themselves on family land they had inherited through the lineage of Thomas Carnegie, who had purchased the island and had built several plush mansions there in the 1880s before most of them were lost to fire and dilapidation due to later abandonment. Thomas also had a more famous brother named Andrew, the steel magnate turned library philanthropist. The families still hold onto parcels of land improved back in my own times, but a settlement was reached after years of law suits stipulating that when the last remaining immediate heir from that generation has passed away, the US government will control it all.

This was a special time in my life, and worthy of a blog or two in its own right, but keeping to the topic of the day:

MEMBERS OF THE ROCKEFELLER family took a fight with Exxon Mobil Corp. public yesterday, challenging the oil giant spawned by their namesake to split the roles of chairman and chief executive officer and to focus more on renewable energy.

The family members, who describe themselves as the company's longest continuous shareholders, said they are concerned that Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil is too focused on short-term gains from soaring oil prices and should do more to invest in cleaner technology for the future. Separating the leadership roles, they argue, would better position the company for challenges to come.

"They are fighting the last war, and they're not seeing they're facing a new war," said Peter O'Neill, who heads the Rockefeller family committee dealing with Exxon Mobil and is the great-great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller.

Mr. O'Neill said he had the support of more than 80 percent of family members older than 21. Family representatives said that they were not sure how much of the company they own collectively but that it represented a significant holding. Mutual funds and other institutional investors, not individuals, are the company's top shareholders.

Read it all.