A Whole Herd of Goats

Under the Mosaic Law, on the Day of Atonement a goat was brought into the Tabernacle, and over him the priest enumerated all the sins of the people, symbolically transferring those sins from the people to the goat. The animal was then taken out into the wilderness far from the camp and released, never to return. It was a symbolic purging of the people from their sins, and the source of our term "scapegoat," someone to blame to distract us from those who might share the guilt. Not only individuals but whole races and ethnic groups have been persecuted as scapegoats over the centuries. It's a classic Propaganda Technique, and it's being worked hard by the Obama administration.
The AIG executives who received bonuses paid out of the bailout funds provided by the Obama administration out of our pockets, are the most obvious examples. No question, it is galling to think the tax dollars of $30,000/yr laborers are paying the six-figure compensation checks of Wall Street types walking away from the train wreck of our retirement programs, and Congress, the Department of Commerce and the media are making sure everyone stays angry about it. What the media, the Administration and the Congressional harpies, Democrats and Republicans alike, have left out is that the vast majority of those who received the bonuses had no involvement in the "credit default swaps" that brought the company down. They also haven't told you that many of those who received those bonuses had worked the entire previous year for for one dollar to try to address the impending problems, accepting that and the promise of "deferred payments"--spelled b-o-n-u-s--as their total compensation. They also haven't told you that the bonuses were specifically authorized in the 1100 page bailout package that the Congress voted on and the President signed, without either of them ever having read it, or that the clause that authorized the payments was inserted as an amendment by Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee which was supposed to oversee AIG's activities! No wonder they want to keep the heat on the AIG execs. If they couldn't transfer their sins to the scapegoats, those dirty little secrets might be darn hard to explain.
Also trussed up and waiting to be led out into the wilderness are the chairmen of Ford and GM. These guys are in a little different situation than the AIG employees. They've galloped forward and volunteered to serve as scapegoats. It's true that the auto companies have been shamefully mismanaged not only by Alan Mulally (Ford) and Rick Wagoner (GM), but by their predecessors as well, and it didn't help their image to fly in for Congressional hearings in their private jets without any plan for recovery beyond demanding a bailout. The part that nobody is talking about is fact that Congressional interference in the auto industry, in the form of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, have forced the automakers to build whole fleets of cars that nobody wants to buy. Popular "green" rhetoric and public proclamations to the contrary, the best-selling vehicles in the United States are and remain trucks, SUVS and family cars. The over-priced and under-performing hybrids, the Ford Escape and Chevy Volt, just haven't won public acceptance, and for obvious reasons. They don't do the job Americans expect of their vehicles. Nevertheless, Congress has mandated the manufacture of these ornamental offerings to the eco-lobby, and the companies keep producing them because they haven't got the guts to oppose the politically correct sentiment that says the government knows better than the free market what the people should have. So Ford and Wagoner will be led off into the woods, never to return. After last week's hostile takeover, the new CEO, President Barack Obama, has fired them, so the people will think their sins are purged. But that won't make the automakers profitable.
To change the metaphor, it's the old Roman trick of placating the people with bread and circuses. On the one hand the Administration is promising to make sure the masses have food on the table and health care down the road, and on the other they provide the spectacle of corporate fat cats being devoured by the lions of official scorn and public outrage, all so that we won't notice the orgy being enjoyed by Caesar and his friends.
PS