There are always those who insist that Democrats aren’t really socialists, and that it’s unfair for us shrill partisans to hang that label on ‘em. Well, moderates and RINOs, can we call ‘em socialists now?

Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.

He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.

Mr. Frank seems to be in synch with the Obama administration in his plans for executive compensation.

Mr. Geithner said he would consider “extending at least some of the TARP provisions and features of the $500,000 cap to U.S. companies generally.”

Emphasis mine. Socialism, in plain black and white, with absolutely no margin for error or obfuscation. And if you rubber-spined weak sisters out there still think it’s just too rude to acknowledge the simple truth about Democrats, well, would you mind telling me exactly what denialist term you’d prefer we use?

Once again: the “stimulus” ain’t about stimulating anything — except government power.

(Via AP)

Update! More on what’s really going on here:

Voters, then, have every reason to expect from Washington a stimulus bill that will help restore growth. But they aren’t getting one. The stimulus plan is flawed. It marries a few measures that count as stimulus with tons of spending on a domestic agenda that the Democrats have waited years to push through Congress. Why? Because Obama and the Democrats who run Congress are more interested in an idea than they are in economic recovery.

That idea has two components. One: The conservative era, with its more-free-than-not markets, is over.

Two: Now is the time to complete the American welfare state by (a) introducing universal health care and (b) fostering economic equality through higher taxes on income, capital, and estates and increased union membership.

The stimulus bill needs to be seen in this light. It is just the beginning. For Obama, the stimulus is a “down payment” on “investments” in health care, alternative energy, education, scientific and medical research, and infrastructure. When you buy a car, you don’t stop with the down payment. There are many, many more “payments” to come. How large will these payments be? How long will we be paying them?

Until the next American revolution, assuming there is one.

Updated update! Velociman, as per usual, is eloquently on point, and unafraid of the consequences of calling a spade a spade in Obamerika:

My unborn grandchildren will in all likelihood look back upon the passage of this so-called stimulus bill as the tipping point when capitalist America became the Plutocratic States of America. That sad moment when the mythological Shining City on a Hill became an economically spastic failed state, with the traditional lines separating bureaucrat from capitalist merged to become an unidentifiable mass of oligarchs.

There is no economic stimulation in this execrable plundering of the public weal. It is, actually, no more or less than what it appears to be: a gargantuan and shameless involuntary transfer of the private assets of John Q. Buttfucked to the sinister Machiavels who bestride the Rogue State, bit barely in its thrashing jaws. It is what the leftists have always dreamed of: the harmonic convergence of crisis, despair, and befuddlement that will allow the muscled arm of l’etat to exercise a great vast mugging of the American people. Control of both houses of Congress, a megalomaniacal president with delusions of grandeur, propped upon his throne like a bollixed Joseph II by a press simultaneously worshipful and perfidious. Abetted by a formerly loyal opposition brought low by their own avaricious weaknesses, and a cohort of instant gratification baby boomer financiers bereft of all decency, reason, and fiduciary constraint.

I’d say that about covers it all.