Today, while testifying on Capitol Hill about the Big Bailout, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson answered questions from lawmakers hellbent on beating their own populist drums. In between questions, Paulson did his best to show solidarity with The People by periodically sticking a Populist Drum on his head and beating it with a feverish intensity.

One of the most pressing questions being pounded out from the various drums concerned CEO compensation. Many Democrats are adamant that no bailout for Wall Street financial firms transpire without CEO compensation limits installed.

"I share frustrations with CEO compensation," Paulson said. And that may be true. With a net worth of somewhere north of half a billion dollars, most accumulated as CEO of Goldman Sachs, his frustration is understandable to anyone not living in the 83% of America that is considered rural or the remaining 16% that is not Manhattan.


Caught Between Cheerleaders and Vandals

Indeed, while claims that Manhattan is the "financial capitol of the world" may now seem dubious, there is little doubt this tiny island is for all practical purposes the world's largest gated community. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, financial sector employees last year took in more than a third of all the income earned in the city even though they accounted for only about 12.5% of the jobs. According to the New York Times, that share is double the industry's take from 30 years ago even as the number of financial sector jobs has declined.

Like the steady stream of maids, gardeners and dog-walkers who stagger in through the gates of America's most wealthy closed communities each morning, when you are in Manhattan and conducting a transaction with a service employee the odds are pretty good that the person handing you your dry-cleaned shirts or coffee stand purchase came into the city via one of the heavily secured bridges or tunnels.

The upshot is that you get weird scenes like the one downtown last night. At a point, right before I was asked to leave the pub, I realized The Big Fed Protest was either a dumb joke or just one more failed movement. This morning it's hard to really care. I may be a city dweller by location, but my soul is rural to the bone; Kentucky dirt, limestone fortified bluegrass. The people know me, and in turn, I know them. That may be why I don't really need a pork rind sculpture to mean anything. And why I enjoy crop circles as brutal Cartesian statements of sheer existence induced by an easy access to field rakes and excessive amounts of corn liquor.

When nothing makes sense anymore, the experts resort to data mining while the professionals simply look at Google search trends. An acquaintance this morning forwarded me the top five Google search terms as of 9 a.m.



Americans are nothing if not helpful during a crisis, and while on the surface it looks like that crisis is not so much Wall Street as the lack of a name for Sarah Palin's baby, there is more at work here. Clearly, many of us are desperately torn between Idaho cheerleaders and Idaho vandals. Indeed, that is the cultural crossroads we find ourselves facing in rural America and even here in the city, from Maiden Lane in Manhattan to Main Street in Boise, caught somewhere between cheerleaders and vandals.