Amazing Article On Who Is "Overpaid."

This is spot on.

Somebody is getting rich off our tax dollars. That somebody, governors in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and a host of other states would have us believe, just happens to be our neighbor the public employee.

Teachers, fire fighters, cops, and case workers, have become, in effect, the new “welfare queens.” Ambitious pols the nation over, taking a page from the Ronald Reagan playbook, are creating mythic tax dollar-gobbling stereotypes that demonize Americans just struggling to get by.

These stereotypes do more than demonize. They distract. They shove off the political radar screen the fortunates who really are getting rich off our tax dollars. Fortunates like William Swanson, the CEO of Raytheon, the high-tech giant.

CEO Swanson has taken home $97.8 million over the past five years. His company gets 27 percent of its revenue from federal contracts.

Oh, they're not done:

Swanson’s rival, Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens, has pocketed $111.1 million over the past five years. The company he runs gets 37 percent of its revenue from federal contracts, with most of that coming from the Pentagon.

And don’t forget Louis Chenevert, the chief exec at United Technologies, the Connecticut-based company that ranks as the 21st biggest federal contractor. News reports last week revealed that Chenevert made $22.1 million in 2010, a 7.7 percent jump over the $20.5 million he pulled in the year before.

Chenevert “bolstered” the United Tech bottom line, says the Hartford Business Journal, “in part through job cuts and plant closings.” The $1.5 billion in tax dollars his company collected from federal contracts did a bit of bolstering, too.

Companies like UT, Lockheed, and Raytheon don’t just lavish our tax dollars on their top execs. They deduct all the multiple millions they lavish on these execs off their taxes. In other words, the more CEOs pocket, the less their corporations pay at tax time — and the heavier the tax burden on average Americans.

Top executives at America’s biggest corporations, in effect, get us coming and going. Our tax dollars pump up their pay. Then they deduct their pay off their corporate tax bills, a move that enhances their corporate bottom-line “performance” and sets them up, in turn, for even bigger executive paydays.

Now please, tell me who's taking more from you.