From The Hill:

The world’s top-earning hedge fund managers have bankrolled almost exclusively Democratic campaigns.

The top 10 highest-paid hedge fund managers in 2009 have dished out campaign contributions almost only to Democrats. 

Over their lifetimes, those managers have given almost $33 million in campaign contributions to Democrats, according to research by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and that is based on data maintained by the nonpartisan CQMoneyline.

The same managers gave roughly $600,000 to Republicans, according to the research. The contributions went 98 percent to Democrats and two percent to Republicans.
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Recently, people have started to notice that government employees, especially federal employees are starting to make more money than private sector employees. USA Today reported in March that federal employees had salaries of over 12% more than private sector employees in 2008. And, this noted that the benefits were even higher:

These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

One would think that with regulators failing or watching porn and the public’s estimation of government at an all-time low, Congress would be interested in doing something about this. Not Chris Dodd or the Democrats. Instead, his financial regulation bill actually creates a whole office full of government bureaucrats with unlimited salaries. Let’s look at the text of Section 152 (d).

(d) OFFICE PERSONNEL
(1) IN GENERAL
—The Director, in consultation with the Chairperson, may fix the number of,
and appoint and direct, all employees of the Office.

This means that the Director of the Office of Financial Research picks the size of the department, not Congress. And their pay is set at the discretion of the office, not subject to the rules governing civil servants.

(2) COMPENSATION
—The Director, in consultation with the Chairperson, shall fix, adjust, anadminister the pay for all employees of the Office without regard to chapter 51 or subchapter III ofchapter 53 of title 5, United States Code, relatingto classification of positions and General Schedule pay rates.

Let me make sure I get this right.

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It’s amazing to watch the civil libertarians hide when Democrats propose the most sweeping intrusions of privacy in generations.  In addition to the litany of bad policies contained in the Dodd Financial Reform bill is this nugget on pages 1039-1040.  In short, it extends government reach to every deposit account of every citizen.

Subtitle G of the Dodd discussion draft bill requires that records be maintained and reported “for each branch, automated teller machine at which deposits are accepted, and other deposit taking service facility with respect to any financial institution, the financial institution shall maintain a record of the number and dollar amounts of deposit accounts of customers.”

What’s worse, banks will be required to submit these records to the new super regulatory agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (page 1041).  The CFPA will be allowed to use this information for any purpose “as permitted by law” under CFPA rules—rules set by CFPA themselves.

So, lets get this straight—the law requires banks to snoop on its customers MOST PERSONAL INFORMATION and submit it to another government agency so it can be used anyway the CFPA see’s fit.

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