To anyone with a passing acquaintance with the bankrupt Tribune Company that came from reading its newspapers, it would seem counterintuitive that the charlatans responsible for the current crummy simulacra of those once-respectable, if not great, papers that now land with barely a sound on long-suffering porches from coast to coast would be getting bonuses this year, if ever.  The organ with which I’m most familiar (well, the other organ…), the Los Angeles Times, has, under the Tribune Company’s “stewardship,” gone from being the Paper of Record of the West into being a shoddy, disreputable advertiser whose current claim to fame, aside from selling its editorial content to advertisers, stems from having “discovered” Jonah Goldberg. ( That’s something the Pulitzer Committee is sure to notice….)

Beside the fact that ordinary people tend to think of bankruptcy as a time of suffering and humbling austerity, the Tribune Company is, remember, in bankruptcy for a reason; they shat all over their product and now no one wants to buy it.  But like all worthless, unaccountable monopolies, they have a lot of hungry executive mouths to feed, and unlike their many creditors, (not to mention their cheated employees and customers…) the big boys will be fed.  Lots.

By Michael Oneal | Tribune Co. plans to pay 35 of its top executives $14.9 million in additional 2009 bonuses, a court filing revealed late Monday, despite pointed opposition to the proposal from several key constituents in its 17-month-old Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

The company describes the bonuses, devised as two plans, as rewards for steering the company through bankruptcy court while generating total operating cash flow of $494 million in 2009.

Ah, that “reward” must be like the “retention bonuses” of which Wall Street is so fond, except for the niggling fact that it comes from a dying industry with no jobs available, and goes to people who disgraced their company, financially and strategically, and will continue to do so.

The payments would supplement $42.1 million in management incentive bonuses the court allowed Tribune Co. to pay in February to approximately 670 managers, including most of the executives included in the most senior group.

See, it turns out that the $14 million is really more like $60 million, (since February, that is…) which is money being directly stolen from creditors, readers, and employees, for the feat of having ripped off the same three stakeholders so successfully.  Just like the bank bonuses, and just like all the rest of them. it’s  money for nothing, and perks for free.  Naturally, Tribune resorted to a “government” bankruptcy court to expensively bless all this theft, since thanks to the magic of the “market,” corporate thieves cash in while less well-dressed criminals serve hard time.  Innocence is, as the Free Market would dictate, most typically determined by the price of one’s lawyer’s suit. (see Simpson, O.J.)

The Tribune Company’s outrageous cashing in on utter failure merely lands atop the massive pile of other fraudulent, freeloading enterprises gone Galt like BP, Massey Energy, Goldman Sachs, Enron, Blackwater, Halliburton, and on and on.  Not a one would last a day in the Free Market without the tender mercies of their supposedly overbearing sugar daddies, the American Taxpayer, and it’s our job to just pay up, because a lot of influential folks with a lot of money decided that this would be so.  We must Look Forward once again, but with lighter wallets, something we seem to be getting used to by now.

Please, bring back the welfare queens… at least they weren’t so expensive.