Remember the massive outrage over bailout bonuses that got us peasants marching with pitchforks? On March 19, in a sweeping 328-93 vote, the House quickly enacted a 90% tax on $165 million in bonuses handed by AIG. But then bank lobbyists "moved into hyperdrive" and persuaded Senate leaders and President Obama to quietly crush our pitchfork movement.

Since bailout taxes were taken "off the table," Rep. Alan Grayson introduced H.R. 1664 to force the Treasury Department to restrict bonuses through bailout contracts. On April 1, the House adopted Grayson's H.R. 1664 on a bi-partisan vote of 247-171. But first BlueDogs led by Melissa Bean gutted Grayson's bill.

Bean's amendment says that as long as banks start paying back their loan money, which they can do with their loan money, they are no longer subject to the limitations imposed by the Grayson bill.

So who's protecting the banksters? Obama's top economic advisors, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.

Clearly it's futile for outraged citizens to try to limit the salaries of the banksters, either through taxes or bailout contracts. So what's the alternative? A surtax on the incomes of all millionaires, whether or not they work for a bank.

Update 1: The CBO's estimated cost of the bailout just increased from $189 billion in January to $356 billion. Who's benefiting most from the bailouts? Millionaire investors are. That's why their taxes should be raised, rather than increasing the debt of our grandchildren.

Update 2: Dean Baker asks how much do we have to pay Fannie and Freddie execs to lose us billions?

Apparently we have to give them more than $200 million in bonuses to give them enough incentive to lose taxpayers billions of dollars. The NYT says that 213 employees are slated for bonuses of more than $100k each and the top paid ones will pocket over $1 million.

Update 3: Eric Holder arrested Steven Michael Rubinstein, an accountant, for evading taxes on $6 million through an account with Swiss bank UBS. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as UBS admits to helping rich Americans evade taxes on $20 billion. And that's just 285 of their U.S. customers out of 52,000.

Update 4: Todd Gitlin also wants to tax the rich.

If you believe, on the other hand, that the discrepancy between top salaries and medium salaries is outlandish, then the logical policy is to raise top tax brackets.