BANK OF AMERICA’S SHAREHOLDERS vote for change! “After months of anger at Bank of America (BAC) chairman and CEO Ken Lewis, shareholders voted to fire him as board chairman yesterday at the company’s annual meeting in Charlotte. Lewis had a terrible year in 2008, as did everyone in the banking industry, but he had the added baggage of having withheld material adverse information from his shareholders about the forced merger of BAC with Merrill Lynch late last year. . . . Ken Lewis’s shareholders have now taken their revenge for what Paulson forced him to do. (They’re within their rights, of course, and I’m not arguing any differently.) The SEC now has to decide whether to bring enforcement action against Lewis and the BAC board. That would be a distinct injustice, unless they also choose to go after Paulson (not bloody likely). . . . One hundred days ago, we entered a new era, in which heavy government intervention in American industry is considered normal, rather than for emergencies only. And so far, the signs are that both Congress and the Administration are entirely willing to intervene heavily and unilaterally, not only in governance decisions but even in management decisions.”

Plus, from Megan McArdle: “Right now, Ken Lewis remains CEO–the board expressed unanimous support. But at this point, it seems likely that it’s only a matter of time. (If it isn’t, it will become a famous business school case on the Principal-Agent problem.)”

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE: “Workers demolishing the wall of a building that once belonged to the former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp have found a message in a bottle written by prisoners 65 years ago, Auschwitz museum officials said.” I send my SOS to the world . . ..

AMERICA’S best restroom.

WORRIES ABOUT coming hyperinflation. No sign of it at the moment, though, even in gold prices.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COMRADE!

IS ATHEIST ACTIVISM increasing?

JAY LENO SAYS Goodbye to Pontiac: A Tribute to GM’s Performance Brand. “I thought—that’s just the coolest wheel I’ve ever seen. So I really liked those big Pontiacs. And, of course, what kid didn’t go crazy for the GTO—the car that started the whole muscle car craze. The first few years of the GTO were great.”

ERIC POSNER on the Economics and International Law of Flu Pandemics.

Plus, Kenneth Anderson on Swine Flu, Pandemics, and Transnational Regulatory Networks.

STRATFOR: A Chilling Effect on U.S. Counterterrorism.

OH, GOODY: Tennessee officials nearly sure of the state’s first swine flu case.

UPDATE: Helpful advice from Joe Biden. Avoiding subways won’t be hard for Tennesseans . . . .

Plus, prepare for the long haul.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bad news for travelers to Cancun. And for people who live there, even though no swine flu has been spotted there.

DOES G.M. NOW STAND FOR Gettelfinger Motors? Actually, I like the idea of the unions owning the car companies — or I would, if they then had to stand on their own instead of getting still more bailout cash. I’m afraid we’re in for a decade of politically propped-up zombie carmakers, a sort of American Leyland.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus is taking a positive view: “Let the UAW, as new owner of GM, pay the price for the overgrown work rules of its locals. Let the UAW demand above-market raises from itself. Let the UAW try to raise money from new lenders after the previous round of lenders has been royally screwed (thanks, in part, to the UAW). And then let the UAW try to sell the cars that result.” So long as friendly politicians don’t protect them from the consequences of their actions with other people’s money.

MORE ON THE Tea Party Protesters outside Obama’s speech yesterday. No wonder he was defensive.

STAGES OF DENIAL: In Reason, Matt Kibbe writes, Take pity on the left as it grapples with the tea party revolt. “Judging from the left’s hysterical reaction, something really big must have happened. But the only way to really understand the left’s misinformed and paranoid attacks is to realize that the protests represent tangible proof that basic libertarian values continue to resonate with the American electorate. That, apparently, is a difficult thing for some to accept.”

Plus this:

What were the tea parties about? Reading the signs and talking to people (unlike CNN’s incredibly hostile Susan Roesgen, I actually let folks answer my questions in their own words), the “agenda” was crystal clear. Tea party activists were worried and angry about government bailouts for the irresponsible, about spending that “stimulated” record growth in government and not much else, and about government borrowing that will place unconscionable burdens on future generations of Americans. My favorite sign of the day: “Give Me Liberty, Not Debt.”

Some tried to diminish the tea parties as misguided tax protests. In reality, the protestors demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of economics that went well beyond objections to higher tax rates. You can’t spend money you don’t have, the tea party attendees understood, and government spending above current revenues must be paid for with higher taxes, more borrowing (to be paid for with higher taxes in the future), or artificial government expansion of money and credit, which can only debase the currency and make everyone poorer through inflation.

Indeed.

TAINTED MONEY FROM POLITICIANS:

Ellen Roman, executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southeastern Connecticut, said her organization got $4,000 from Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd (D-CT), who received the funds as a donation from fallen mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corporation. Roman said if she had known where the contribution originated she might have asked her charity’s national office to review it, but added that “it’s very challenging times right now [and] I do have to look at what kind of resources I have.” . . .

Deciding which donations to accept, especially at a time when public sensitivities about financial improprieties are running high, can be a complicated calculus for charities and nonprofit organizations. “Organizations weigh how much of an assault on their integrity this is, and whether they have the credibility to withstand that assault,” said Gene Tempel, president of the Indiana University Foundation. “You either damage your integrity a little bit, or you don’t serve some people.”

What’s a little damage to integrity, if there’s money in it? Nothing that bothers our leaders!

HOUSE APPROVES FEDERAL HATE-CRIME EXPANSION BILL. Jacob Sullum comments: “Aside from the usual problems with hate crime laws, which punish people for their ideas by making sentences more severe when the offender harbors politically disfavored antipathies, this bill federalizes another huge swath of crimes that ought to be handled under state law, creating myriad opportunities for double jeopardy by another name.”

HMM: Mexico Limits Public Services As Flu Alerts Are Increased.

EXAMINER: Court records contradict Obama HUD nominee Sims.

JUSTICE SCALIA RESPONDS TO A BLOG INQUIRY.

And, speaking of privacy, news about Miss California that — I’m fairly certain — has no counterpart with Justice Scalia. But what about President Obama’s Facebook Friends?

FABIUS MAXIMUS on American sentiments on torture.

Plus, what Obama got wrong about the British.

CREDIT MARKETS GO JOHN GALT?

People are reeling from having their 401ks wiped out in the current market slide. And now those who had for years bought what they thought were “safe” blue-chip corporate bonds are discovering they were only safe until they were told by the government to go fly a kite because government wants to pay off the unions instead. That is deeply unfair to small bondholders, and it’s dreadful economic policy. As a friend of mine put it to me, “Who in their right mind will buy corporate bonds now? And if nobody’s buying bonds, how exactly are our debt markets going to get humming again? What a mess.”

Indeed. This could be the continuation of the Tea Party phenomenon, manifesting itself in a different way.

If you set out to wreck the non-governmental parts of the economy, you could hardly do a better job. And, frankly, the governmental parts aren’t being handled much better. I mean, how much safer are U.S. Treasury bonds in the face of this attitude, and towering piles of debt?

UPDATE: TigerHawk emails:

Yes, the situation with the auto workers is a mess and the small bondholders are getting whacked, but it is far from clear that the example of the GM situation will hurt credit markets. First, the credit markets have actually been improving in recent weeks (while the automakers have been understood as zombies), with more money flowing in to mutual funds that invest in bonds, yields on corporate bonds (among other instruments) slowly declining (meaning bond prices are going up), and, finally, a few original issuance “high-yield” bond deals actually getting done. So I am not sure the auto deal is in fact causing the credit markets to go “John Galt,” for which we should all be grateful. Second, in general the Paulson/Geithner era has been extremely solicitous of bondholders and other creditors. The equity has gotten crushed, the executives have been taken to the woodshed, but the government has been all about protecting the creditors, even to the point of serious moral hazard (thinking primarily of the AIG counterparties, who are the main and possibly only beneficiaries of the AIG “bailout”).

Well, I hope that’s right.

I GUESS OBAMA KNOWS ABOUT THE TEA PARTIES NOW: “He’s not really all that gracious when it comes to dealing with people that don’t already love him, is he? Kind of smirky, with a faint flavor of exasperation.” Say what you will about George W. Bush, he had a skin whose thickness wasn’t measured in Planck lengths.

HMM: Analysts Dispute Charge by Specter of GOP Moving Rightward. I think it’s more like what Neil Sorens said: “The reason for the change in perception is that with fiscal conservatism abandoned, the only distinguishing characteristic of the Republican Party is now social conservatism.” So, tepid as that is, it dominates. Also, there has to be some reason to tell college students that Republicans are uncool. . . .

IS THE NRSC ABOUT TO abandon Pat Toomey? That wouldn’t be nice.

IT’S INEXPLICABLE! Illinois Lawmakers Strangely Uninterested in Fighting Corruption.

MEGAN MCARDLE: “Doctors are not, by and large, altruists who dream of living on a GS-13 wage. Nor can I blame them.”

Neither are politicians.