Dems Lure AIG Into Contract, Then Bash Them With It

Before the election everyone said the liberals would over-reach, like they always do when they get into power, and I guess I believed it but couldn't really fathom how fast or how far they would do so. Well it turns out we didn't have to wait very long to find out, did we?

This AIG bonus scandal, not a huge deal in my eyes, though annoying, has highlighted for me just how incompetent the lawmakers in Washington are. I should have figured this out when Bush was still in office late last year, as he led the charge to rapidly approve $700 billion in TARP funds ("Troubled Asset Recovery...") so the feds could forcefully back-up all the bad mortgage assets that so many investors had on their books. A decent idea on its face, considering the financial crisis's causes. However, in about one month's time, the TARP fund became the Slush fund, with lawmakers tapping it to bail out other corporate entities like the car companies (NOT a decent idea by any stretch) and others.

Not satisfied with that idiocy, President Obama got inaugurated and promptly started working hard to make Bush look like a fiscal conservative, leading the Democrat congress to approve all kinds of borrow-and-spend measures that raise the annual federal deficit (not the debt, the deficit) to something like $1.75 trillion. They approved this 1000-page bill about 12 hours after having received it, so obviously no one had actually read it. How we will ever pay for this without quintupling the inflation rate, I have no idea.

In the midst of all this, including more federal bailouts of large companies that somehow got "too big to fail" status, the feds bought over 80% of American International Group, AIG, with bailout "white knight" -type funding of over $182 billion. Put aside the fact that it is a horrible idea to have the federal government owning stakes in private companies. This is a controlling stake of a teetering-on-the-edge company that does business all over the world in many industries. And they are doing similar things with many other companies like this. Does the word "communism" mean anything to you?

As they were lavishing dollars on AIG, they put together a contract, negotiated and signed by the feds and by AIG executives, that provided the conditions for the company getting the money. During negotiations, AIG agreed to accept limits on executive compensation that the feds wanted. However, the Democrat chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd, inserted a paragraph that stated that these limits would not apply to any compensation (including bonuses) that had been contractually agreed-on before February 11th (Dodd, by the way, turns out to be the most heavily-paid senator by AIG during campaign season). Well AIG had agreed to pay its executives $165 million in bonuses some time ago. And after they got the bailout money, they made good on that promise.

Well once the public got wind of these bonuses, paid out by a company on the federal welfare wagon to a handful of executives whose big success had been to drive the company they'd been running into the ground, they were rightly very angry. They began to ask, "how did they think they could do such a thing?" and reporters quickly found the loophole that Dodd had put in there. Of course, it didn't have his name on it, and so when reporters started questioning him about it, he denied knowing anything about it (making him a liar). Eventually he 'fessed up and claimed that, "the administration" made him do it. What a bonehead!

At this point the congress and the White House went into full-fledged panic/defense mode. First they had denied knowing anything about it, then they admitted they'd known about it but pointed fingers at others. Finally, after having been backed into a corner, they responded with, "the taxpayers want justice, and we're here to give it to them." So they did what they could, working out a bill that levies a 90% excise tax on a very specific group of people - executives at companies that have received bailout money - on income they make over $250,000. Rather than be apalled and embarrassed at this ridiculous and evil piece of legislation that specifically targets a certain class of private citizens, taking away almost all of the money they earn, Rep Barney Frank, co-contributor to the financial crisis meltdown, said he expected the states and local governments to take care of the remaining 10%. He was proud of this disgusting legislation!!

Look, when the American federal government starts taxing people at a 90% rate, it is time to step back and say, "Whoa!! Hold on a minute; what are we doing, here?" It goes against everything we, as a capitalist nation, should stand for.


Secondly, the only reason they're doing this at all is because they were so incompetent the first time around, agreeing to allow the bonuses to begin with. Had they done their jobs right the first time, they wouldn't have to be meeting, discussing how to get it back. Dodd never would have written that loophole into the bill in the first place, and/or others would have had time (more than 12 hours) to actually read the bill before voting "yes" on it, would have noticed this provision and excised it.

Obama's head of the Council on Economic Development, a lifelong academic (big surprise) said on Fox News Sunday that this never would have happened had we had "a judge" in place that could have nixed the bonuses so we didn't have to come up with this punitive retroactive confiscation - sorry, tax - that was her solution. Along with a whole host of other idiotic things she said on the program, this one statement is an obvious cover for Senator Dodd. What she should have said was that, had they known they were going to get caught specifically allowing these bonuses, and that the public would be really upset about them, they never would have allowed Dodd to add that paragraph into the agreement in the first place. So they miscalculated politically, assuming no one would notice or care, but wound up getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Disgusting.

Remember "disgusting" every time you see a Democrat on a news show rambling on about how offended he/she is by the whole AIG scandal, demonizing their management and advocating such bills as this unconstitutional 90% tax. These idiots wrote it into the agreement, got caught after the money went out, and now are on this completely bogus crusade on behalf of the taxpayers to get it back any way they can. Disgusting.