The AIG executive bonuses that everybody seems to be talking about today — while perhaps morally questionable — are legal and contractual payments to these executives.
And Congress should have no business deciding how much private sector citizens are paid, to include their bonuses. Unless you’re one of those Socialist-leaning Liberals who thinks that, yes, the US Government should regulate how much each and every person is paid. You know. To ensure fairness.
Perhaps the NFL, NBA, and the Screen Writers Guild of America wouldn’t mind if Congress decided, “You know what, Kobe? After missing three late minute free throws last night, we don’t think you should be paid as much, so we’re going to introduce a special Kobe Sucks at Free Throws tax to offset your pathetic performance.”
Or maybe they might send a letter to Matt Damon saying, “Dear Matt, we, the Honorable members of the United States Congress, have decided to scale your pay in accordance with your actual acting ability. From now on, you will receive no more than $8.95 and a Big Gulp from 7-11 for each movie.”
If Congress is actually worried about giving government money to people who don’t deserve it based on their pathetic job performance, maybe they should start with the raise they just gave themselves.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is Dumber than a Box of Rocks
If Congress didn’t want AIG to be able to use the bailout money to pay for contractual and legal bonus agreements, then they 1) shouldn’t have been throwing around OUR money like it was THEIR money, or 2) they should have stipulated it in the language of the Stimulus Pork Bill.
Instead the geniuses who are running our country, led by the ethically challenged Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), specifically wrote language into the stimulus bill that specifically allows for the exact bonus payments he is now whining about.
While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” — which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.
The amendment made it into the final version of the bill, and is law.
Not so in-coincidentally, Sen. Dodd happens to be the largest single recipient of campaign donations form AIG during the 2008 election cycle with $103,100, according to opensecrets.org.
Who do you think received the second highest amount of campaign donations from AIG last year? If you said “Barry Obama” ( to the tune of $101K), then you’ve been paying closer attention than most.
Obama is also trying to find an illegal way to steal back the payments that were legally made to AIG executives. Despite the fact that O-Bozo was the Pretender in Chief who signed the bill into law that included the amendment that made those payments legal.
Our country is being run by clowns.
It’s almost as if Obama is nothing more than a slightly-below average community organizer who is in way over his head as President of the United States. Almost as if…
________
OTHERS
- Michelle Malkin
- Michele Bachmann at Townhall.com
- The Liberty Papers
- The American Pundit
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Robbie, Obama, in his best feigned surprise mode, is shocked, shocked I tell ,you, that there is gambling going on at Ricks. Or should I say Timothy’s place.
Last November, the NYSlimes reported how Geithner worked his little tail off on the AIG bailout. It was actually Geithner’s baby, not Paulson’s. But today, the administration is claiming that although those at Treasury and the Fed knew about the bonuses last fall, poor little Timothy had no clue. Wait a minute, wasn’t Geithner, the co-author of TARP, (along with his buddy Patrick Kennedy), in charge of the NY Fed last fall?
So we are to believe that Geithner, author of TARP, godfather to the AIG bailout christening, did not know that Chris Dodd had permitted for the bonuses? And we are to believe that the Porkulus Bill, that directly involved the Treasury Department, was never read by the brilliant Mr. Geithner that the nation could not do without as Treasury Secretary?
Give me a friggin’ break. Does the administration really think that we are all that stupid? Apparently so.
But maybe Obama should quit judging the 48% that did not vote for him by the mental capacity of those that did.
It is rumored that Tom Hanks will earn a sweet $42 million for his next movie. Considering that Americans are having a hard time finding the funds for a few hours of escape from their daily problems, I am sure the Obama administration will soon also feign shock over Hank’s current income. After all, we are all in this together (as Obama throws not one, but two, taxpayer funded parties today, claiming his Irish heritage as a reason why) and I am sure that Obama doesn’t think that Mr. Hanks should be getting such a salary on the backs of movie goers.
Oh, wait, Hanks is a Democrat.
Never mind.
Obama’s and Dodd’s “anger” is nothing more than CYA. The money they got from AIG was a bribe and those two scum delivered in the form of exemptions specifically written into the original POS legislation to protect those bonuses. Politics the Chicago way.
No…he knows the news media will not do anything. What should be a really good “gotcha” news story will be either totally ignored or spun the way the administration wants. Remember: modern journalism=public relations.
That’s perfect! I’m stealing that and using it elsewhere!
When responding to how to hndle the AIG bonuses/retention paymens this is what Summers had to say. “He recognized that you can’t just abrogate contracts willy-nilly, but he moved to do what could be done,” Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. But what about rewriting the contracts for benefits and and pay in regards to the UAW and GM or Chrysler. There didn’t seem to be a problem with forcing a rewriting of those contracts. Those men and women of the UAW aren’t making 6 and 7 figure bnuses or more and yet they get new deals forced on them. AIG and their people don’t have to suffer anything…jst the little people/ Change doesn’t seem to have come to Washington….change is just happening out in the real world.
Does no one see the other option? They were well aware of the issue and how the population would react, and allowed it to happen so they could pass precedent setting legislation to fully tax bonus payments after the fact. Something they could use later in other less obvious situations to increase tax revenues.
It just smells of a manufactured crisis to enable legislation that would never stand a chance of passing otherwise.
Fannie Mae & Fannie Mac are also giving bonuses. Are they going to go after them, too?
yes, they are apparently. although to a lesser degree it seems. who needs a contract when the gub’ment can come in and tell you “your’re contract is null because it makes us look bad…so what if it is legal and binding”. this administration consists of little more than con-men, thieves and most of all…liars.