All the phony outrage over the contractual bonuses paid to AIG executives masks what should be the real scandal: our money going to bail out foreign banks. Goldmach Sachs aldo received TARP bailout money through AIG.
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (al-Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc and a parade of European banks were the major beneficiaries of $93 billion in payments from AIG — more than half of the U.S. taxpayer money spent to rescue the massive insurer.
The revelation on Sunday by American International Group Inc was another potential public relations nightmare, coming on the same weekend that the Obama administration expressed outrage over AIG’s plan to pay massive bonuses to the people in the very division that destroyed the company by issuing billions of dollars in derivatives insuring risky assets.
Over half the original TARP bailout money intended for AIG went instead through AUG to banks outside the United States as well as Goldman Sachs.
And they’re howling about $173 million in bonuses that were contractual obligations? For those of you who graduated from Racine Unified, that means that AIG was obligated to pay them. Not to do so would have had them wind up in court, which would have cost a lot more.
Here’s another dirty little secret: those bonuses which are the object of such outrage on the part of Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama and Democrats in Congress … were well known to both The Messiah and His minions, including the tax cheat Treasury Secretary Turbo Tax Cheat Tim Geithner long before Monday.
And, the Sheriff of Dodd City, Chris Dodd, he of the sweetheart Countrywide mortgage fame, not only inserted the language in the porkulus bill passed in February to protect the AIG bonuses, he did so at the urging of Turbo Tax Cheat Tim.
(al-CNN) — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNN Thursday his department asked Sen. Chris Dodd to include a loophole in the stimulus bill that allowed bailed-out insurance giant American International Group to keep its bonuses.
In an interview with CNN’s Ali Velshi, Geithner said the Treasury Department was particularly concerned the government would face lawsuits if bonus contracts were breached.
But the Chocolate Jesus stands up and says He is going to have his tax cheat treasury secretary pursue all legal means of recovering that bonus money. What Clintonesque weasel words. All legal means. Which means, there are no legal means. It was in the original TARP package, which Turbo Tax Cheat Tim helped put together, which The Anointed One supported as a U.S. Senator, which Bela Pelosi, Bawney Fwank, Dingy Harry and pals all signed off on and approved. It was inserted into the porkulus bill by Sen. Dodd at the urging of Turbo Tax Cheat Tim and signed by the Second Coming of Christ.
Translated, means it’s legal.
No matter what 328 demagogues in the House of Representatives say, and that includes 85 Republicans named here by Michelle Malkin. Shame on you, and that includes Rep. Paul Ryan, my congresscritter here in the 1st District.
The New York Post rightly warns about this type of Robespierre demagoguery. The Post calls it mob rule, and the newspaper is correct. How long until My Boy Lollipop, Bawney Fwank, or another acknowledged tax cheat, this one in charge of writing the tax laws as chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, Charles Rangel, decides someone else made too much money?
JustOneMinute says enough is enough.
Right now it’s AIG and Fannie Mae; later it will be Merrill and Citibank, and eventually it will be defense contractors, profiteering oil executives, or whomever the Congressional Dems single out as their whipping boy du jour.
And of course, rolling this ex post tax out at the same time the Fed and Treasury are trying to encourage private investors to partner up with the government to get the credit markets moving again is insane. What investor needs the likely aggravation to follow? Who needs to be hauled in front of Barney Frank a year from now in order to be blasted as a profiteer who exploited our national crisis for his own profit, which Barney will then tax back?
There’s not one leader anywhere to be found in Washington this side of the brave souls who voted against today’s demagoguery. Not one. Why? Because demagogues aren’t leaders. Instead, they set up straw men and big, bad monsters that they themselves tear down, all the while setting themselves up as the great protectors of the victimized little people. Demagogues, be they Hitler, Huey Long or Barack Hussein Obama are dangerous. They whip the great masses up into a frenzy to support whatever knee-jerk policy they advocate regardless of the damage.
Likewise, policy based on emotion is dangerous as well. And that’s what this is. Who in their right mind will invest in any business that received bailout money if the business becomes successful and there develops the risk of being dragged in front of Congress to become the national whipping boy for a bunch of jerks who couldn’t even make a profit runing a lemonade stand? Don’t forget, these idiots couldn’t even make the cafeteria in the Capitol a success.
And writing at The Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes writes via Charlie Sykes:
But it has been clear for a while that something — an event, a comment, a cable news tirade, a speech — was going to focus the growing public anger over bailouts and government giveaways.
This is it.
Voters are looking for someone to blame. At the town hall last night, Obama seemed to accept responsibility. “I’ll take responsibility,” he said. “I’m the president.” It was enough for some in the media to give him credit for stepping up. But it was phony. The very next sentence out of his mouth: “We didn’t draft these contracts.” And later he added: “My job is to make sure we fix these messes, even if I don’t make them.”
But the bonuses are almost entirely a mess of his own making. Dodd says that someone from Treasury inserted the language that would protect the bonuses. And, of course, had Obama not fast-tracked the stimulus bill — insisting on a vote before it was even possible to read it — perhaps more members of Congress would have raised questions about that odd provision. With just three exceptions, Republicans voted as a bloc against the stimulus and complained loudly — remember John Boehner slamming the bill on the floor? — that they hadn’t had time to read
The furor over the White House’s handling of AIG is likely to increase as we learn more. What about the bailout money to AIG that has been regifted to counterparties overseas? Is it possible that U.S. taxpayers will be, in effect, paying the bonuses of European bank executives?
Hopefully Paul Ryan will be as angry about that as he was about the AIG executives getting paid.
Oh, and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner is right about one thing in particular — he voted against the confiscatory tax grab: it is unconstitutional.
It is only a matter of time before this bill is declared unconstitutional and overturned by the courts because of the bill of attainder. A bill of attainder is prohibited by Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 of the Constitution because it deprives those individuals being singled out for punishment the right to a trial. Essentially, this means taxpayers will not recover this bonus money. To add insult to injury, it may even cost taxpayers more money because of the likely litigation expenses and court fees that will result from this legislation.
Too bad there are so few people in Washington who actually know what the Constitution says. Rather, they become like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland when it came to words: the Constitution means only what they choose it to mean, neither more nor less.
