**This is a post that normally would appear at VASS, my political blog. At this moment VASS is undergoing site renovation and technical issues, so it appears here. This change is temporary.**
Executive pay and bonuses. Everyone is screaming about the $165 million in bonuses that AIG executives were paid. Congress went so far as to break the law to take back the bonuses paid. All of this to avoid noting that about $20 billion dollars of the over $100 billion given to AIG so far, went to overseas banks and companies.
Polispeak is one thing, but this should be an outrage.
Senator Chris Dodd knew that AIG was going to pay bonuses. He in fact made a provision just so they could do so. Treasury Secretary Geithner knew of this, in fact he knew back when he was still working in the Fed. So all the surprise they are feigning is obviously for a different reason.
The public is being distracted from the real problems. That our money went to foreign countries as opposed to helping our own. And it is advancing the ability of the Liberal Democrats to control exactly how much an American citizen makes.
$165 million in bonuses sounds like a lot. And to the average person it is. But then again this was a contractual agreement made by AIG long before the bailouts. Basically, as long as the company has money it must pay the bonus. Every member of Congress and the Obama Administration knew that. President Obama as a former lawyer had to know it as well (they do teach contract law in law school).
So the outrage is misplaced. Especially when key Democrats were involved in ensuring that the contracts were lived up to. So why all the hype?
Because $20 billion dollars is really a big number and an enormous waste. That’s money that could have saved tens of thousands of U.S. jobs (literally), gone from the nation. That is factually the retirements and college tuition of millions of Americans wiped away for years, maybe decades, to come. All because the Democrats were in a rush to pass legislation without the public, or most of Congress, seeing what the legislation entailed. [You do recall the promise of President Obama to have full transparency and allow the public to review legislation 2 days before it is passed into law – which he has violated several times now]
Because in feigning outrage at actions done willfully, they look like they are concerned. Because it looks like someone is trying to do their job. Because the legal battle that will ensue will have more public passion behind it rather than what it really means.
The fact that Congress has passed a tax on the AIG bonuses now means that ANY company and ANY employee or owner can be taxed if the Government decides they want their money. Besides being a retro-active act, which is expressly forbidden (that’s why there are grand-father laws), it is a means in which we move from a capitalist society to a socialist one.
Win a lottery, and the Democrat-led Congress will pass a law saying that you must be taxed even more than you already would be, because the Government can use the money better than you. Build a business, and the Government will put a new tax out so that you can’t gain the reward of your hard work and risk. Because the Government wants to pay for spending on special interest initiatives. Work for a company in a good job, and have a tax to take away the money you worked hard for all year, just because they can.
Yes it sounds wonderful that people will get things from the Government. That is what they want you to have, not necessarily what you need and definitely not what you want. Because the Liberal Democrats know what is fair - for you.
This is a horrendous step by the Government. Yes the idea of paying AIG executives for failure is distasteful. But not so distasteful as removing the ability of contracts to exist. Not when compared to the end of American life as we know it and have enjoyed it.
These kinds of acts are things that socialist nations like Venezuela, China, and the C.I.S. (former Soviet Union) take. People have fled those nations to come to America because we don’t treat people in such a manner. Or we didn’t until now.
People have complained to me about how they thought President Bush destroyed the law of the land. Yet there is not one thing that has been proven to have affected the American people. Lots of allegations, but not a single fact. And the average person lived as free as a decade ago.
Now we have a Democrat-led Government that is actively breaking the laws that built this nation. We are watching as the structure of the nation is being manipulated. And I hear no outcry about this.
Dark days are ahead of us, if this is the path we are being led down. Do we need to shout? Oh, yes. But it’s not the AIG contracts that upset me. It’s Congress and the Obama Administration.
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