Posted on 03/26/2009 4:27:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
The enraged mob came to the doors of Congress in the dead of night with their torches glowing, their pitchforks raised, and their voices screaming for the blood of anyone from A.I.G. In response, 85 alleged Republicans from the House of Representatives threw them the rule of law, bits of our Constitution, and the legally binding contracts of fellow Americans as a way to not only appease the unbalanced anger, but as a cowardly way to ensure their self-preservation.
These Republicans, along with the predictable Democrats, voted to slap an un-American 90% punitive tax on the bonuses paid to any employee of a bailed-out institution with a household income higher that $250,000. It is for this reason and many others, that I now refer to myself as an “Independent Conservative” rather than a Republican.
Not only should the Republicans and Democrats who voted for this socialist inspired tax be ashamed of themselves, but for the good of our nation, every Member of Congress and the Administration should consider resignation so the American people can have a chance to put some adults in place before it’s too late. Has there ever been a point in our nation’s history when our government has been so leaderless, so spineless, or so clueless?
No one wants bonuses going to people who did not earn them or put us in peril. Beyond that obvious conclusion, it’s important to note that not everyone getting bonuses at these bailed-out companies were involved in cooking the books. Just as not every Member of Congress, this Administration and the past Administration, was involved in enabling the greatest economic crisis of our lifetimes. Only certain individuals. Should the salaries of those individuals also be federally taxed at ninety percent? Why stop there? Who else can we slap a socialist tax on?
Leaving aside the selfish, embarrassing, and transparent reasons for the House of Representatives pushed for this tax, there is a much greater reason to condemn the act. That being the personal safety of some of these financial employees. When you have Members of Congress themselves fanning the flames of hate that fuel the angry and uninformed mob, is it any wonder that these targeted American citizens are starting to wonder which country they live in or who they can to turn for protection?
Make no mistake. Employees of these companies -- labeled “Guilty by association” in the court of public and Congressional opinion -- are getting death threats. To the point where a spokesperson for A.I.G. said, “However someone may feel about the appropriateness of the retention payments, there is nothing appropriate about the threats that people have made to and about employees.”
When is enough, enough for certain Members of Congress and the media? Do some of these employees -- again, the vast majority innocent of the vile acts perpetrated by a few -- have to be burned out of their homes, injured, or even killed before they feel they’ve gotten their pound of flesh?
As this surreal process played out, one banker is quoted as saying, “It’s like a McCarthy witch-hunt. This is the most profoundly anti-American thing I’ve ever seen.”
Agreed. Who can rescue us from those pretending to rescue us?
> Read this real slowly, Hunter.
OK, I’ve read it slowly and find that I agree with what you say. So what?
> You are legitimizing mob mentality.
> You are legitimizing lawlessness.
> You are sowing the seeds of brownshirt fascism.
Shrill nonsense. I am doing nothing of the sort. I am refusing to care about a minor issue when there are more important issues at stake. What does that have to do with mob mentality? Lawlessness? Brownshirt fascism?
Not a dam’n thing.
Get a grip, mate — settle down.
> FRiend, who, who then should unwind AIG? Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, 0bama, Rahm? Who and how should they be rewarded for minimizing the losses?
Appoint a receiver under their standard commercial terms. Let the receiver decide whether to trade thru or to wind it up. That is how things are done in the commercial world.
On a scale of 1 thru 10 of what America needs to worry about, as bad as it is AIG surely doesn’t rate any more than a 2. You are, after all, a nation fighting war on two fronts... three if you count your border situation. War has to score a 9 or 10, surely?
The German National Socialist Party demonized the Jewish Bankers first.
I heard Eric Bolling from Fox Business Network, last week, say that YES their names [AIG execs who received bonuses] should be made public, that they should be AFRAID, that it could curb this sort of behavior in future. i was astounded! this kind of talk is RIDICULOUS.
It is not a minor issue in this country when Congress acts as prosecutor, judge, and jury. Congress is outside the system of checks and balances.
Second, their actions resulted in innocent people being visited by ACORN "protesters" over this past weekend. Mob mentality. Death threats.
NZ is a long way away. Congressional actions of punitive taxes is illegal. The matter should be handled in the courts, not the halls of Congress. They are manufacturing an imbalance in the separation of powers.
I apologize as my first response to you was as though you lived in the US.
i’ll say it again, believe it or not we CAN worry about more than one thing at a time without losing the whole picture. you can denigrate this issue as meaningless to you and so, fine. some of us see it as emblematic of something greater and NOT something to be ignored or minimized until its too late.
Thanks for posting names. Disgusting slimy things.
They used class envy to instill anger in the mobs. Then the mobs took over the businesses and couldn't run them. They didn't know how...so they killed them too.
M<y Idea was to force each and every member of the House to read the Constyitution out loud, in front of the full House, on CSPAN, starting with the one who shows so often her complete ignorance of it’s content. the Very Dishonorable Nancy Pelosi.
That way they can’t plead ignorance the nexrt time they abrogate their duty, and act as if their seats give them dictatorial powers.
AIG is not just a side show. It distracts from the other thrusts, it directly strengthens an important assault (more regulatory power over other companies), undermines societal and constitutional defenses, establishes precedent for confiscatory taxation under a popular banner, actually enlists Obama’s enemies directly in one of his initiatives and thus, indirectly, in many others.
Fast forward a few years.
The US will see a network of local Soviets. (“Originally the soviets were a grassroots effort to practice direct democracy.”) Local organizing is already going on. Organizing For America.
These will be backed up by an army in uniform. The civilian service corp. It's roots are already in place through the recent “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act” As an organizer said, “We're not looking for a fight. That will come later, when we have an army.”
An “progressive Party” will exist as a power in parallel with and, increasingly, as a replacement for State institutions.
Organized mob fury will have intimidated resistance. The AIG mobilization is just a prototype.
The mainstream media will have been bailed out. It will serve its masters loyally, if not well. The new media will have been regulated. The close partnership between party and state mechanisms will allow the later to be deployed to snuff out hard cases.
The tax system will have been deployed against the Party's enemies. That is coming from the new tax commission. (Notice, a semi-governmental structure). The Party will be one of the chief beneficiaries of the revenue. ACORN hospitals and social service offices will have begun to dominate the landscape.
Eventually the stupid, complacent population will have woken up to what was happening. But too late to organize effective resistance. State organs will collect intelligence and bring down punishment. Party organs, in communication with the State, will intimidate and, if necessary, apply muscle.
Too late.
AIG is the opening battle. And we wimped out.
Statement by Congressman Tom McClintock
Regarding HR 1586
March 19, 2009
HR 1586 would tax 90 percent of the bonuses that push an executive's earnings above $250,000 IF his company has received more than $5 billion in federal bailout funds.
I reluctantly supported HR 1586 for a simple and singular reason: it will stop or slow the corporate bailouts that are bankrupting our country.
Until HR 1586, there has been no downside for the executives who persuaded Congress to hand them the keys to our nation's treasury and who are now plundering it with impunity. This measure takes away the personal profit for the executives who are doing so. In addition, since the bill would not apply to any corporation that returns its bailout windfall, I believe it will be a powerful incentive for companies immediately to repay the funds that Congress should never have authorized in the first place.
I do not believe the act qualifies as a bill of attainder, as some have suggested. The measure applies to any recipients of TARP money, making no distinctions among them, in the same manner as the tax code applies separate tax treatments under a wide array of circumstances.
Nor do I believe this is a tax increase in any conventional sense since it seeks solely to recover tax revenues that are being spent for purposes other than Congress approved.
I abhor a number of aspects of this bill, starting with the fact that it is necessary at all. I believe the government bailout of failed companies is prolonging and deepening our recession and for that reason I have opposed this policy every step of the way. The only justification for this bill is that it will greatly reduce the number of companies seeking or holding government bailout subsidies.
I am also deeply concerned with the use of the tax code for purposes other than generating revenue. It is a dangerous precedent justified only by the dangerous precedent of the bailouts themselves.
I will vigorously oppose any legislation seeking to interfere with compensation decisions made by private companies with private funds. But once a company has accepted government bailout funds and begins operating with public capital, it has also invited public oversight of its decisions. And that never ends well.
But...
I am also deeply concerned with the use of the tax code for purposes other than generating revenue. It is a dangerous precedent justified only by the dangerous precedent of the bailouts themselves.
Great: one "dangerous precedent" justifies another "dangerous precedent."
I believe what really happened here exemplifies the current conditions on Capitol Hill: instead of using the occasion to drive home the duplicitous nature of their fellow-lawmakers (Dodd, in this case), and the administration itself, they rode the public wave of indignation (always good for votes among the ignorant). Instead of using this as a teaching moment to warn against the dangers of populism run amok; instead of finding out the facts of the case, the timing and the reason for these incentives, they did the easy thing.
Hint: Because potential investors in Geithner's newest bank bailout scheme also thought it would be a "powerful incentive" -- to wreak similar targeted-tax revenge on anyone who may make money by purchasing toxic assets from the same bailed out entities.
DITTO!!! And don’t forget the ACORN folks driving the bus tours to homes of bonus recipients.
Those bonuses were RETENTION bonuses. The recipients of those bonuses had reduced the losses of AIG by 1.1 TRILLION dollars, and were given a total of 168 million for doing their jobs properly, and for staying with the company through this rather unpleasant business.
You have fallen for the same lies and disinformation the leftists have, culminating in the perfect example of class envy.
BTW, the “law” taxing these payments is wholly illegal, in that it is both “ex post facto”, and a bill of attainder.
Your class envy gives your true liberal nature away.
Retention bonuses by the old management that Liddy said that if he had been CEO he would not have granted. The recipients of the bonuses collectively caused the AIG liquidity crisis and caused a 41.1 BILLION dollar loss in AIG-FP in 2008, and have caused great economic and political damage. Winding the book down by 1.1 trillion dollars is not reducing the loss by that amount, it is just winding down the book; and one has to wonder whether it was required to pay some $500,000 each on average to over 400 employees to do that.
These mostly same employees no doubt were richly rewarded for building up the book and for the "profits" booked for many years (which were illusory). Liddy said paying these bonuses was "distasteful" and he is correct.
Of course I don't want them dragged out of their Fairfield County manses and put to the sword before howling mobs, their women and children sold into slavery, and their green lawns plowed with salt.
But they are no Heroes of Capitalist Labor, they gave 66% of their political contributions to Democrats, their whole business was built on a basic misunderstanding of risk (which was supposed to be their business), or else was a form of scam: They understood what could go wrong but it was too lucrative for them to not keep it going. In other words they are incompetent and/or dishonest.
Thank you.
Strike one Tom.
Principle is principle.
It is wrong for congress to single out private individuals for punishment retroactively that broke no law.
It was congress’s duty to set the required conditions prior to giving these companies taxpayer money. All of this was just a deflection of where the true blame lies.
That is very disappointing Tom.
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