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There is a major push underway -- engineered by Obama's Treasury officials, enabled by a mindless media, and amplified by the right-wing press -- to blame Chris Dodd for the AIG bonus payments. That would be perfectly fine if it were true. But it's completely false, and the scheme to heap the blame on him for the AIG bonus payments is based on demonstrable falsehoods. Jane Hamsher has written the definitive post narrating and indisputably documenting what actually took place. The attempt to blame Dodd is based on a patently false claim that was first fed to The New York...

Sen. Chris Dodd, facing the lowest approval ratings of any Senate Democratic incumbent,is in political purgatory. But on the subject of AIG's bonuses, he doesn't deserve the bad rap. Dodd is being blamed for OKing a proviso in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act guaranteeing previously sanctioned employment contracts. He faces intense political pressure because of his long-standing friendship with bankers and lenders, which has made him a key player in the negotiations between financial institutions and the government. In a statement yesterday, Dodd called on AIG executives to voluntarily refuse their bonuses. The truth is that the codicil was...

I'll begin by quoting from another blog that has it's act together on these disgraces we call the Obama Administration and Congress. The article is entitled, "Obama's Own Stimulus Bill Protects the AIG Bonuses He Now Condemns": HIGH IMPACT - Thanks to our stimulus spending bill search engine, we discovered that Obama granted AIG a free legal pass to give high bonuses because of the following stipulation in Obama’s stimulus bill he personally orchestrated and signed into law:From page H1412 of the Final Stimulus Bill, “SEC. 111. EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: “(iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall...

Has Chris Dodd ever heard of the Bill of Attainder? Evidently not. Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) wants to tax AIG employees on their exhorbitant bonus payments.

In the middle of decrying the misdeeds of the financial firm AIG, President Barack Obama cracked a joke. "Excuse me," he said Monday, after coughing into the microphone. "I am choked up with anger here." There were laughs all around the gilded East Room of the White House because he didn't sound angry at all. The laughter, of course, did not fit the occasion, the latest in a seemingly endless stream of public events at which Washington's political leaders work themselves into high dudgeon over the sins of financial wizards who, we are told over and over again, have messed...

Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd has come clean on his latest real-estate scandals in the same way he came clean on his sweetheart mortgages from Countrywide Financial: limited release of carefully selected documents that underpin improbable scenarios that put him in the least corrupt light. Sen. Dodd has told reporters his April 1986 purchase of a posh Washington, D.C., townhouse with Edward R. Downe, then a director of Bear Stearns who in 1993 pleaded guilty of securities fraud, was "fairly routine and non-controversial." A column by Don Pesci elsewhere on this page and published reports say the men went halves on...

Obama, Dodd Outraged at AIG Campaign Cash by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace · No Comments (2009-03-17) — As the furor over AIG executive bonuses threatened to bring the current economic recovery to a halt, President Barack Obama and Sen. Chris Dodd today threw fuel on the fire, announcing their “fierce outrage” upon hearing that the insurance giant had given each of their campaigns more than $100,000 last year. “While AIG was collapsing, and her executives crawling to DC with hat in hand,” said Sen. Dodd, D-CT, “my campaign, and then-Senator Obama’s were getting what can only be termed influence bonuses...

Dodd calls for retribution tax for AIGPublished: March 17, 2009 at 8:07 AM WASHINGTON, March 17 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd , D-Conn., called for an individually targeted tax to strike back at American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AFF)'s bonus pay plan. The company, 80 percent owned by the government and the recipient of billions of dollars in bailout funds, has said the $165 million it plans to hand out in bonus pay is mandated by contract. In retribution, "we'd write a tax provision specifically targeted to that audience," Dodd said in a CQ Politics report Tuesday. U.S. Rep. Gary...

While the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd unexpectedly 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 seeking to tax. The amendment is in the final version and is law.

"A holiday home in Connemara is at the centre of a growing row in America involving a prominent Democrat politician, a convicted insider trader and the former president Bill Clinton. The purchase of the home by Senator Christopher Dodd is being examined by the US Senate ethics committee after allegations that Edward Downe Jr, a businessman convicted of insider trading, acted as a “middle man” in the deal. Eight years ago Dodd, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against Barack Obama, lobbied Clinton, the then president, to grant Downe a pardon."

The Senate Ethics Committee has been looking into possible conflicts of interest in Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd's 2003 mortgages. Now questions about another Dodd real-estate adventure, this one in Ireland, should keep the Ethicists even busier. All the more because Mr. Dodd's "cottage" purchase involves a crooked stock trader for whom the Senator once did a very big political favor. Mr. Dodd is already under a cloud for receiving what a former loan officer claims was preferential treatment from Countrywide Financial on two mortgage refinancings -- in Connecticut and Washington -- in 2003. Countrywide was an aggressive lender to shaky...

The Senate Ethics Committee has been looking into possible conflicts of interest in Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd's 2003 mortgages. Now questions about another Dodd real-estate adventure, this one in Ireland, should keep the Ethicists even busier. All the more because Mr. Dodd's "cottage" purchase involves a crooked stock trader for whom the Senator once did a very big political favor. Mr. Dodd is already under a cloud for receiving what a former loan officer claims was preferential treatment from Countrywide Financial on two mortgage refinancings -- in Connecticut and Washington -- in 2003. Countrywide was an aggressive lender to shaky...

At the end of my tenure on this committee, I want it to be said that the safety and soundness of our financial institutions was not weakened on my watch -Chris Dodd, February 15, 2007 (H/T Ironman, who notes that the Dow has fallen nearly in half since that date). Senator Dodd has a lot to answer for and it looks like Connecticut voters are turning on him, as a new Quinnipiac poll out this morning shows he would narrowly trail moderate Republican former Congressman Rob Simmons 43-42 if the election were held today. (H/T) Simmons has been publicly mulling...

It was six moths ago when Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd admitted to America that he had the IQ of a slug (either that or he thinks that his constituents were stupid). It had been disclosed that the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Received TWO VIP Loans from Sub-Prime Lender Countrywide Inc. The Loans were at favorable interest rates. THE CHAIRMAN OF THE SENATE BANKING COMMITTEE, Chris Dodd, said he didn't realize that VIP treatment meant favorable rates. If you believe that I have bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Now we are finding out about a new "funky" friendship...

Join us for an appearance by Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Joe Courtney for Health Care Forum. Find out about the health care plan. A great opportunity to show Dodd and Courtney how you feel about their performance in Washington.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve refused to identify trading partners benefiting from a $180-billion taxpayer bailout of American International Group (AIG.N) as one lawmaker said Europe's financial stability was at stake in the rescue of the insurer. The identity of those being helped by the massive AIG assistance package remained a mystery on Thursday despite efforts by irritated members of the Senate Banking Committee to get answers from Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn. Kohn said revealing names risked jeopardizing AIG's continuing business but said the counterparties numbered in the "millions" and were spread all over the globe, including...

President Obama on Saturday struck back aggressively at critics of his $3.6 trillion budget proposal, casting himself as a populist crusader whose "sweeping change" has angered Washington's entrenched special interests, and promised to fight them. "I realize that passing this budget won't be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington," Mr. Obama said in his weekly video and radio address. Mr. Obama's language was combative and confrontational, as he promised to fight for "American families." "I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists...

Will Larry Kudlow run for senate against Chris Dodd? From Steve Moore: Republicans in Washington think they may have found their man to pick up a Senate seat in Connecticut in 2010: Larry Kudlow, the former Reagan budget advisor, Wall Street economist and now CNBC TV news anchor. The Internet is abuzz with the chatter of a Kudlow for Senate boomlet, which has even hit the Drudge Report. In an interview yesterday, Mr. Kudlow confirmed to me that he did sit down for dinner with Senate Republican Campaign Committee Chairman John Cornyn “to hear him out on the idea.”

President Barack Obama's first budget includes $15 billion a year for renewable energy programs and an ambitious plan to raise $646 billion from a carbon reduction proposal. "Because our future depends on our ability to break free from oil that's controlled by foreign dictators, we need to make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Mr. Obama said Thursday morning. "That's why we'll be working with Congress on legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy." The plan uses money from a cap-and-trade program — which would allow companies to...

Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Rosa DeLauro got together today to introduce four public-service bills in their respective chambers of Congress. National service was a major theme of President Barack Obama's ascent to office -- mentioned prominently in his inaugural address. This package of bills speaks directly to that topic, expanding service possibilities for all age groups. One bill would establish a summer program for kids to serve in an organized community project. Another would allow high-school students to spend a semester getting academic credit for volunteering. And a third would establish a national program encouraging people 55 and older...