Den of Thieves

Yes chuckie, and we want our stimulus money back too. It also belongs to the tax payer.

Constitutionally speaking the Congress cannot single out any one person or group for legislative persecution (and that is what it is) they have to do it generally across the board. What this means is, if they want to follow the constitution they have to tax all executive bonuses not just AIG. But why let a little thing like the Constitution get in the way.

Those who complain of the bonuses being paid out to corporate executives need to remember AIG’s Edward Liddy had no legal recourse other than to pay the bonuses.

In the case of AIG where executives received some $173 million in bonuses were out of the financial services division located in Connecticut. Connecticut has a state law requiring any employer, who has a contract to pay an employee a set wage or bonus, to pay up. If the company should fail to pay, as required by the contract, the company is liable and can be sued. If the plaintiff wins the case the company will be required by state law to pay double the amount plus attorney fees. This could be disastrous making AIG liable to possibly pay out over $346 million dollars.

Not to mention the fact, there are provisions within the stimulus bill that allows companies receiving tax payer support to pay out bonuses to their employees. Once it was found out it was Christopher Dodd who wrote these provisions into the bill he quickly rolled on Barrack Obama saying he was asked by Obama to write these provisions into the bill.

So it would seem AIG acted within the regulations put on them by government. Now they are being persecuted by government for following the rules.

The Government wants to blast AIG for their behavior, what about the government’s behavior? One just has to remember that AIG is paying bonuses in the low hundreds of millions of dollars while the government stimulus spending is in the high hundreds of billions. They are all crooks, its thieves regulating thieves. If anyone wants to complain about the bonuses they should be complaining even louder about the bailouts in the first place.

I guess it’s a case of everyone wanting to have their cake and eat too.