ObamaNation's first big constitutional crisis

Well, ye socks, yesterday the red herring throwers that yours truly mentioned in earlier posts succeeded in ramrodding a resolution thru the House of Representatives to retroactively impose a 90% tax on AIG bonus recipients.

The vote on HR1586 was overwhelming, 328-93. Shame on members of the loyal opposition who marched in lock-step behind the "democratic" majority!

If anything like this resolution reaches the oval office and is signed into law by El Presidente, it will be nothing short of unconstitutional and will demand an appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Thank God that George W. Bush got Justices Roberts and Alito on the bench before he left office. They may be the last line of defense against the irrational socialist juggernaut.

I maintain that all of this political theater is disingenuous in the extreme, meant to distract the public's attention from the fact that the bailout bonuses were approved by the ObamaNation's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The legislation that ok'd them was shepherded thru Congress by one of the administration's most capable minions, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut. And, the bill with that provision was signed into law by El Presidente himself! So, why all the outrage?!

I guess the lesson here is what the ObamaNation gives you today can and will be arbitrarily taken back tomorrow.

If we open the door to retroactive and punitive taxes to satisfy every outrage these socialists can gin-up with their herring tossing hi-jinks, just how far back will they go?!

I'm afraid the sky's the limit with these folks. And, that's why they've got to be stopped.

Hope and change . . .

AIG Bonus Outrage is a Red Herring

All the bluster and hyperbole coming out of DC about the $165 million bonus money being paid by recently-bailed-out AIG is a load of tripe.

First, and foremost, AIG is contractually bound to pay that money and would be in violation of Connecticut law if they failed to do so.

Second, the total spent on bonuses represents less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the $173 BILLION in "bail-out" money AIG received.

If taxpayers really want to get angry about something, let's talk about the $172,835,000,000 that the feds in all their wisdom forced AIG to take without so much as getting the company's shareholders to vote whether or not they wanted to accept it.

The fact is, the ObamaNation has been preaching the twin lies of a "systemic risk" and "rogue executives" who managed to slip thru the cracks of weak regulations. And, forcing AIG to take the money was nothing short of a hostile takeover by the government. They hijacked a multi-billion dollar international corporation, and used it as a funnel for redistributing wealth. Remember, by their own admission, $120 billion of the $173 billion they gave to AIG actually ended up in the hands of other banks and local governments--not to mention the billions more that ended up in the hands of FOREIGN institutions. AIG's net "bail-out" was only a fraction of the sum over which the herring throwers would have us all wringing our hands.

If the media would stop basking in the glow of their Messiah, they might ask him and his minions exactly what "system" was at risk and required government involvement. It certainly was not the capitalist system, whereby those who make poor decisions have to suffer the consequences.

Furthermore, it's absolute balderdash to claim there isn't enough government regulation of our financial services. In the case of AIG, the SEC and the Office of Thrift Supervision both had direct oversight, a responsibility they took quite seriously. And that was just the federal layer of government that was watching their every move. On the state level, it was the oh-so-ethical watchdog Eliot Spitzer, then New York's attorney general, whose "oversight" marked the decline of the financial giant.

In March 2005, Spitzer pressured AIG to fire its CEO Hank Greenburg over accounting practices he couldn't comprehend. This accomplished, he never pursued the charges . . . probably because he knew he couldn't argue his case intelligently. But, the damage was done to AIG's credit rating, denying them the ability to get favorable terms from their creditors, and leading them to begin investing in risky derivatives.

Bigger government is not the answer to this question, or most others for that matter. Stop the madness! Return AIG and other "recipients" of government takeover money back into private hands as soon as possible. And, stop the aforementioned bluster and hyperbole. It's disingenuous in the extreme.