Obama Gives Corporate Execs A Bonus

If there were any balance in the media, or if the media treated President Obama like they treated President Bush the above headline would be screaming from every newspaper in the land—because that’s exactly what happened.

Just What Can We Afford, Mr. President?

In his address to the nation, President Obama claimed that we were in the midst of a challenge in which we could not afford to do nothing.  We were admonished that these perilous times called for extreme action, and so we needed to get a stimulus package passed at lightning speed, before anyone got a chance to read the whole thing so that… AIG executives could get their bonuses.

Had we done nothing, AIG executives would not have received bonuses—they would have had to get rid of the executives or fold.  We would not have used public funds to fund their bonuses, and we would not be in this situation.

And that’s not even bringing up who was one of the top two recipients of campaign money from AIG last year:

Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are – Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.

So last year our President gets a big donation from a company that he then preaches is too big to fail, and so he gives them a cash infusion and that has trouble when they follow their contracts.

Just Where Does that Buck Stop Again?

It used to be said that the “buck stops here”- referring to the President’s office.  Today, the buck stops anywhere but.

We have an Administration that, should anything unplanned happen, it reflexively blames or demonizes private citizens.  In politics, the unintended consequence looms large.  “Beware the Unintended Consequence” should be a banner hung high in every room of the Capitol, because more often then not it comes back to get you.

This is exactly the case.

The President and Congress were wrong.  They used public funds to bail out a business, and then they have the audacity to say that following legal contracts is wrong.  They took our money and paid bonuses with it—without investigating current legal contracts… they do exactly what government always does:  Whenever a problem comes up, government seeks to answer the problem two ways:

1. Throw as much  money as possible at it.
2. When something goes wrong, regulate the money and take control of that previous entity.

And we’re just using the same old playbook.  Except this time, people are upset with the play, so the wrath of the people—which can’t be directed at the President who made the plan, and the Congress that is complicit with it, of course—has to be directed at individual private citizens.

They have to scare people into resigning their jobs—even if they didn’t get a bonus.  They have people making death threats to the company.  And the sickest part will be that the government, instead of acknowledging their mistakes and getting out of meddling in the private sector will use this opportunity to take even more control over lives.

Let’s Tax ‘Em

I saw on the news last night that different Congressmen were debating how much tax they could levy on these bonuses.  And who can forget the Congressman that said that these execs should either quit or commit suicide.

Congress has declared war on AIG for something that they did, something that they signed—they are culpable.  They goofed, they’re embarrassed, and they need to blame anyone but themselves.

And in their attempt to fix this problem, who else are they going to hurt?  Who else will be caught in their snares.

This is a perfect illustration of government’s primary power—the power to destroy.  Whatever business it touches, whatever benefit it gives out, whatever thing it claims it’s trying to do for our good, the Federal Government takes away our rights, it destroys business, and now it does all of this while grinning and pointing to the guy standing next to them like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

We deserve better from our leaders.