Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on March 21, 2009

By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone

I’ve always respected Sen. Jon Kyl, as he represents my state of Arizona. And now, that respect has elevated. Kyl managed to block the totalitarian bill that would have forced unprecedented (or “revenge-driven”) taxation on the $165 million in bonuses that AIG paid to employees with bailout money.

Remember, I hated that AIG paid those huge bonuses. People in this country are losing their homes, their jobs, their retirement portfolios, their kids’ college funds. Our economy is still spiraling around the drain, so hearing that AIG executives were getting bonuses using bailout money is reprehensible.

But AIG was indeed permitted to pay those bonuses as specifically stated in the previous bailout. They had contracts written long before the recession that they had to honor. They broke no laws. Period. I don’t have to like it, you don’t have to like it.

Congress botched it from the beginning. So if anyone is to blame here, get mad at the authors of the badly written bill and the people who voted for it without reading it thoroughly. Haste made the mess in the first place.

Congress deliberately included the protection text, and it was not vague or misinterpreted. Pres. Obama signed the bill. And then, well, a few elected officials with weak spines changed their minds about honoring it once taxpayers found out and screamed bloody murder. Can’t jeopardize re-election, after all.

And so, they decided to publicly vilify the bonus recipients, grill the AIG CEO Edward Liddy as though he were a child murderer, and ominously proclaim they would tax the hell out of anyone from AIG who had the audacity to keep their bonuses. Speaker of the House Nancy “Red Queen” Pelosi kept bellowing that she wanted heads to roll. Scapegoat times ten.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut lied and lied and lied, then broke down and admitted that he himself had written the protection clause for AIG’s bonuses. Secretary of the Treasury Tim “Pinocchio with the 3-Foot Nose” Geithner lied and lied and lied, and finally admitted that he knew about the bonuses long before he had originally said he did. He confessed just one day after Obama gushed on the Tonight Show to Jay Leno about what a great job Geithner was doing and how America underappreciated him and his talents… talents we didn’t know also included bald-faced lying.

With all these repulsive lies about the bonuses being revealed this week, the “Washington CYA Witch Hunt” remained in full swing. The wrongness of punishing AIG with excessively high, retroactive taxes for doing something that Congress had previously approved and now was feigning shock and surprise about was unthinkable. Vile. Cowardly. Abusive.

The whole process to judge and sentence was rushed, just like the writing and enacting of TARP was and all the other expensive “stimulus” packages approved by our elected officials.

In just a matter of days, the reputation of AIG was destroyed, employees’ families were receiving death threat letters, vandals and thugs were stalking AIG families at their homes and workplace. But key people in Washington have now confessed to lying, they knew about it all along. So, that should change everything.

But to most Democrats and a good number of Republicans, it didn’t matter. AIG was going to be the example, come hell or high water.

Our government was no longer the fair, deliberate body of America, doing what was right, but instead, conducting a frantic witch hunt, a nasty kangaroo court, led by Congressman Barney “Who Cares about Death Threats” Frank from Massachusetts. One more piece of our Constitution that protects its citizens from the targeting of government would be destroyed. It would allow our government to capriciously, whimsically revise laws and break contracts, then outrageously punish anyone after the fact. A heinous abuse of power. If you think it would only be to punish AIG this one time, think again.

This isn’t Cuba. This isn’t Russia. This is America. This is NOT what America is.

Here’s a snippet from Hot Air’s article:

Sen. Jon Kyl, the Republicans’ vote counter, blocked Democratic efforts Thursday evening to bring up the Senate version of the tax bill to recoup most of the $165 million paid out by AIG last weekend and other bonuses in 2009. The House had swiftly approved its version of the bill earlier in the day.

By rushing, Kyl said, Democrats were letting populist outrage trump informed decision making in the Senate, which is supposed to be insulated from the pressures of public passion.

“I don’t believe that Congress should rush to pass yet another piece of hastily crafted legislation in this very toxic atmosphere, at least without understanding the facts and the potential unintended consequences,” Kyl said on the Senate floor. “Frankly, I think that’s how we got into the current mess.”…

Read the entire Hot Air Piece: Sanity: Kyl blocks bill on AIG bonuses to give Senate time to think things over

There’s a lot more to this than meets the eye; while public rage was directed at mere “millions,” Congress sneaked through “billions” more this week in additional porkulus bills that were buried in the week’s news stories, if reported at all. The AIG uproar served as a diversion. Read Michelle Malkin’s exposé: Look beyond the bogus bonus smokescreen.

From a March 22, 2009 commentary posted on Rasmussen Reports website, by Debra J. Saunders:

Here’s the short version of why that House vote is probably unconstitutional. As Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., noted before his “nay” vote: “There is something called a bill of attainder. You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them. You can’t have them treated more onerously than somebody else without a trial.”

Now for the question as to whether there is any honor left in Washington. President Barack Obama and Congress had the opportunity to pass a measure before the AIG bonuses were paid to limit bonuses paid by corporations that have received federal bailout funds. Yet Congress failed to do so.

After the House passed the tax-the-bonuses bill, Obama announced, “Now this legislation moves to the Senate, and I look forward to receiving a final product that will serve as a strong signal to the executives who run these firms that such compensation will not be tolerated.”

It would be a sorry example of taking responsibility for Obama to sign a measure that goes back on not only his own stimulus package but also the very language that his people asked Dodd to insert. I feel as if I’m watching a movie in which a hired thug kills someone and then another hired thug kills the first thug and then another thug kills the second thug.

In less than two months in office, Obama has shown that in a town full of snakes, he’s the fastest runner. Who on Wall Street will trust him now?

For now anyway, to me we’re more “America” at this moment than we were yesterday. Thank God cooler heads are prevailing to review and discuss the bill. But the tip of this iceberg must not be where we stop. We must, must, must not let this shameless power grab and squandering of taxpayers’ money by members of Congress to keep on happening.

And we should toss out the liars.

More good reading; outrage is starting to brew against Obama’s Orwellian administration:

Debra J. Saunders, Rasmussen Reports: Congress, Overtax Thyself
Peace and Freedom Global Future: Obama: Why Are We Saving Geithner and His Incestuous Relationship With Wall Street?
Peace and Freedom Global Future: Defining Moment for Obama’s Treasury Secretary
Michelle Malkin: Roll call vote breakdown: The 85 House Republicans who supported Rangel’s 90 percent bonus tax
Michelle Malkin: The Senate shows a little sense; confiscatory Republicans show no shame
Michelle Malkin: The rule of the mob
Riehl World View: Did Obama Really Sell Out Dodd?

Categories: Conservatism, Economy, Government, Law & Constitution, Social and Political Climate
Tags: AIG, Barney Frank, bonuses, Chris Dodd, citizens against government waste, Congress, Government, government waste, Jon Kyl, mob rule, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, pork barrel, pork barrel spending, porkulus, punishment, spending, taxes, Tim Geithner, Washington DC, waste