Posted on 03/18/2009 8:30:44 PM PDT by conservativegramma
If you only see one video on the internet today, or if you only want to listen to one sound bite on the internet, this is the one you must play.
Republicans in Congress today pushed to the floor of the House of Representatives legislation that would stop AIG from using taxpayer money to pay out its executives’ bonuses. The Democrats killed the legislation.
Outraged, Congresswoman Foxx (R-NC) took to the floor to demand that Congresswoman Kilroy (D-OH) explain why Kilroy and the Democrats would not stop AIG from paying out the bonuses.
Kilroy flat out could not offer up any answer. Making it more delightful, Foxx refused to back down until she had an answer. Hilarity ensued.
Kind of disappointing that a Republican representative was willing to resort to this line of reasoning in order to score points. This kind of mistake will allow dems to get to the right of us and look smarter with regard to business acumen.
I disagree, for this reason- The bonuses were legal between AIG and some employees; AIG does not, in actuality, exist anymore, it is now USAIG, 80% owned by the US citizenry (so I've heard). The employees are owed the bonuses by a business that really no longer exists. Without the taxpayer bailout, there likely would not have been any bonuses.....The above is my opinion only.
...and there should not have been any bailout, but there was. As soon as our congressidiots gave AIG the money, it became AIG’s money. That is why there should have been specific rules against bonuses. But there weren’t because Chris Dodd specifically wrote it out of the bill.
We have to hold the dems responsible for this. No matter how angry we are at AIG, the dems did this on purpose.
When one takes over a corporation, one takes over its assets and its liabilities. AIG as a corporation still exists under new ownership so its new owners still owe.
Now had AIG been liquidated and some entity purchased only the assets, there would be no liability to any one holding a contract.
I expect the contracts will hold up in court.
It is a moral issue as to what kind of person will take that kind of money under the circumstances.
I have argued both sides, but I believe the bottom line is that the recipients of the bonuses owe the criminal enterprise known as the congress absolutely nothing.
Had congress stayed out of it and had AIG any chance of making it, those executives should have given up the bonuses in hopes of saving the company for the stockholders who trusted them.
Since congress specifically wrote the clause that made them home free, they owe nothing. Now if anyone owes the stockholders, it is congress because they took ownership.
I agree with almost all of your statement, there should have been NO bailout, but since there was, I don’t know if there were any conditions or restrictions or not- so it may have been given for a specific purpose (or not), and yes, it does seem to be a PLAN on the part of the Obamassa to allow AIG to get away with this. And yes, the dims did this on purpose, after having been shown the way by GWB. A pox on both their houses.
This issue is nothing more then noise to distract the publics attention away from other more dangerous moves this administration is taking.
While the press and our elected officials are falling all over themselves with the AIG issue, the Obama administration has:
Pissed away America’s sovereignty by signing a UN declaration that we will decriminalize homosexuality. We no longer control who makes the laws of our country the UN has been handed jurisdiction. Not only was his signing of this UN document unconstitutional the states once again are having their rights under the 10th amendment stripped. This time it’s not only to the feds, the states will now be beholden to the UN.
Removed policies that protected the rights of American’s whose ethical or religious beliefs prevented them from participating in anyway with an abortion. Those protections are now gone forcing pro-life citizens to either give up their careers or commit an act that millions consider murder. Another typical display of what “choice” means to a liberal.
The administration has stopped the program allowing pilots to carry guns in the cockpit. We’re being set up once again for an attack if terrorist groups choose to repeat 9-11. In fact, he’s made it easier for them. History shows terrorists repeat what has worked before.
To publicly and openly remove protections from a known plan of attack against U.S. citizens should be enough to impeach zer0. Even with non-stop AIG ramblings from the media, I’d venture a guess Al Quada didn’t miss that Obama just handing them, literally, the keys to the cockpit.
Bonuses paid out to AIG employees are less than .05 of 1% of the money they received yet that is all we are hearing about.
Obama may be worthless but he is not an idiot. He fully understands that the American public is nowhere near as leftist/progressive/communist/Marxist as he and that his policies and decisions would not be approved of by the vast majority of Americans.
AIG is nothing but noise to cover-up the bait n switch Obama is doing with our country, our freedoms and our safety.
Fox is engaging in politics. It is what she does and what voters elected her to do. Fox is exposing the DimRats for what they are, a bunch of posturing hypocrite's.
As for the bonuses, it is my belief they would NOT have been paid if there had been no public money available to pay them with. AIG should have been allowed to sink in the mud.
obambi is our first gay Prez. He is a scumbag.
But whenever we try and call over FOUR hundred million dollars!!! ...............in bonus and retention cash paid out by a company that is FUBARed and 180 Billion dollars in debt to US...............a tiny number like .05 of 1%, we lose the rest of the arguments.
400 million is 400 million.
Of course the GOP is the one who started the Bullsheet Bailout. Obambi just took the baton from Bush and ran faster and longer with it.
AIG is not just noise. AIG is Thunder, the thunder posed by the $1.6 TRILLION DOLLAR portfolio of complex derivatives.
Put ... t h a t ... into tiny percentages.
The 9 percent Solution?
The U.S. Congress has no right to pass bills of attainder, and that’s precisely what Schumer and Frank have been threatening.
My freedom is threatened infinitely more by fiends like Schumer, Frank, Dodd, and Obama, than by those people who have received their CONTRACTUALLY AGREED UPON compensation from AIG.
The fact that we propped up the company instead of letting in go into chapter 11, means all contracts are to be enforced. The government dropped the ball on this, what AIG, was legal and they were by law compelled to honor those contracts, whether we like it or not.
We are letting the MSM and the Congress confuse us and rile us instead of telling the truth. They are as usual, deflecting the blame for their stupidity on others with the hope that we are too stupid and emotional to pay attention to what really went on.
Good for you. You give charity to whomever you want to, but don't ask others to do it, especially to a government enterprise. If (when?) the Federal Government takes over the NY Yankees, are you going to expect Derek Jeter to play for $5000 a game? (Not bad money, right, $5000 for playing a baseball game?)
ML/NJ
I mean they didn't sell out for just 100 large each right? Didn't I hear that Goldmen Sachs got some of that AIG money? How much did Obama and Dodd get from them?
Well, why pay them a salary? After all they wouldn't be getting a salary if the govt hadn't stepped in. My understanding is that these people agreed not to leave the company when it became obvious that it was facing financial difficulties in return for a bonus to be paid if they continued to work for the company until a specified date.
And using your logic, the govt obviously wanted AIG to continue operating; how do you think that would have been possible if all of their management left to pursue other opportunities? (Or are you one of those folks who thinks people are interchangeable, and you could go down to the welfare office and find people to run AIG for $10/hr who would do as well or better as those people who were retained?)
ML/NJ
And BTW, it is the govt that is costing you billions (to put it mildly). I had no interest in AIG. I might even have come out marginally ahead if they had gone under. The AIG folks have no access to the Treasury not given to them by Bush, Obama, Dodd, Fwank, & Pelosi.
ML/NJ
These people engineered a catastrophe through greed and now the they expect the taxpayer to continue paying them at extreme levels for extreme failure. I strongly disagree with you on this one. It is obscene.
I believe it was when these bonuses were promised.
These people engineered a catastrophe through greed
Oooooo, greed. If it weren't for greed, we'd all be living like the folks in Cuba. Profit is the reward our system offers for creating jobs.
ML/NJ
An employee who has no part of decision making regarding his pay must be paid under contract law.
If the bonus is a reward for work done and he performs the work according to the agreement, he must be paid.
However, bonuses paid to those who were part of the decision making regarding bonuses, conditions for getting them, amounts, etc., are in a different category.
In bankruptcies, judges have held that persons in that category have bled the company to the detriment of their creditors, put themselves at the head of the line, and must return the money.
I believe there is a 90 day rule that allows the judge in bankruptcy to review all payments and call for the return of money that was paid to any creditor the judge deems to have received preferential treatment.
My point is that there could be some defect in the contracts to pay the very top people who made the bonus rules that would allow a judge to legally rule that the bonuses are a conspiracy to bleed the company of its funds.
That said, none of us know the facts and it would take some really smart lawyers and the courts to sort it all out.
The dispute over AIG's payouts represents the most pressing controversy confronting the administration as it addresses the financial crisis. Some private firms say the furor has made them wary of joining the federal initiatives to help save the economy.(from MSNBC,/a>)And the do-gooders won't stop at restricting the compensation of employees at the companies they've nationalized. They'll go on to the companies that merely do business with the nationalized companies. I'm sure you'll sleep easier when only the Jamie Goreliks and Franklin Raineses are collecting seven and eight figure bonuses.
ML/NJ
I'm quite familiar with preferential payments, unfortunately. (I was deemed to have received one by a receiver who sued for recovery even though I had been paid for work done after the declaration of bankruptcy which is specifically exempted from consideration to be a preferential payment. My lawyer advised me to settle. In other precincts, they call this extortion.) There is, unfortunately, no bankruptcy to consider here.
ML/NJ
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