Then, Monday night, after most of the AIG bonuses had already been disbursed, Democrats began calling for a tax on the AIG executives who had received these hefty bonuses. Yet only a month ago, when the Senate considered the $787 billion stimulus bill, Senate Democrats passed an amendment by Senator Chris Dodd providing an exception for “contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009.” That is, Senator Dodd and other Democrat leaders who are decrying the outrageousness of exorbitant executive bonuses were the very ones to guarantee that the bonus checks would be written.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN’s Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer Wednesday that he was responsible for adding the bonus loophole into the stimulus package that permitted AIG and other companies that received bailout funds to pay bonuses.
March 18 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama may try to push through Congress a health-care overhaul, energy proposals and tax increases by using a partisan tactic that would thwart Republican efforts to block the measures.
The administration and congressional Democrats are debating whether to use a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation to advance some of the biggest items on the president’s agenda. The move would allow Democrats to approve plans to raise taxes by $1 trillion, create a cap-and-trade system to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions, and overhaul health care without a single Republican vote.
Nobody here drafted those contracts; (a LIE: see above) nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in,” (a LIE: see above) he said outside the White House. ” [But] we are responsible, though. The buck stops with me.”
You have, however, but to read Obama’s statement from Wednesday to understand the core of his actual Socialist philosophy:
People are right to be angry. I am angry. People are rightly outraged about these particular bonuses,” he said. “But just as outrageous is the culture that these bonuses are a symptom of that have existed for far too long, a situation where excess greed, excess compensation, excess risk-taking have all made us vulnerable and left us holding the bag.”
“Excess risk-taking.”
Excuse me? This entire nation was founded upon risk taking. Our Founding Fathers were risk takers. Our success as a sovereign nation is entirely predicated upon risk taking. We became a military and business Powerhouse but upon the back of risk taking.
Yes, Mr Obama is in fact that ignorant of our history.
just one question…. can anyone explain to me the issue of soldiers having to pay for injuries during wartime or something like that? as a recent veteran, this makes me sick. I don’t want to get too involved until I know everything about it. can someone please help shed some light on the subject for me?
Breaking News: Dodd Says loophole that protects AIG Bonuses added per request of the Obama administration. The video is about a fifth of the way down.
http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/17/obamas-stimulus-bill-explicitly-grants-aig-the-legal-right-to-hand-out-bonuses/
Obama should take full and direct responsibility for this mess.
Chris, that clusterfuck has been re-thought too…
See comment #16 on this thread: Obama to Bill Combat Wounded for Medical Care
One of my readers caught it on the news and salvaged us a link…
Chris: no. No one can. It is completely reprehensible.
Pro: thanks, and please, readers, check Pro’s link. Obama SAYS he’s responsible but — I predict — he’ll be kicking GEITHNER to the curb very shortly.
TF: thanks!
BZ
He has no choice, he knows he has to push and shove as much as he can before the masses wake up to the reality of socialism. The left know fully well by now that their policies are most easily foisted upon a nation by stealth.
Ignorance and lies are their allies.
Obama will push Geithner to the curb, but it will be done in such a way that we won’t know it. Geithner may say he is stepping down for personal reasons and that it has nothing to do with Obama or anyone else telling him to leave etc.. etc.. They will figure out something. After all, their lies stick as truth in the mind numbed robots that follow them.
You know, let me say this. Anyone who thought George Bush would be ANYTHING other than exactly what he was asked to be bitch slapped with reality. I knew. And voted for it. I STILL think he was the guy for the job.
Now, anyone who didn’t think this is EXACTLY what we were getting with Obama also is asking to be bitch slapped by reality.
The thing is, I vote. I vote INFORMED. I hate all this shock and dismay I see from the middle class. Are we really so easily misled by the “good performance”?
*shakes head*
Apparently we were.
I never believed for a minute, after watching Obama’s behavior with Hilary Clinton, that he EVER intended to work with the GOP on anything.
I hate feeling helpless, but I will grit my teeth, speak where I can and vote again in 2012.
Well, unless the Mayan calendar is correct.
Oh and the funniest thing I see coming from the left? Obama is a CENTRIST.
Now THAT’S hilarious.
thanks texas fred. I just got an update about that. what a stupid bastard he is to even propose such a thing. and I read about the “fairness doctrine” and law makers said they’ll make a law to make it against the law to do the fairness doctrine, but they drafted another document (called something else mind you) that is like the fairness doctrine on steroids!!!! so, make it against the law so it’ll look good to voters, but draw something else up that is even worse and call it something else. they actually think we’re stupid. look out people, your brown eyes are going to get poked.
You’re right, BZ. Socialism is being rammed down our throats, like it or not. We knew this would happen. We warned as many people as we possibly could that this would happen but it did no good. Now we are stuck with this debacle because of so may Americans who paid no attention and simply liked the fact that Obama is Black and can read a teleprompter. He sounds like a dunce without one, but who cares. The man has charisma! GAG!
During the campaign I and many others, probably including you, posted videos of Obama telling us exactly what he was going to do and now he’s doing his best to do it. Apathy, ignorance and “feel-good” political correctness paid off for the Obama administration, but his approval rating goes down a bit further every week and I’m hoping that as his policies affect more and more people they will realize what they have done!
Jennifer: quite correct in terms of what, essentially, we got with Bush. However, I would beg to suggest that my readers, you and I, are looking more at Mr Obama with unjaundiced eyes than the bulk of the electorate that voted for him. They were swayed by single words such as BLACK and NEW and FRESH and CHANGE.
We also have to throw the GOP/Bush Factor in as well: he WASN’T Bush. And a vote for Obama, when the Dems decided he was The One, was more importantly a vote AGAINST Bush.
Chris: go to my blog’s home page and, in the SEARCH field, write in the two words: “fairness doctrine.” That will provide all you’ll need to know about this abrogation of freedom.
Gayle: so true. In a mere TWO months a good many people — NOT the “Hard Right” — are starting to exhibit Buyers’ Remorse with Mr Obama.
BZ
Jennifer: also, FYI, I bought Edge of the Storm and Heart of the Storm for my wife today!
BZ
And now Congress wishes to *tax* those who have done perfectly legal actions that Congress specifically ALLOWED. Now isn’t that wonderful? It is un-Constitutional as all hell just on the ex-post facto part of it, as well as the estoppel part of not taking a reward away after promising it for performance. So its also illegal.
But when you think about it, if Congress is willing to use their proportional taxation power to go after just a handfull of people, then there is NOTHING stopping them from going after any INDIVIDUAL they want this way for any reason whatsoever. You don’t have to break any law to get this treatment.
Aristocrats they are, now looking at the Jester King and court of Fools.
AJ: and you have hit upon THE point to be taken from this!
If Congress can relegate their laws to such a small strata of persons, what’s to keep them from focusing on an even SMALLER group and, for example, on YOU in particular — ?
The Demorats ALLOWED and KNEW of the situation they now excoriate! So now they write laws AGAINST what it is they ALLOWED originally!
That is INSANE!
BZ
Yes, Mr. Z, I am getting to know the works of such fine artists as Thompson, Mosin, Nagant, Ruger…. ah such beautiful artists they were! Truly priceless are their works, a beauty to behold, a marvel to own, and such fine wood on some of them…. it is beyond expression. Now I will need some low cost works by Mr. Browning… if I can get some scratch together after ensuring the vitality of my already owned art works.
Thanks for buying my books for your wife. I hope she likes them!
Of course, now I’m a little nervous….LOL.
AJ, Very well reasoned thought. It is amazing how good at ’cause and effect’ we are and how bad liberals are at it.
We see the eventual personal invasion stemming from our current fast paced leftist swing.
It’s coming- the downfall of our economic system and quite possibly our country if Obama and the left in congress have 8 years to rule. It isn’t pessimistic to think the worse either. It is realistic.
Anyone with half a brain can see the end results of a hard-core leftist rule during a recession.
You don’t hire a socialist in the middle of a temporary economic downturn. Sheesh!
Mr. Z – It is the consolidation of power part of Leftism that is vulnerable: when people still remember enough of the old system to respect it, but do not go against its organs when they turn ill on the population. Obama’s mandatory ‘volunteer’ service plan is the equivalent of the Nazi Youth or Young Pioneers of the USSR: coerced indoctrination. Little did those wanting ‘hope & change’ think that it would come to involuntary service to the State in something far more horrific than a mere draft. The extreme Left wanted that, and now the mere Left will feel that lash. Unfortunately the pacifism of the Left leaves it ill prepared to deal with it… and I’ve noticed a few on the Right who have this strange notion that involuntary service is ‘good’ for society.
The politically caused economic downturn is having its mask eroded far faster than did Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao… the Feiler Faster Thesis is now in play and what used to take years takes months or just weeks. When fully kicked into gear the FFT is a fast spiral of events, analysis, feedback… and those unwilling to adjust to it because of political dogma get caught in the gears.
I was a bit trepidatious posting my prior timeline, but I’m starting to have that feeling as I did in 2006, that the events will unfold in a pattern that can be seen. I was correct on Iraq when so many others, even on the Right, called it a loss… yet I looked at the trends and called it otherwise. I dovetailed it, however, with the coming problems in the US which, I noted, were on a trendline set to go down and quickly. There are very few that would do that and back it with the evidence, then. Now the evidence of the dovetail is coming in and I don’t like it, but it is my analysis.
There are choke-points in Leftist take-overs: Black Shirts nearly were put out of business in Italy, the Reds and the Browns had open warfare via assassination in Germany, a Russian general sent his army ahead of him in 1917 and it decohered into the mob, and the US nearly went down under the pack that we call the Shaysites, but were a wide-spread phenomena building to near destructive potential. Napoleon’s ‘whiff of grapeshot’ a few years earlier by the regime would have turned into a bloody slaughter, but would have killed the French Revolution. A backed Bay of Pigs would have taken out Castro. There is always a choke-point in such schemes, the famous inflection point past which all things hinge.
This President does not have military or police backing, attacks the finances of the people of the Nation, now seeks to impose involuntary service and make us beholden to government for many ‘good things’. Unfortunately they also believe enough in the old system to think it will regenerate under this weight… and now that the analysis of FDR is being set to show he caused the major problem from ’37-’41 the question is: how fast will the FFT propagate that? Years? No, too long. Months? We are at that and it is starting even now. Which leaves us Months to Weeks for the choke-point. The current Left doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to make a ‘win’ stick, even if they control the inflection point what is left will dissolve out from under them. The failed dogma of the 19th century will crumble in weeks in the 21st… and then things get very nasty, very quickly, indeed.