AIG is the New Rush Limbaugh (Updated – This is Blowing Up!)
John on March 18, 2009 at 12:52 am
The public flogging of Rush Limbaugh had just about run its course. So what’s a desperate David Axelrod to do? Create a new, even worse dragon for Sir Telepromter to slay:
Some people are vengeful, calling for jail, public humiliation or even revolution over the decision by A.I.G. to award $165 million in bonuses to employees who were in part responsible for the insurance giant’s near collapse — though few go as far as Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who has suggested that company executives should “resign or go commit suicide.”
But it’s never good when the plebes in the cheap seats can see the strings on the puppets. In this case, Obama’s faux outrage is a little too convenient to be believable:
President Obama was informed about the $165 million in bonuses due to employees of the American Insurance Group the day before they were paid out last week, the White House disclosed late Tuesday.
[...]The president did not publicly express anger over the bonuses until after they were disclosed Sunday in The Washington Post.
So Obama knew days before he made his outrage public. But he should have known long before that. News of the bonuses, in general terms, goes back a lot further than Sunday.
Andrew Cuomo was walking this same beat back in October of last year. Harry Reid was complaining about AIG bonuses in mid-November. Lower tier Democrats got into the act complaining about “retention bonuses” being offered by AIG last December. In short, this is hardly news.
But it sure makes a satisfying villain for a White House that needed one.
[HT: Hot Air headlines for the "Obama knew" story. And HT to Morgen for digging up the old AIG bonus stuff]
Update: The Washington Post sees right through this:
[T]his has not been a stellar moment for the man who came into office arguing that “the time has come to set aside childish things.” With hundreds of billions of dollars in necessary repairs to the financial system still to come, Mr. Obama must find a way to explain those costs in terms that neither inflame the public nor insult its intelligence.
Related: The American Thinker notes that the dweeb who ran AIG’s financial services division — the one getting all the bonuses and also the one that led to AIG’s downfall — is a fan of mass murdering communist Che’ Guevara, and so presumably a leftist.
Second update: Ed at Hot Air put up a post based on some stuff that Morgen dug up yesterday. (Guess I should be quicker on the ball next time). Anyway, what Morgen found is that AIG isn’t the only company receiving bailout money to give out bonuses. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the GSAs at the center of the crisis — are giving bonuses too. What’s significant is that, unlike the AIG bonuses which were agreed to last year, these bonuses were approved recently. No one has the numbers yet because Fannie and Freddie haven’t put them in their tax filings, promising to do so in a supplemental filing.
If there’s a real reporter out there who wants a scoop, find out how much Fannie and Freddie gave out and who in Congress approved it.
Third Update: The Wall Street Journal has the numbers, some of them anyway. They’re paying around half a million each to the top guys. Probably quite a few more to come.
Fourth Update: Drudge has now linked the WSJ story. Rush has mentioned this on the radio already. Morgen’s scoop is going national!
Fifth Update: The plan to pay bonuses to Fannie/Freddie employees has been defended by James Lockhart, the director for the Federal Housing Finance Agency. So how does his statement square with Obama’s outrage exactly? Obama/Axelrod seem a bit flat-footed on this one.
Category: Politics |
So…does this mean that AIG bonuses are fine? The administration should be doing nothing? And Democrats are wrong to be up in arms about this?
March 18, 2009 @ 7:03 amDavid,
During one of the debates (the first?) McCain brought up earmarks and the fact that Barack Obama had personally received almost one billion in earmarked spending in his short time in office. Barack Obama’s response was that earmarks amounted to a tiny amount of money, only $18 billion in all. He said this on national TV. But suddenly now he’s outrageously outraged over $160 million?!
Sure, these AIG execs don’t deserve it, but has anyone bothered to add up the 8,000+ earmarks in the budget Obama just signed? I guarantee you it comes to a lot more than 160 million. I’m keeping my eyes on the ball.
March 18, 2009 @ 8:00 amIf Obama missed this important clause in the contracts of AIG execs when agreeing to use tax-payer dollars to rescue this corporation from bankruptcy, then I wonder what other important details he’s overlooking with respect to ESCR, the Iraq War, terrorism, the stimulus packages, etc?
If more of this silliness from his adminstration continues, I wonder if his supporters will continue to praise him. Maybe now they’ll realize that it takes quite a bit more experience than a community organizer to run a country.
March 18, 2009 @ 8:02 amThe billions that went to foreign banks is even a larger outrage. Obama should resign.
March 18, 2009 @ 9:54 amIf only you really meant it.
March 18, 2009 @ 9:56 amDavid:
Bonuses are fine. That’s how you do busines in certain sectors. What’s not fine is using taxpayer dollars to give bonuses. And there are two ways to take that argument: one that they shouldn’t have used it for bonuses, or another that the government should not be giving bailouts in the first place. The first argument doesn’t work for me because
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT YOU FLAMING MORONS? YOU STAND THERE AND RIP ON THE EXECUTIVES ABOUT HOW STUPID THEY ARE THEN HAND THEM MILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS THE NEXT WEEK?
Who should just go away and kill themselves again? Blaming and attacking the execs for giving themselves bonuses that were previously contracted reminds me of a scene in the movie Natural Born Killers where the Indian guy tells the story about someone who nurtured a wounded rattlesnake, and when it was healed it bit her and she questioned why it did that. I think the snake says something like, “I’m a rattlesnake you f*$#ing b^$#h!”
March 18, 2009 @ 11:11 amI do mean it, and I felt that the last three should have resigned. (Clinton thru Obama)
March 18, 2009 @ 11:40 amI love the “public flogging” phrase since Limbaugh makes hundereds of millions of dollars verbally flogging everyone…everyday.
The Flogger became the Floggee. Poor thing.
March 18, 2009 @ 12:32 pmFannie Mae and Merril Lynch have also paid bonuses. The entire system is an outrage, and Obama is going on Leno tonight while scores of treasury seats remain empty in the midst of a financial crisis?
The ship lies on the ocean bottom while the captain still plays shuffleboard.
Resign.
March 19, 2009 @ 4:13 amDude,
March 19, 2009 @ 11:36 amHe’s not going to resign. Most people are happy that he’s doing just what they elected him to do. We’re stuck with him for the next 4-8 years. Unless H.J.Res. 5 passes.
Obama resign? That’s as likely as Ahmedinejad teaching Hebrew school. Americans now want to be taken care of from womb to tomb by the government. Our Messiah promises to do just that. We get what we vote for. We need another Reagen revolution – I see no one on the horizon capable of pulling this off.
March 20, 2009 @ 3:54 am