Archive for March, 2009
Who in the Obama Administration will be forced to resign over AIG's bonuses?
Someone high in the Obama Administration will need to resign over the AIG bonuses mess. Who will it be?
Though the MSM is downplaying the Tea Party Movement, 5,000 people turning out in Cincinnati, Ohio (of all places) to protest this Administration’s wasteful spending is indication real anger and outrage is building in this country. The upcoming April 15th Tea Parties throughout the country are shaping up to be the largest ones yet.
And the more people look into this business surrounding AIG’s bonuses, the more clearly they see that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner knew exactly what was going on with the bonuses, and that Democrat Chris Dodd specifically wrote an amendment in Obama’s Trillion Dollar Spending Bill protecting those lavish corporate perks.
So, who’s going to resign over this so the Administration can turn the page, the MSM can claim there’s nothing more to see, and Obama can move on to something else?
Chris Dodd and Tim Geithner should both resign, for general incompetence, if not their responsibility in the AIG matter.
Who do you think will end up under the Obama bus this time?
UPDATE: Here’s an interesting read on Tim Geithner’s culpability with AIG, by Eliot Spitzer of all people. The bonuses got people’s attention, but the real scandal is the fact that AIG is pumping most of the money it gets from the federal government into other companies, some of which are based overseas. So, US taxpayer money is flowing freely out of the country, to entities not intended to recieve those billions. That’s a lot more complicated for the public at large to deal with — unlike the bonuses issue, which has hit a populist nerve.
Geithner won’t withstand another large hit. As things stand now, he’ll survive in his post, but he better hope the public doesn’t look deeper into the AIG mess. If that happens, Geithner will probably be toast by the Fourth of July, because there doesn’t seem to be any credible reason to keep him at Treasury if every story that breaks about financial mismanagement or public outrage is tied to Geithner in some way.
Action Item of the Day: call your Senators and Reps and give them an earful about Chris Dodd's responsibility for AIG's bonuses
Here’s a list of contact information for your Senators and Representatives.
The Congressional switchboard’s number is: (202) 224-3121
Today is a good day to call Congress and give them an earful about Chris Dodd and his responsibility for AIG’s bonuses.
Chris Dodd, more than anyone else, is actually responsible for ALL OF THIS.
Though, truthfully, the entire Congress is to blame for rushing through a Trillion Dollar Spending Bill without actually reading it, Dodd snuck an amendment into that bill specifically protecting AIG’s bonuses.
Dodd personally received close to $250,000 in campaign contributions from AIG (the next highest recipient of AIG contributions? Obama).
Dodd’s amendment to Obama’s Trillion Dollar Spending bill is on page H1412 of the Final Stimulus Bill, “SEC. 111 EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE”. It reads:
(iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11th, 2009, as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.
Any outrage about AIG’s bonuses coming from Democrats in Washington is absolutely ridiculous, considering the simple fact that Chris Dodd actually wrote an amendment into the Trillion Dollar Spending Bill specifically protecting those bonuses. No Democrats read the Spending Bill before voting for it — if they had read those 1,400+ pages of pork laden excess and recklessness, then perhaps we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in now.
Call your Senators and Representatives today and ask them what other surprises are waiting for us in the bill that was rammed through Congress, without being read, and contains amendments protecting greed and corruption like the one written by Chris Dodd.
Why is Caterpillar laying off another 2,500 people if Obama's Trillion Dollar Spending Bill was supposed to stimulate the economy through construction projects?
Caterplillar is laying off another 2,500 people this week, on top of the 2,500 or so it already laid off last month.
Caterpillar makes construction equipment.
You know, the kind they need at all of the construction sites created by projects such as those stuffed into Obama’s Trillion Dollar Spending Bill (you know, the one Congress rammed through last month without reading).
So, if this “stimulus” was really going to “save our economy” as advertised, wouldn’t the very first companies to benefit from the “stimulus” be the ones that make construction equipment, since infrastructure projects are supposedly the backbone of the “stimulus”?
Obama/Pelosi/Reid claimed the infrastructure projects were “shovel ready”, meaning they would be getting underway quickly.
Caterpillar’s layoffs indicate otherwise. Why would a company that makes construction equipment layoff 5,000 people in two months if it saw massive orders for construction equipment (ordered to handle all of those “shovel ready” infrastructure projects) heading down the pipe?
That just doesn’t make any sense.
Unless, of course, you look critically at the projects included in the Trillion Dollar Spending Bill and see that most of them actually are not “shovel ready” at all (such as the $8 billion being sunk into Harry Reid’s levitating train from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, which won’t be built for years, if ever); the ones that are ready to go are projects planned years ago, that were already underway with all of their needed equipment purchased, with the “stimulus bill” only picking up the tab by the Federal Government instead of the local and state governments.
The spending bill isn’t stimulating anything.
If it was, and infrastructure projects were going to turn the economy around, then Caterpillar should be HIRING 2,500 more people, not letting them go.
New Grey Gardens trailer from HBO reveals depths of Kennedy-Obama similarities
The extended Kennedy family has done many shameful things, so Grey Gardens doesn’t even rank anywhere near the top (certainly not when Ted Kennedy’s unrepentant use of Oldsmobiles as submarines is entered into the mix).
Technically, Grey Gardens is a Bouvier family matter, but the Kennedys were well aware of what happened to Big and Little Edie. The Kennedys and Bouviers both allowed these two women to live in raccoon-infested squalor, with their house, Grey Gardens, falling down around them, doing nothing about it until a documentary was made about the deplorable situation that so embarrassed Jackie Kennedy and her sister on a personal level that they finally helped the Edies.
Even though they knew what was going on for years, and chose to do nothing, until Saint Jackie was embarrassed by the documentary and reluctantly sprang into action to mitigate the damages to her name and image.
And you know what this reminds us all of?
Obama’s grandmother living in filth and squalor in Kenya.
Obama’s brother George eating garbage and living in a tin shack outside Nairobi.
Obama’s aunt living illegally in the slums of Boston.
Would you allow your family members to live in filth and squalor when you had more than enough means to help them get back on their feet?
We guess you’re not a Kennedy, or an Obama.
This is a damn lie: Obama claims he didn't know about AIG bonuses until this month
What makes Obama’s lie that he didn’t know about AIG’s bonuses until this month so preposterous is one simple fact: Tim Geithner, the alleged “wunderkid” who had to be confirmed as Treasury Secretary because only he could save the economy (despite all of his deliberate tax evasion problems), was the man who, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, approved a loan to AIG last fall to keep it from going under like Lehman Brothers.
In that loan, all of the information pertaining to AIG’s contractual obligation to bonuses for employees was clearly spelled out. It was in a voluminous amount of paperwork, which one would expect from any agreement involving a financial behemoth like AIG, but it was there. The Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, the White House, and all other government agencies with hands on this bailout deal ALL HAVE PLENTY OF HIGHLY-PAID STAFF whose responsibilities should include reading every page of material submitted in a mult-million dollar bailout like this.
This was information Geithner, personally, had to review before providing AIG with that loan from the Federal Reserve.
Obama’s excuse for not putting two and two together regarding these bonuses until now is, unbelievably, that “the compensation agreements were incredibly complex and not easily understood”.
If these clowns can’t read legal agreements, and many of them went to Harvard, and they can’t “easily understand” anything “complex”, then we shudder to think what’s going to be revealed in coming months as the fraud, graft, corruption, and waste written into the 1,400 pages of Obama’s Trillion Dollar Spending Bill slowly reveal themselves.
Because no one — not a SINGLE MEMBER OF CONGRESS — actually read that Spending Bill before voting on it.
“It’s boring.”
“It’s overly complex.”
“It’s not easily understood.”
“I want this passed so I can go to Italy and be shamed by the Pope.”
None of those are excuses for the remarkable chaos and ineptitude on display in Washington in the Obama/Pelosi/Reid administration, which has trouble reading and understanding what’s clearly put in front of them, apparently.
People want to rename St. Patrick's Day "Shamrock Day". Because they are crazy.
Why do crazy people want to rename all of our holidays?
For years, there’s been a concerted effort, if not all out war, from the far left to rename Christmas “The Holidays”, and turn every Christmas Tree into a “Holiday Tree”, every Christmas Wreath into a “Holiday Circle”, and Santa Claus into “Holiday Man”. And those are the people who want to allow these traditions to remain, but just rename them. It’s not even getting into grinches like Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky who waged legal war a few years ago to yank the Christmas tree and other decorations from Seattle’s airport.
This last fall, lunatics in California were up in arms over children dressing up in Pilgrim and Indian costumes to celebrate Thanksgiving – which would seem like the least controversial or upsetting of all holidays, as it’s about friendship, giving thanks for all we have, and eating lots of delicious food with good company.
Religious groups routinely go after Halloween celebrations, insisting schools either skip Halloween activities or make the kids call it “Trick or Treat Day”. But, then some parents object to the word “Trick”, as that could be seen as encouraging children to play tricks on people, which would be wrong (or it could be an incongruous reference to a late-90s Christian Campbell/J.P. Pitoc meet-cute movie that not only co-starred Tori Spelling, but was the screen debut of Miss Coco Peru). Other parents object to children having candy, and instead want them to have only fruits or vegetables on “Treat Day” (because THAT’S sure a lot of fun).
Easter is “Spring Celebration” in many places.
Presidents’ Day is now “Obama Day” for many.
And now, most ridiculous of all, today for the first time we’re hearing kooks and loons calling for the renaming of St. Patrick’s Day as “Shamrock Day”, because it’s more “inclusive” for people who don’t like saints or any religious connection whatsoever to a holiday.
There are many things that make America the greatest nation on this Earth. Caving in to PC lunatics is certainly not one of them. It’s amazing these people have such sway, and can mount campaigns to change holidays and rename things we all grew up with. These holidays and simple traditions are often the only things many of us have in common.
In a room full of strangers, who grew up in different parts of the country, with different talents and abilities, none of us might have a lot in common, but we can all remember making Pilgrim and Indian art for Thanksgiving art in grade school, marveling at all the Christmas lights somewhere in our home towns, dressing up and going Trick or Treating on Halloween, hiding eggs or eating little yellow Peeps at Easter, and dressing up in green and possibly acting more than a little stupid some time in our adult lives on St. Patrick’s Day.
Not Shamrock Day.
Not Green Day.
St. Patrick’s Day.
UPDATE: Here’s a little history of St. Patrick’s Day…and some incentive to keep the holiday just the way it is.
Pittsburgh Steelers Owner Dan Rooney named Ambassador to Ireland
Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, has been named Ambassador to Ireland.
Rooney is a political appointment, chosen for his wealth and loyalty to Obama, and not because of any career in diplomacy that Rooney possesses.
It will be interesting to see just how many immensely wealthy Democrats, who contributed large sums to Obama through bundling and other campaign-finance-reform skirting means, are rewarded for their efforts with ambassadorships, to Europe in particular.
The two best assignments are Ambassador to the Court of St. James (which HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy wants) and Ambassador to France.
Let’s see just how much of the candidate who promised to change Washington is left in the man doling out rewards and favors now that he’s in the Oval Office, located in Washington, where business seems to be conducted pretty much as usual.
Hope!
Change!
Patronage!
Former AIG CEO suing the company now over bonuses
The best part of this is where the former CEO of AIG calls Congress and the White House out for their feigned SHOCK! at the AIG bonuses.
People, those bonuses were written in all of the agreements submitted for the bailouts — these are not surprises. If the government read the AIG employment contracts, they would have seen clearly these bonuses were coming. AIG did nothing to hide them. AIG was deceptive in no way.
Congress and the White House just didn’t bother to read any of the paperwork before funneling millions of dollars into AIG.
The same way Congress didn’t read the Trillion Dollar Obama Spending bill it rammed through last month.
Reading is fundamental, as the AIG mess proves.
Can Meg Whitman Save California?
Here’s a very interesting read.
Meg Whitman, as Governor, would run California like a business – instead of, apparently, a strung-together collection of movie one liners and stale catch phrases, Schwarzenegger-style.
Here in Illinois, we can barely fathom the concept of running a state sensibly, responsibly, and with the best interests of its citizens in mind.
Fiscal responsibility and sound drama-free judgment?
What’s that?
Tuesday Open Thread
What’s on your mind this Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day?
How do you feel about the AIG bonuses, coming from the millions in bailout money rushed through to “rescue” the company?
Do you think there just might be a connection between rushing through bailouts and massive spending bills (without Congress even reading them) and massive fraud, graft, corruption, waste, and excess?
Maybe reading legislation and critically thinking about its impact could prevent things like this from happening.
What do you think?
