Wall Street Witch Hunts
Democrats in Congress usually have a “thing” for privacy rights. Listening in on international phone-calls were one end of the conversation is a known or suspected terrorist? That’s bad. However, not all such intrusions are equal.
McCarthy-esque intrusion into the lives of folks working on Wall Street? Wielding the tax code as a weapon against employees who allowed the offer of retention bonuses to convince them to remain in AIG’s employ that they might carry the government’s water? How about a fishing expedition into the remuneration of Merrill Lynch employees by Andrew Cuomo? That, it would appear, is hunky-dory to the high mavens of privacy rights and civil liberties, death threats and hate-speech concerns notwithstanding.
Update (Jim): I would say its unusual when Dave and Chris Matthews actually agree on something.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWvo0pRJGFg
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The vote was a lousy idea, but you should check on who voted for it. Not just Dems and, of all the people, Erik Cantor.
Congress passed a law allowing the AIG bonuses, and, approximately a month later, Congress becomes outraged at the law they passed, so, they "tax away" the bonuses. Is it too much to ask that we have some continuity in the position of our leaders…at least for more than 4 weeks?
One wonders how many of them were genuinely outraged because the majority of them didn't bother to read the bill.
Continuity? I would rather see competence (or at least competent staffs who can tell these schmucks what to do….).
Remember the old adage "there's never time to do a job right, but there's always time to do it over?" Think of that in the rush to pass these stimulus/bailout bills and the subsequent band aids they scramble to pass to fix what shouldn't have been broken in the first place.
This AIG bonus flap is a deliberate ruse by Congress to rile up Americans at a level that many Americans can relate…..i.e. Hate the Rich folk. It is easy to conjur up rath against the "haves" from the "have nots".
To fan the flames of out rage at $164 Million presented by the New Axis of Evil (DEM/LIB/MSM) is easy for the "simple folk" to grasp.
Yet, $727 Billion here, $412 Billion there , is not an issue….huh
Democrats and the teacher's unions have made the "simple folk" simple, by deliberately failing to teach civics and economics in high school (not to mention science and math). With a complicit media, they have 24 hour outlets for their tripe. Imagine what it would be like without the "rest of the story" from conservative talk shows…
Republicans voted for the tax and have also been railing and inflaming. Everybody loves this food fight, because the "simple folks" eat it up.
Ok – let's put some numbers on this (and all other comments like "they voted on this" and "they all do that").
On the House bill to impose the additional tax, 96% of Democrats voted for the bill and 48% of Republicans voted for the bill. This is after days of propaganda press railing and preying on populist sentiment in an effort to deflect the fact that they knew this was coming all along in the first place. I'm not surprised that some weak kneed Republicans are riding the wave – I disagree, but I'm not surprised.
I think we can all be mad as some executives who (arguably) should not get a bonus did, but we should all be outraged and on guard as to the power of a propagandizing press and the willingness of Democrats in both Congress and the White House to purposely abuse the public trust. The fact that the bonuses were specifically negotiated and protected in the Stimulus bill clearly indicates that the current grandstanding is political theatre and a conscious attempt to lie to the public. Personally, I think the protection was put in there to protect their "friendly" executives in places like Fannie and Freddie and they (Rahm and the boys) thought that they could pick on only AIG as the demon of the day. This may have backfired a bit as they propaganda machine may have been too efficient.
Cantor is now a "weak kneed Republican"? That's should be news to him too.