This is a fun collection of video spotlighting goofy gaffes by Barack Obama and members of his administration. No doubt if George W. Bush were still president this would confirm the prejudice that this man and his administration were stupid and incompetent. Of course this proves nothing of the sort for Obama, and we shouldn't think it does. The fact is we live in a world where there are cameras everywhere recording everything public officials say. Like you and me, if you listen to them long enough they will say something stupid. It doesn't prove they are morons, just that they are human, and that's healthy to remember from time to time.
On a more serious note, please read Steve Chapman writing about those pesky AIG bonuses. He is almost certainly right that it is Congress and the administration that are to blame for this embarrassment, not AIG. Yet Congress fiddles while Rome burns.
Congress is outraged. Really, really outraged. Unbelievably, incredibly outraged. And there are certainly grounds for anger.
Not at the insurance company AIG, which paid bonuses that are seen as intolerable, but at Congress, which blithely declined to prohibit them but is now shocked to find AIG doing what it was allowed to do. The Democrats who control Capitol Hill want revenge, as do many Republicans. So the House voted by a 328-93 margin to impose a 90 percent tax on the payments.
In doing so, members resolutely avoided a couple of inconvenient realities. The first is that the fault, if any, lies with the same people who are now angry. The second is that the tax conflicts with the clear intent of the Constitution.
The pending fees were not exactly classified information. "AIG's plans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars were publicized last fall, when Congress started asking questions about expensive junkets the company had sponsored," reports the Associated Press. "A November SEC filing by the company details $469 million in 'retention payments' to keep prized employees."
In January, two House members urged the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to block such bonuses. Last month, the Senate passed an amendment outlawing such payments by companies getting federal bailout funds -- and then dropped it.
The White House was also in the loop. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) says that the administration asked him to attach a provision to the stimulus bill that authorized such bonuses. Dodd protests that he only agreed because he didn't understand what the measure would do.
Maybe other people who voted for it in the Senate and House didn't either. Maybe Dodd and the rest ought to read legislation before they approve it.
As they say, read the whole thing. Chapman goes on to argue, again most certainly correctly, that the bill pushed through the House this week to tax the bonuses at 90% is a bill of attainder and thus unconstitutional.
This is a sad turn of events. Congress and the president screwed up and now, in phony outrage, they want to punish the politically unpopular AIG employees who benefited from this very reasonable retention bonus program. As John Hinderaker argues, this is more like the activity of a banana republic than the United States. Find a politically unpopular minority and punish them, particularly by confiscating their wealth, all in the name of covering up your own misdeeds. It is particularly mendacious of most members of Congress, including our own Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, to vote for the bonuses as provided for in the stimulus bill, and then realize that because they didn't read their own legislation, because of their own incompetence, these bonuses get paid. So they resort to demagoguery and unconstitutional acts to cover their own guilt. Meanwhile, we sink deeper and deeper into debt.
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