A.I.G. Ruse

I want to address the uprising that has been occurring since the release of the information concerning the bonus's given to certain AIG executives. First all, let me say that if the executives that are part of AIG that is failing are getting these bonuses, I am against rewarding failure.

Now on to the meat of it. AIG has seven separate departments under the umbrella name of AIG. Only two of them are having the financial problems that is bringing it down, the rest of the departments remain profitable. So when you hear about AIG executives getting bonuses, the first thing that needs to be considered is whether the executives are part of the corporation that is still a viable, profit making division or are they part of the divisions that are causing the trouble.

The real story though, is all the executives are entitled to these bonuses regardless of which division they belong to. Let me explain. When congress passed the stimulus bill, Chris Dodd, (the Senator of Connecticut) purposely placed in this bill an exception stating that any contracts that were in place on or before the date in the bill ( sometime in February), would have to be paid their bonuses agreed to in their existing contracts with AIG. Furthermore, Chris Dodd was the number on recipient of campaign contributions from AIG, with Obama being second. Now, because it has become politically unattractive to be associated with this company, Chris Dodd was the first to come out against these bonuses and demand repayment. Again, it is politicians playing politics. They could have cared less about these bonuses if the people would not have started rising up against them.

But, the people are addressing the wrong issue. They are going after these 63 people who received these bonuses instead of going after the politicians who, for one, wrote the exception into the bill in the first place. and two, the majority of the politicians in Washington who did not even read this bill before signing it into law. If they had, they would have known about the exception and would have not had it included in the bill prior to signing it. So we have one of two things happening with the politicians in Washington. One, they are totally inept, by not reading this bill prior to signing it, what else is in this bill that is going to come back to bite them? and Two, they are corrupt by knowing of this exception and allowing it to remain in place. In either case, it is bad news for We The People. In addition to the above, the politicians in Washington are now trying to force these bonus earners to return their legally received bonuses or else they are going to try and recover the money by implementing a special tax in the amount of 100%.

Here is the problem with that. One, these are legally signed contracts by the company and the individuals long before the crises that they are facing. These contracts legally binding and if the government did not want these bonuses to be pain, they should have let the company declare chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to void the contracts and renegotiate new ones. But by giving them bailout money, they in essence forced these companies to uphold the contracts and pay the bonuses.

And most importantly two, it is against the first article of the Constitution for the government to impose a tax on a specific part of the population and it is against the first article of the Constitution for the government to interfere with legal contracts between private citizens as well as establish laws that would penalize citizens retroactively. What this means is that the government can not pass a law that states that as a gun owner, you are now responsible for any deaths that have occurred for the past fifty years and they are now going to retroactively charge you taxes for all the medical payments for medical treatment that gunshot victims received over the past fifty years. This was put into the Constitution for the sole purpose to prevent the government from doing what is trying to do right now with these citizens receiving these bonuses. Please pass this along to all your friends and family and co-workers so they understand that their anger is misplaced. It is not the employees of AIG that they should be angry at, but Chris Dodd and the members of our government who intentionally forced this company to pay these bonuses in the first place. Thanks, and keep fighting the good fight. Earl