-
The Audacity of Obama's Secularism
February 7, 2012 | 376 comments
-
Civil Disobedience in Obama's Second Term
February 3, 2012 | 312 comments
-
Romney's Cheap and Empty Win
February 1, 2012 | 900 comments
-
A Little Bit Ghetto
January 27, 2012 | 143 comments
-
Obama's Open Buffet
January 25, 2012 | 318 comments
The Obama Watch
Obama's Penal Code
The AIG sideshow and his view of taxation.
Barack Obama allowed himself another moment of juvenile socialism this week, quickly assenting in principle to the Democrats' proposed penal use of taxation against AIG executives. Even Charlie Rangel, chastened by his own tax troubles, hesitated at the sound of his colleagues' raw Bolshevik braying. "It is difficult for me to think of the code as a political weapon," Rangel was quoted as saying.
Not so for Obama. Taxation is his avenging angel. But why doesn't his avenging angel, while he's at it, also swoop down and take money away from other publicly financed failures? Perhaps it is time for an excise tax on the bonuses of principals at disastrous public schools. Or how about an excise tax on the ballooning salaries of bureaucratic managers whose social-engineering schemes extend pathologies year after year?
No, in the special-interests sweepstakes that is Obamaism, failure produced by liberal recklessness is to be rewarded generously: public-school teachers can expect to see their salaries rise as test scores fall; bureaucrats are more likely to receive bonuses for enlarging their client case load than reducing it.
Obama gets worked up about rewarding failure at AIG, but rewarding failure has never stopped him before. Indeed, rewarding failure is the organizing principle of liberalism; the squeaky, destructive special interest almost always gets the grease. It complains about some needless or corrupt government project failing, demands more money for said project, and in short order receives more millions to waste. Were AIG executives a liberal special-interest group, they could expect bonuses for years to come.
Obama's supposedly transcendent, fresh politics is drearily familiar, a populism of the cheapest and most unimaginative sort. Yet another week is wasted on a nothing issue.
Instead of focusing on problems at AIG, its government-appointed head, Edward Liddy, had to belly up to the socialists' scapegoat-spit and spin it around a few times while pretending to explain to Congress what it already knew and permitted, all so that Chuck Schumer could find a microphone and say to bonus-receiving executives, "If you don't return it on your own, we will do it for you."
The legality of AIG's bonuses is due to the incompetence of the Obama administration: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who had awarded himself an inadvertent bonus through clueless tax evasion and still got the job, apparently just didn't notice them. In other words, the Obama administration is using an outrage it helped create to justify a new one -- the hasty, amateurish use of taxation as an instrument of retaliation.
Earlier in the week Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, captured the cheapness of this presidency by indulging in a sophomoric slight at Dick Cheney. Not even Clinton's shabby and immature press aides ever behaved that boorishly. The touchiness of Gibbs was particularly gross and hypocritical given that the Obama campaign spent a good year or so defaming Cheney at every chance. Cheney has every right to unload on them.
In their Olympian arrogance, Obama and his surrogates can dish criticism out, but they refuse to take it. Notice that Gibbs' idea of a comeback was to gloat over Cheney's unpopularity.
The Obama presidency is as much or more of a demagogic "permanent campaign" than Clinton's, moving from one phony, poll-tested issue to the next. During the campaign Obama pandered to crowds by promising to confiscate the wealth of oil executives. Now, seeking more quick applause, he finds another villain of the hour and sanctions confiscatory excise taxes for AIG executives.
His political gain is the economy's loss. Turning the tax code into a penal code will just frighten markets even more.
About the Author
George Neumayr is a contributing editor to The American Spectator.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (31) | Leave a comment
Leave a Comment
More Articles by George Neumayr
More Articles From The Obama Watch
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/03/19/obamas-penal-code
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- The Collapse of Jon Corzine
- Who's Really Conservative?
- Current Wisdom
- Digital Subscription (Save 78%)
- Buy a single issue (Save 50%)
- Send Spectator as a gift
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Grzmlyk| 3.19.09 @ 7:56AM
This is nothing less than a coup d'etat.
We are witnessing another dreary rise of another otherwise-forgettable wannabe dictator. Cheap is right. Obama is third-world, banana republic all the way.
Who is worse, the Obamabots and their naked, craven, puerile thirst for ever more power, or their sycophants the true believers, who are prepared to sacrifice their lives and their children's - and millions of others when it all shakes out - on the altar of their own moral vanity?
The Great Experiment that was America is now closed for business. The brightest light in the geopolitical firmament has just been extinguished.
What saddens most of all is how many people rejoice at the darkness.
Robert Rosencrans| 3.19.09 @ 9:38AM
The real story with the AIG bonuses is that it now exposes a new element of the lies emanating from the White House and Barack Obama's mouth, almost on a daily basis.
Since Senator Dodd's statement on CNN that it was the Obama White House, not Treasury, who requested the grandfathering in of the bonuses, what is the public to believe?
Although Senator Dodd is a corrupt government official who likes sweetheart mortgage deals ultimately subsidized by the public, and may have engaged in a Presidential pardon land swap deal for one of his friends, it is highly likely he is telling the truth about the White House request for the provision to grandfather the bonuses and other forms of compensation.
The only conclusion is that someone in the White House was "gotten to" in a quid pro quo situation, or perhaps it was a scheme cooked up by Obama and Dodd themselves, the number one and number two largest recipients of campaign donations from AIG.
It paints a picture of massive corruption inside the beltway, and deflates the promise of ethical government promised by the biggest liar to come down the political pike, Barack Obama.
macdaddy| 3.19.09 @ 10:10AM
As much as AIG's bonuses piss me off, I hope they don't return a single penny of it. I really would like to see the RATS shown for the idiots they are when the Supreme Court declares their attempts to recover the money unconstitutional. The Constitution prohibits bills of attainder and here we have Congressmen eager to shred the Constitution over $165 million. It's scary that their price is so low. This was plain incompetence on Obama's part. The Republicans need to make sure he owns this.
Gill O’Teen| 3.19.09 @ 10:11AM
Article I, Section 9 of a document inconvenient to obumah’s communist vision for our country known historically as The Archaic and Obsolete Constitution of the United States specifies that “No Bill of Attainder (“A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial - http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/attainder.htm) or ex post facto Law (“passed after the occurrence of an event or action which retrospectively changes the legal consequences of the event or action” - http://www.lectlaw.com/def/e086.htm) shall be passed.” With each passing day the evidence mounts into a big stinking pile of cow poop that the very persons who swore an oath to protect this Constitution as required by that out-of touch piece of paper are intent on destroying it. They are all traitors and should be exiled to Cuba or Venezuela. Maybe China will take them in. The words spoken by The Queen of Hearts in Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "Off with their heads!", comes to mind.
Anthony| 3.19.09 @ 11:03AM
This $170 B bill is a Democrat Party disgrace. The Democrats, and only the Democrats, are responsible for this. Is it no wonder that Pelosi and Reid were squealing like stuck pigs begging for Republicans to give them cover on this disgrace? Obama, Geithner, Dodd, Franks and the whole Democrat Party will pay dearly for this. The Democrats, famous for over reaching, may finally bring an end to liberalism.
I'm also wondering if the actor, Tim Robbins, famous for his "chill wind" quip on perceived Republican "draconian tactics" took notice of Barney Frank's imitation of Sen. McCarthy yesterday, demanding the names of AIG employees who received bonuses, approved by the Democrats in this bill? Hey Tim, at least McCarthy was going after Communists that actually were in the U.S. government. What's your excuse for Barney the Frank?
Charles Martel| 3.19.09 @ 11:42AM
Were I an AIG bonus recipient, I would be looking after the safety and well-being of my family and not returning so much as a penny.
Let Barney Frank pass his Bill of Attainder, and let Barry sign it. We are still a nation of laws, not men. It will not stand.
+++
Dustoff| 3.19.09 @ 11:43AM
NOT only AIG... look at what is going on with Freddie & Frannie.. Huge bonuses and not a peep
Madge | 3.19.09 @ 12:08PM
When is Obama going to govern? He is watering the lawn while the house is on fire.
Navas de Tolosa| 3.19.09 @ 1:01PM
I would actually have had a smidgen of respect for Teleprompter Jesus if he had come out in opposition to all the blather of the MSM about this issue. There is a totally legitimate counter-argument to be made.
First, much more AIG money was lost in the highly regulated everyday insurance department than in the derivatives. Second, and foremost, these employees were contractually promised bonuses to entice them to stay on the job, amidst the wreckage occurring around them. Only these people understood the nature of the derivatives enough to be able to unwind them. To do otherwise would have cost a lot more money and a lot more time.
I would hate to have this TeleJesus say he would back me. I know he would be all the way back.
Robert Rosencrans| 3.19.09 @ 1:04PM
While Congress goes through the pretense of taxing the bonuses, many members of Congress know it's a joke because many of the biggest bonuses went overseas to people who have never paid taxes in the U.S. The U.S. Congress has never been inhabited by more thieves, liars and outright crooks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/opinion/18dowd.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
At first, on the nutty bonuses, Team Obama thought it could get away with the same absurd argument used to justify the nearly $8 billion in unnecessary earmarks it allowed Congress to jam into this year’s overdue spending bill: It was written last year; we’re just signing off on it; we’ll do better in the future.
What President Obama should have said to the blood-sucking bums at A.I.G., many of them foreigners who were working at the louche London unit, was quite simple: “We stopped the checks. They’re immoral. If you want Americans’ hard-earned cash as a reward for burning up their jobs, homes and savings, sue me.”
He also should have saved a dollar a year and fired Ed Liddy. There must have been ways to avoid rewarding the perpetrators of our financial crisis and Liddy seems to have seriously explored none of them.
Barney Frank told reporters: “I think the time has come to exercise our ownership rights ... and then say as owner, ‘No, I’m not paying you the bonus. You didn’t perform. You didn’t live up to this contract.’ ”
Cuomo, who seems far more intent on transparency than Mr. Obama, and Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary who reluctantly signed off on the bonuses, issued subpoenas for the names of the bonus babies. Cuomo started an investigation of whether the payments were fraudulent because the company knew it did not have the funds to cover them.
The president needs to brush back the arrogant, greedy creeps who kneecapped capitalism, rather than cosseting Wall Street for fear of looking like an avatar of socialism.
Geithner, who comes from the cozy Wall Street club, and Liddy believe it’s best to stabilize the company and keep on board the same people who invented the risky financial tactics so they can unwind their own rotten spool.
Isn’t that like giving bonuses to the arsonists who started a fire because they alone know what kind of accelerants they used to start it?
“Their mythology starts with the false premise that these are irreplaceable geniuses,” says Cuomo.
Boiling mad that A.I.G. made more than 73 millionaires in the unit that felled the firm, Cuomo called the company’s counsel on Monday to demand that she stop payment on the checks. Cuomo was informed that the money had already been direct-deposited in the accounts of the derivative scoundrels with the push of a button.
Navas de Tolosa| 3.19.09 @ 1:15PM
"Isn’t that like giving bonuses to the arsonists who started a fire?"
--No. False analogy.
Pingback| 3.19.09 @ 1:26PM
The American Spectator : Obama's Penal Code : PlanetTalk.net - Learn the truth , no links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 3.19.09 @ 3:10PM
Obama’s Penal Code « Depravity links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
L. Ross| 3.19.09 @ 4:23PM
You're right, Navas de Tolosa. It's more like paying a daughter a bonus to guard her virginity after she slept with the football team. Eleven people got retention bonuses AFTER they left the company. Unbelievably.
anewamerica| 3.19.09 @ 4:51PM
http://reincorporation.blogspot.com
woodstock| 3.19.09 @ 10:52PM
How about taxing Frank Rainnes on the millions he
awarded himself,oops I forgot he's black.
Gary Hench| 3.20.09 @ 12:21AM
On leaving the country, the doors and windows will be left open. There's no one left to steal anything. So, the last one leaving the United States, please turn off the lights!
David Govett| 3.20.09 @ 4:31AM
Run a company into the ground--get vilified as a scapegoat. Run a nation into the ground--vilify a scapegoat. Politicians truly believe we are idiots. Since we elect them, however, maybe we are.
gfdgfdg| 11.26.09 @ 10:10PM
Mac TOD Converter,
TOD Converter for Windows