AIG and your runaway Congress

If you’ve watched the news lately you’re probably floored that AIG would dare to hand out over $165 Million in retention bonuses to some of the very people who were managing the disaster. My opinion… pay the bonuses for NUMEROUS reasons.

First and foremost, AIG was under contract to pay these bonuses based on contracts that were drafted well before any of this mess began. Here is a small fact that NO ONE seems to really care about… The Financial Services Division of AIG is headquartered in Wilton, Connecticut. There is a small thing called the “Wage Act” in Connecticut that would result in a DOUBLE payout should AIG fail to pay contracted bonuses, bring your “outrage” total to over $300 Million.

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather deal with $165 Million in bad press than $330 Million.

Second, if corporations are simply allowed to ignore legally binding contractual agreements with their employees you would be destroying the bonds between companies and their employees and opening up a can of worms so massive I really don’t think our current market system could recover.

So what does Washington do? They take a huge dump on the US Constitution and the House of Representatives passes a bill that would tax “any company” receiving over $5 Billion in federal bailout funds aimed at individuals with a family income over our magical “evil rich” level of $250,000, at 90%.

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 – United States Constitution

“No bill of Attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.”

By passing this bill, your federal government would be retroactively dipping their hands into legally binding contract payments and essentially seizing what would then be private funds.

Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor:

“It could well trigger years of litigation,. Just because a company or individual is unpopular does not mean the government can retroactively impose punitive measures against them. There’s a host of difficult contractual and constitutional and statutory barriers that would have to be overcome by Congress.”

The signs are becoming clearer every single day that those we have supposedly “chosen” to lead this country have no clue what they are doing, and zero regard for the rule of law and the very roots of the founding our country.