This comment on the Heritage Foundation blog expresses my sentiments.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/
ARGH: The AIG Fiasco Gets Worse
James Gattuso
The Foundry
March 18, 2009
Jerome Zacny writes:
March 18, 2009
Mr. Geithner doesn’t know how the AIG bonus package got into the
bailout plan he crafted. Mr. Dodd doesn’t know how his amendment to
the bailout, restricting bonuses to executives, became “gutted” to
exempt bonus payments to AIG executives from those restrictions. Mr.
Obama doesn’t know how all of this happened and is now “outraged”. At
least that’s what his teleprompter said. These people are either the
biggest liars in government, or they are the most inept, lazy and
irresponsible people to ever work in Washington.
I tend to believe the latter. Trying to determine the biggest liar in
government is like trying to determine the largest grain of sand on
the beach. The safer bet is that no one actually read the compilation
of provisions that were crammed into the bailout legislation. Mr.
Obama turned the whole enterprise over to Mr. Geithner and the
Legislature. The Legislators put their ideas on paper and turned those
papers over to their staffers, who completed the bill and sent it to
the President. Mr. Obama promptly signed the bill into law. Now, those
who are responsible claim to have no idea how these bonus payments
ever found their way into the provisions of the bailout.
Nobody, not the President, not Ms. Pelosi, not Mr. Geithner, not Mr.
Dodd or his boss Harry Reid bothered to read the final version of the
bailout legislation before putting it into law. Everyone involved
trusted others to do their jobs for them. Now, when the fecal matter
hits the fan, they are all “outraged”.
This isn’t the only piece of important legislation that went unread
before being signed into law. The “stimulus” legislation was well over
a thousand pages long. It would be safe to say that no one read the
entire draft of this legislation, other than the typist who produced
it, before it was signed into law. There will be no shortage of
“outraged” legislators, no doubt including Mr. Obama himself, when we
all discover later exactly what was put into law. We may discover that
we have negated the Constitution, ceded the Southwest U.S. back to
Spain, the Southeast U.S. back to France, Alaska back to Russia and
the rest of the Country back to England. Who would know, no one read
those thousand pages before passing the legislation and signing it
into law. Perhaps that’s what Mr. Obama meant when he said the
legislation “wasn’t perfect”.
This kind of irresponsibility would not be tolerated in any other
environment. Can you imagine standing before a judge trying to explain
how you, an ostensibly rational adult, should not be held accountable
to the terms of an agreement or contract that you signed, based on the
argument that you didn’t read it?
This administration likes to talk a lot about accountability.
Teachers, doctors, bankers, stock brokers, insurance companies all
should be held accountable. But what about U.S. Representatives,
Senators, the President and their minions? Should they not be held
accountable? How can the American public have any confidence at all in
“representatives” who don’t read the legislation for which they vote?
Why should the American public have any confidence in a President that
signs into law legislation that he has not read?
* * *
“Treasury Secretary Geithner is disingenuous at best and untruthful at
worst when he says that he ‘inherited the worst fiscal situation in
American history.’
The truth is that Secretary Geithner didn't inherit the policy of
throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at failing companies - he helped
create it.
Even before he was Treasury Secretary - when he was still head of the
New York Federal Reserve - Geithner was so deeply involved in the
government's bail out of Bear Stearns, its take over of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, and its bailout of AIG that this was the Washington
Post's headline from September 19, 2008:
"In the Crucible of Crisis, Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner Forge a
Committee of Three".
The first meeting of the first bailout - of Bear Stearns - was held in
Geithner's office. And the first meeting of what has become a $170
billion bailout of AIG was held - where else? In Geithner's New York
Fed office.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?
March 18, 2009 Vol. 4, No. 11
Bankruptcy, Not Bailout
Human Events
by Newt Gingrich
* * *
http://www.examiner.com/x-268-
Obama Received a $101,332 Bonus from AIG
March 17, 3:01 PM · 582 comments
Dan Spencer
Examiner.com
Right Side Politics Examiner
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