AIG: Tax Authority as Political Weapon?

"It's difficult for me to think of the code as a political weapon," said Rangel, who spoke to a handful of reporters outside his office...." U.S. Representative Charles Rangel (DEM-NY), 3/19/2009

Okay, Congress, with Charlie "Didn't Know I Owed Taxes" Rangel, Democrat of NY, and U.S. Representative to Congress since the Middle Ages, passed a personally punitive tax package, directed at 74 people who work for AIG. Even 85 Republicans went along with this. What's really going on, Charlie?

Some of this history we know, or at least those of us who read or watch something other than the MSM. AIG, the world's largest insurance company, and a major contributor to campaigns by U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd (DEM-CONN) and U.S. President Barrack Obama (DEM-Washington DC), got into trouble last fall when the credit default swaps it was selling as insurance against subprime mortgages soured (AIG had to pay out instead of sell). Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed, and Timothy Geithner, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President Obama (DEM-Washington, DC), arranged for an 85 billion bailout.

When the United States Congress (Democrat majorities, both houses) wrote, but apparently did not read, the Stimulus Bill ($787 billion), and then passed it, as if by magic, and at the behest of the Treasury Department (see reference to Timothy Geithner, US Secretary of the Treasury), Senator Christopher Dodd (DEM-CONN) wrote a little clause in exempting contracted bonus payments to AIG executives. Yesterday, Senator Dodd (DEM-CONN) denied having written that clause. Today, Senator Dodd (DEM-CONN) admitted that he had, at the behest of the Department of Treasury (Timothy Geithner, Secretary of Treasury), written that clause but wished he hadn't. This was as discussions built up about giving another $85 billion to AIG which, without federal protection from anti-trust actions, would never have existed in its current form. Without federal intervention (Community Redevelopment Act) in the mortgage market, where banks and other mortgage holders were required to give subprime mortgages to people who couldn't pay them back, it is unlikely that credit default swaps would have been sold in large numbers by AIG.

The big to-do about AIG bonuses (prompted by actions involving two Democratic national officials, Sen. Dodd (DEM-CONN) and Timothy Geithner (Secretary of Treasury, Obama Administration) looks an awful lot like a political storm to cover up the biggest American scandal since the S&L mess in the 1980s. The Democrat answer to their own party and government corruption is to use the IRS to penalize people that they had originally intended to be rewarded for -- for what? Bad behavior?

Sounds a lot like paying off somebody's mortgage because they failed to pay it on their own, then sending them a bill for the same amount under threat of arrest.

Hey, defaulting mortgage holders, better watch out. The Congress (Democrat majorities, both houses) may decide that they don't remember bailing you out.

QED

Luther