Everyone still has their knickers in a twist about the $165 million paid in bonuses to the dicks at AIG, except for CNBC’s Rick Santelli and the guys who actually got them.
That whole idea that if these guys just understood the public outrage, they’d voluntarily give their bonuses up? Ain’t gonna happen. Even their big boss pronounced himself disappointed that he can’t rescind the payments because they are a contractually-obligated “retention payment,” though New York State Attorney General Andrew “Shucking And Jiving Is Not A Racist Term” Cuomo found out that 11 of the dudes who got “retention payments” weren’t actually retained. Oh, and TPMMuckraker discovered that, once upon a time, AIG used to just fire assholes who demanded their contractually-obligated bonuses. [Crooks & Liars, The Hill, NY Times, LA Times, TPMMuckraker]
Dana Perino thinks everyone’s just being mean to hard-working, middle-class Americans when we crap on the AIG executives’ multi-million dollar bonuses. [ThinkProgress]
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wants to know who stripped out his provision from the original bailout bill that would have capped all bonuses at $100,000. I’m curious about that myself, given that everyone is swearing that no one really knew these massive, contractually-obligated, gonna-cost-the-taxpayers-$1-billion-to-forego bonuses were coming. [Huffington Post]
And although the new rage in Washington is taxing the shit out of any AIG exec stupid enough to take a bonus (Cuomo says we’ll know your names soon!), House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel is having none of that. He says that the tax code shouldn’t be used for political purposes. Now who is going to go out and investigate how much money AIG execs have donated to Charlie’s precious CUNY building honoring Charlie? Bueller? [Huffington Post]