How do you continue to defend Obama when Obama knew of AIG bonus payouts for months?

If the public did not show outrage over the bonuses, would the Obama admin. have done anything differently? Doubtful. The hypocrisy.How do you continue to defend Obama when Obama knew of AIG bonus payouts for months?Usually the Devil takes a form that is more disguised...This guy is brasen!|||Have you noticed Obama and congress acting so outraged and surprised, but today we learn that he signed the very bill that quite clearly made those bonuses legal 鈥?the $787 billion stimulus package he had traveled around the nation promoting.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100鈥?/a>

The bill includes restrictions on executive compensation, but creates an exception for bonuses contractually obligated before February 11 of this year. The provision, and the exception, were inserted into the bill by the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd (D, Conn.), who has received more than $100,000 from AIG employees in the last 20 years, had written and inserted the relevant provision, with the relevant loophole.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets鈥?/a>

How can he, the president, or anyone else who voted for the stimulus, suddenly act surprised? Don't tell us they didn't read the bill. The presence of this loophole, in black and white, certainly gives the lie to all of this phony outrage 鈥?by the senator who created the loophole, by the president who signed it into law, and by everyone else who voted for the stimulus package. o_OHow do you continue to defend Obama when Obama knew of AIG bonus payouts for months?Obama DID know about the AIG bailout / bonus contract(s)!!



It's been uncovered by CNN that 5 years ago, Bush, Jr. got $200,000 in "campaign contributions" from AIG and paid Obama $100,000 in "campaign contributions" last year. Greed evidently doesn't know race OR political party lines.



And the news gets SCARIER: Other bailed out companies have abused their loan $$$$ to brazen insulting levels--read the link to learn more:



http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeti鈥?/a>



Our next move would be to call our state elected officials in D.C.--and have them call out the guilty to joing AIG in a Congressional hearing on live TV.|||obama is like clinton,he does things for political gain,or to act like he cares.funny he is upset with them getting bonuses,is he upset with his chief of staff,or his economic adviser for the way they got bonuses at fannie mae while cooking the books? no,obama is a show,and no substanceHow do you continue to defend Obama when Obama knew of AIG bonus payouts for months?First, I think we need to get the fact pattern straightened out. First, these are not performance bonuses. They are retention bonuses. Retention bonuses are used to give needed employees a reason to stick around and finish a job. Second, these are contractually obligated bonuses. Failure to pay them would have resulted in legal proceedings that would have ended with AIG, and thus the government, paying not only the bonuses but damages as well, as much as 3 times the actual damages. Finally, the bail out law was specifically written to allow payment of these bonuses:



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=w鈥?/a>



In my analysis, this is much ado about nothing. In general, you only give out a retention bonus to employees whose services you require for a wind down. Without it, they would have just walked away, making the problems at AIG even worse. The bonuses were signed, sealed, and approved. Congress knew all about them, in spite of their protestations to the contrary. Besides, the outrage at .01% of the total bailout to AIG going to retention bonuses is not only disingenuous (these politicians are the same ones who said the billions in earmarks on the stimulus bill were tiny and irrelevant) but misplaced.



The real outrage should be that half of the bailout money given to AIG went to pay foreign banks. Deutche Bank and a few others received BILLIONS of our tax dollars. THAT is what we should be mad about. And this talk about punishing the people who received the bonuses getting a 90% tax on it is stupid. First off, they did what they were contractually obligated to do, so they deserve to be paid. Secondly, you cannot change tax law in this manner after the fact. Imagine you getting a tax bill for an extra $2000 from last year because the law changed and was made retroactive. Would you find it fair? I certainly would not. And lastly, the government knew about it. These politicians kept telling us they knew where every penny was going. They certainly knew about the bonuses since it was Dodd who wrote that part of the bill. They should just stop trying to demonize people and move on.|||And the funny thing is Obama is a Constitutional Lawyer, and according to the Constitution of the state where AIG is headquartered, It is illegal not to pay the bonuses, and if they weren't payed, they could have been sued for double.|||The Obama administration did not negotiate the takeover of AIG. The Bush administration did. Even if Obama knew about the bonuses, which I doubt, no one would think that AIG would actually try to pay such bonuses under the circumstances.|||Exactly. With all of his huffing and puffing he knows there is nothing that can be done about the "bonuses" they are part of the contract.

I want to know; when are people going to quit listening to his words and watch is actions?|||Your question is accusatory yet you have not one shred of evidence to back it up. Therefore you question has no meaning. Isn't it fun to make stuff up?|||But he is OBAMA! He promised to pay for their gas and mortgage!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3鈥?/a>



He is going to pay them, isn't he?



One

Big

Awful

Mistake

America|||lol, aren't you in the same group that was so critical of Obama trying to do too much before the inauguration?|||do you have any evidence to back your question? people please have facts before accusing...|||OBAMA=One Big A$$ Mistake America