Brace for Impact

This is redistribution of wealth – plain and simple. It’s coming with tomorrow’s vote.
First they made healthy banks take bailout money, which I have been saying since the beginning was designed to nationalize them through retroactive amendments, and now they are plowing ahead at full speed – their wheels greased by the minor incident at AIG (the $165mm of bonuses in question is 0.1% of the $173bn that the government gave the firm!!!). Stealing the bonus of every bank employee in order to punish these select few individuals is like carpet-bombing an entire village just to kill one low-level insurgent who could never impact the outcome of the war.
Couple this with the guillotine blade of stagflation rising ever higher over our heads and it is becoming clearer by the day that the American way as we know it is coming to an end.
I don’t really know what else to say, except get ready to fight for your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Washington will do everything in its power to take it away and will feed whatever senseless propaganda is required to achieve this purpose to the eager mouths of its constituents, blinded by rage.

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. House Democrats plan a vote tomorrow on a measure imposing a 90 percent tax on executive bonuses paid by American International Group Inc. and other companies getting more than $5 billion in federal bailout funds. “I expect it to pass in overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters today in Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said, “The American people are very upset about what they’ve heard about bonuses.”

The legislation would apply to bonuses paid to employees at companies such as Citigroup Inc. and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel of New York.

The measure is the first legislative response to a political furor that erupted after insurer AIG, which got taxpayer-funded bailouts totaling $173 billion, paid $165 million in bonuses last week to 4,600 employees. Many receiving bonuses are in AIG’s financial products unit, the credit-default swaps subsidiary whose losses pushed the insurer to the brink of bankruptcy in September.

The measure was being drafted today as AIG Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy told a House Financial Services subcommittee that he asked employees who got bonuses over $100,000 to repay half.

The 90 percent tax would apply to people with overall income exceeding $250,000, including bonuses. The tax would apply to bonus payments made after Dec. 31, 2008, and it would cease when the U.S. government’s investment in the company fell below $5 billion.

The Senate is readying a separate measure that would impose a 70 percent excise tax on the bonuses, split between the company and employee.

Congress is acting after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a letter to lawmakers last night that his department’s lawyers determined it would be “legally difficult” to prevent AIG from paying the bonuses because they were required by contracts.

“We passed a recovery act, we did not pass a license to steal,” New York Representative Steve Israel, a Democrat, said at the news conference. “The middle class will no longer subsidize pay for failure.”

Asked how lawmakers reached the 90 percent figure, Rangel said, “We figure the local and state governments will take care of the other 10 percent.”