Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Hammer on the AIG OUTRAGE

Last night on Fox:


…look, the larger issue here is, of course, the administration is really hurt. It is an issue of competence. The Democrats in charge are in disarray.

But the larger issue here—this the best argument against socialism, socialism writ large or socialism writ small, meaning the takeovers of companies in the United States.

When you get politicians ahead of the mob running companies, you get madness and idiocy here. The contracts are legal contracts, and it wasn't as if these bonuses were unknown or sprung at the last minute. They were written into these agreements over a year ago, long before AIG was even nationalized or partially nationalized.

And the problem here is that by the Congress now trying to break the contracts by a ruse, essentially a 100 percent taxation or confiscation, they're going against a few hundred years of common law where you don't do retroactive confiscation or bills of attainder, which are laws aimed at particular individuals. It's just not done.

And to sacrifice all of those principles of democracy and business and contract over, as Rich indicated, a tenth of one percent of the bailout, is absurd, particularly in a Congress which just a week ago signed a bill with enough pork to fund these bailouts for about 20 years.