The President’s strange priorities
Charles Krauthammer sums up a number of the things we’ve been reflecting on over these last days, as the administration makes one clueless move after another:
A $14 trillion economy hangs by a thread composed of (a) a comically cynical, pitchfork-wielding Congress, (b) a hopelessly understaffed, stumbling Obama administration, and (c) $165 million. That’s $165 million in bonus money handed out to AIG…
in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone. If Bill Gates were to pay these AIG bonuses every year for the next 100 years, he’d still be left with more than half his personal fortune.
For this we are going to poison the well for any further financial rescues, face the prospect of letting AIG go under (which would make the Lehman Brothers collapse look trivial) and risk a run on the entire world financial system?…
there is such a thing as law. The way to break a contract legally is Chapter 11. Short of that, a contract is a contract. The AIG bonuses were agreed to before the government takeover and are perfectly legal. Is the rule now that when public anger is kindled, Congress summarily cancels contracts?
Even worse are the clever schemes now being cooked up in Congress to retrieve the money by means of some retroactive confiscatory tax. The common law is pretty clear about the impermissibility of ex post facto legislation and bills of attainder. They also happen to be specifically prohibited by the Constitution. We’re going to overturn that for $165 million?
Nor has the president behaved much better. He too has been out there trying to lead the mob. But it’s a losing game…It is time for the president to state the obvious: This recession is not caused by excessive executive compensation in government-controlled companies. The economy has been sinking because of a lack of credit, stemming from a general lack of confidence, stemming from the lack of a plan to detoxify the major lending institutions…Obama has been strangely passive about this single greatest threat to the country.
Instead, President Obama is on Jay Leno, allowing his his teleprompter to make rookie errors for which he has to apologize. When it comes to this administration, where’s the beef?
March 21st, 2009 at 4:41 am
I recanted my vote for Obama upon learning his intention to make wounded veterans pay for their care with private health insurance. (More here.)
More disgusting than the Lewinsky scandal, afaic.
Retraction of the plan was too reluctant to make a difference to me.
March 21st, 2009 at 7:45 am
That should be “Where’s the Wagyu beef?”
March 21st, 2009 at 10:19 am
A transcript of the Leno appearnance is here. Fairness requires me to (reluctantly) acknowledge that there was more to it than the Special Olympics gaffe.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:32 pm
I was amused to note more than half the $165 million was paid to foreigners residing overseas. The Pelosi Clown Posse aims high and shoots itself in the butt again. I guess Oba-Urkel doesn’t understand some other components of the Constitution.
March 22nd, 2009 at 2:25 am
Over at the blog The View From 1776, proprietor Thomas Brewton has a post titled ‘Publicly Berating Bankers and Businessmen has Consequences’. What is interesting about the post is some quotes he has from FDR who referred to businessmen and investors as ‘economic royalists’, ‘priveleged princes’ and ‘economic dictators’. Roosevelt could lead the pitchforks and torches mob as adeptly as Obama. Recall how well that turned out.