Red Herring

The bonuses given to AIG employees are nothing more than a distraction, and the Obama administration and friends love every minute of it. $165 million is less than 1/1000th of the bailout money so far - it makes no sense to get this outraged.

I know what alot of people are saying, "It's not the amount that matters, it's the principle. They took taxpayer money and then got huge bonuses." A couple of points: Those bonuses were contractual. Maybe they were really poor contracts, but it doesn't change the fact. Also, shouldn't this call into question the efficacy of the gov't doing something as foolish as propping up businesses, rather than anger over people receiving something that was legally obligated to them?

The root of the problem is the gov't getting its hands all over everything. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank knew this was going to happen. Can anyone, especially those of you who are angry over this, seriously support the gov't trying to run the economy? They are making a mess of it. The strategy goes like this: Hamstring private enterprise to the point where is cannot function well and suffers a breakdown. Stand back and say, "Look, capitalism failed! We must take over!" Then, run it poorly and claim that the only solution is more power.

What really saddens, angers, and frustrates me is that this game works. If the AIG execs should not have received bonuses because their company did poorly, then why on earth should any firm get gov't money? The only ones that need a bailout are the ones doing poorly. The very anger over the bonuses is based on logic that the gov't has no business bailing out anybody. We are rewarding failure. So, in that light, what's wrong with the AIG guys getting some cash? We can't let them go broke, can we? That would be catastophic!

Please, don't take the bait. The architects of all this want you focused on AIG, they want you angry at capitalism, they want you so whipped into a frenzy over the red meat they're throwing out that you fail to notice what's really going on. Obama wants to implement an agenda that would be horrible for this country, and he is using cover for himself in the form of "corporate greed", trusting that the populace will be engrossed- then, he can get away with all kinds of things which would never fly in a sane environment.

Chaos, anger, tumult - they are the weapons and friends of demogogues.