AIG

36 campaigns took funds from gov't bailed out firms during Feb. Where's the outrage? This video report from MSNBC details how YOUR REPRESENTATIVES padded their own campaign coffers by taking funds from firms on the government bail out list.

This piece, penned by Fred Barnes for The Weekly Standard, is possibly the best summation I've seen regarding the news out of Bozovia these last couple of weeks. It's subtitled, "The White House Tries It's hand At Damage Control," and in it Barnes draws his conclusions from facts of current events and Presidents past.

In an effort to keep himself from fading into well-deserved oblivion, Robert Reich, (Secretary of Labor under former B.O., Slick Willie Clinton), has posted his take on the AIG mess for Huffington Post.com. Reich says, that "The real scandal of AIG isn't just that American taxpayers have so far committed $170 billion to the giant insurer because it is thought to be too big to fail - It's that even at this late date, even in a new administration dedicated to doing it all differently, Americans still have so little say over what is happening with our money. The administration is said to have been outraged when it heard of the bonus plan last week." The operative phrase in that quote is "is said to be."

In his weekly newsletter, Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called on the Obama administration to abandon the strategy of bailing out failing companies, insisting that companies choose bankruptcy or receivership as the only way to restore a sense of order and fairness to the economic system. Gingrich writes "So far, the American taxpayers are on the hook for $170 billion to AIG - that’s an astounding $1,224 per taxpayer." He also points out that any company that needs a $170 billion taxpayer bailout is a failed company, and that the executives that led that company are failed executives.

According to the AP, those bonuses paid to the execs at AIG "Were paid under legal contracts, part of a program that had been disclosed in advance filings that American International Group Inc. made with the government."

I just finished this AP report entitled "Obama berates AIG and vows to try to block bonuses."  The article kicks off with "Joining a wave of public anger, President Barack Obama blistered insurance giant AIG for "recklessness and greed" Monday and pledged to try to block it from handing its executives $165 million in bonuses after taking billions in federal bailout money."