Here's what Ed Koch wrote:
...The public saw with their own eyes Senator Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, state during a television interview that he had nothing to do with writing language in pending legislation that authorized the payment of bonuses to AIG employees. Dodd was fingered by the staff of the office of the Secretary of the Treasury as in fact being the person who wrote the enabling language allowing the bonus payments, with their urging.
To make matters worse, we then learned that the amount of the bonus payments was underestimated - it has now grown from $165 million to $218 million. Furthermore, an increasing number of employees - now up to 400 - were found to have received those payments.
The American public, unbelievably docile up to this moment, exploded with anger directed at AIG employees for taking the bonuses and at the Congress and the President for enabling the bonuses to be paid. Then everyone ran for cover, with members of Congress who voted for the legislation and the president who signed the legislation vowing they would undo what had happened, denouncing AIG and the employees who received the bonuses and demanding the money be returned. The House membership threatened that if the AIG employees failed to return the bonuses, they would be subject to a 90 percent confiscatory tax...
If President Nixon (or Pres. Bush), his administration and a compliant Congress had done what this President and this Congress have done -use the United States tax code to punish employees of a company seen as having engaged in legal conduct that they disagreed with - the press and respected government observers would have denounced Nixon (and Bush)and called for the removal in the next election of every involved member of Congress...
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/koch/ent...d_imprisonment
It is outrageous that the privacy of these AIG employees was violated and they face mobs protesting outside their homes--all in the name of diverting attention from the colossal incompetence of the Congress, Sec. Geitner and the President. This is Chicago Politics practiced on a national scale.
The buck may have stopped with Pres. Truman, but this President passes the buck to those most politically expedient to tar, feather, skewer and ride out of town on a rail - all in the name of rescuing precious poll numbers.
To make matters worse, now Sec. Geitner wants to seize the "crisis" as an opportunity to limit executive pay for companies who did not even take TARP funds...This is one of the worst moments in the history of our democracy.
Finally, the EU is telling the President to stop acting like a socialist. Oh the irony:
EU presidency: US stimulus is 'the road to hell'
By AOIFE WHITE, AP Business Writer
Wed Mar 25, 3:38 pm ET
BRUSSELS – The head of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama's plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as "the road to hell" that EU governments must avoid...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090325/...lkAwRsA1dTMQ--