Posts from — March 2009

Like Captain Louis Renault, the police prefect of Casablanca, who was “…shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”,  Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) seemed to be completely in the dark as to how top management of AIG got over $160 million in bonuses.

In a statementreleased by his office, Sen. Dodd said “This is another outrageous example of executives – including those whose decisions were responsible for the problems that caused AIG’s collapse – enriching themselves at the expense of taxpayers.  A car mechanic or teacher in Connecticut shouldn’t have to subsidize the bad decisions of these executives. Executives at other companies receiving TARP funds have voluntarily foregone bonuses – there’s no reason why those at AIG shouldn’t do the same.” 

That’s interesting. While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009”  exempting the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax. 

[Tidbit: Sen. Dodd was AIG’s largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle with $103,100, according to opensecrets.org.]

“Because of negotiations with the Treasury Department and the bill Conferees, several modifications were made,” Dodd Spokesperson Kate Szostak said in a response to FOX Business.  “Senator Dodd was completely unaware of these AIG bonuses until he learned of them in the past few days,” wrote Szostak.  To suggest that the bonuses affecting AIG had any effect on Senator Dodd’s action is categorically false.”

Duty   Honor   Country … the guiding principles of our Armed Forces. 

With them are courage, commitment, integrity and faithfulness.

Semper Fidelis 

Obviously, these words have no meaning to the community organizers running our country.

On Monday 16 March 2009, Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion met with President Obama to discuss a proposal by the administration to shift the financial responsibility for caring for our wounded to the private sector. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs in such cases.  In effect, the VA would be required to bill the private insurance of wounded veterans for service related injuries.

As a Nation we promised our war fighters that we  would ‘..care for him who shall have borne the battle’.  The Obama bean-counters figure they can raise $540 million by billing veterans for treatment of service connected disabilities.

The true nature of “Change we can believe in” becomes apparent when in this era of multi-billion dollar bailouts to Wall Street, hedge funds, mega banks and the like, this Administration can deny a paultry $540 million to our wounded veterans.

Please contact your representatives and demand honorable treatment for our wounded veterans.

Promises made must be promises kept.