AIG Bonus Flap: Lawsuit to Get Back $165 M Could Cost $300 M or More

The AIG bonus flap gets curiouser and curiouser.

Fox News is reporting that if the government demands repayment of the bonus money AIG already paid and recipients sue, the taxpayers could see $300 million or more burned up to recoup their $165 million.

The bonus money is $165 million — about 1/2 of 1% of the AIG bailout of $173 billion.

Related:
Dodd Allowed AIG To Thrive in His State, Approved Bonuses: Now Throws Them Under The Bus

From PBS blogger:

The outrage over AIG bonuses is echoing from Main Street to Washington, DC and can even be heard on Wall Street. How can it be that these “contracts” are so iron clad that the government has “done all it can legally do” to keep them from being paid, and they will still be paid? It would be more costly to prevent lawsuits? Huh? I say, let them sue. Then they’d have to show up in court and make their case. I, for one, would like a front row seat. The government has a whole army of lawyers; you mean to tell me they can’t muster the strength to fight these potential suits?

But what frustrates me most is that this has been coming for a long time. Runaway executive pay has been a story for decades. Shareholder activists have taken on the boards of big companies who failed executives with hundred million dollar pay packages and multi-million dollar perks. News outlets have tried to shame executives and boards into making changes, with reports of the most overpaid CEOs. AIG was long on this list. There were lawsuits for a “say on pay,” but the whole time executives’ pay grew. For the administration to say it has no choice but to pay out these bonuses, at the same time criticizing them, just seems like more of the same. Will it take riots in the streets for things to change? I hope not, but without real change, I fear that is where this country is heading.

Read it all:
From Stephanie Dhue
http://www.pbs.org/nbr/blo
g/2009/03/aig_deja_vu.html

http://michellemalkin.com/200
9/03/17/chris-dodd-for-aig-bo
nuses-before-he-was-against-them/

Taking On The “Establishment”: Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin was ready to pounce when a new report appeared last week detailing the Democratic House speaker’s use of military aircraft.

“Nancy Pelosi is the Jennifer Lopez of congressional travel,” Malkin wrote. Her March 11 column outlined the nature of Pelosi’s trips and quoted from her staffers’ impatient demands — and from the befuddled responses of military officials, worried at the misuse of resources. “No word on whether Pelosi required vanilla-scented candles, Evian water and fresh white lilies aboard the flight,” she concluded.

By DAVID FREDDOSO
Examiner Staff Writer

This is Malkin at her best. Fans enjoy her syndicated column for its documentation of liberal outrages, but also for her provocative, humorous presentation of the facts. Critics bridle at the provocations, missing the humor entirely. The formula makes Malkin distinctively controversial, and loved or hated by everyone who reads her.

In 2004, when the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk dropped her column, its editors denounced her as “too stridently anti-liberal” and claimed that she “habitually mistakes shrill for thought-provoking and substitutes screaming for discussion.” Malkin, whose column is routinely picked up and dropped by newspapers without comment, mused on her blog that the paper probably should never have picked her up in the first place. “I was just as ‘anti-liberal’ five years ago as I am now,” she wrote.

Malkin is generous with harsh words, and she spares no one in the public eye.

Read the rest:
http://www.dcexaminer.com/politic
s/Michelle-Malkin-Making-War-Wit
h-Words-41215392.html

http://michellemalkin.com/200
9/03/15/sunday-open-thread-6/

Michelle Malkin, 38, established her combative writing style in her pre-blog career at the Los Angeles Daily News and the Seattle Times. Her old columns from the 1990s attack multiculturalists, moral relativists, teachers unions, Bring Your Daughter to Work Day and apologists for the Rodney King rioters. ANDREW HARNIK/EXAMINER

We owe a lot to Michelle Malkin… and also Barry Obama, Joke Biden, TurboTax Geithner, Rosy Romer…..

Tax Marijuana, Health Benefits? Obama Will Fiddle While It All Burns….

If you don’t get well at least you can get high….

Lesson of the Cramer/Stewart What?

The face off between Jim Cramer of CNBC and “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart tells us about the realities of today’s new media.

The winner of this, what was it?  Debate? Gloated during his show aired on “Comedy Central.”

First, we live in the age, to a great extent, of the swallow Obama media.

Second, the newspapers are dying and that means a lot of fine critical thinkers, their ananlysis and writing will be gone, or lost or squished into the Internet.

Third, there is a lot of over-the-top self serving and a craving for “riveting” TV and radio which is needed to make money but may be degrading our social thinking and discussion.  We probably wouldn’t even listen to men like John Adams today but Jon Stewart and Rush Limbaugh have “merit.”

Entertainment and critical analysis are now mixed — and sometimes all mixed up.

This is reality.

But the Internet and our modern reality also means Michelle Malkin and guys like me have more of an opportunity to add our two cents — and more of a responsibility to think and offer criticism and ideas that have merit.

On Sided Smackdown, Riveting TV
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-d
yn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI20
05041100587.html

http://michellemalkin.com/200
9/03/14/lesson-of-the-cramer
stewart-kerfuffle/

From AP

The feud between Jon Stewart and CNBC’s Jim Cramer has been good for laughs — and ratings — but has also raised the serious question of whether the experts at TV’s No. 1 financial news network should have seen the meltdown coming and warned the public.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090313/ap_on_r
e_us/meltdown_financial_reporters

 
Jim Cramer, left, host of the ‘Mad Money’ show on CNBC, talks with Jon Stewart during an appearance on Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ Thursday, March 12, 2009 in New York.(AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

Malkin: “People that create American wealth are going on strike”

“People that create American wealth are going on strike,” conservative columnist Michelle Malkin told Neil Cavuto on the Fox News Channel on Thursday (4 PM Eastern hour).

Malkin says the “creators of American wealth” are hiring fewer people, planning only very limited future spending and drastically cutting investments.

She said that the “creators of wealth” now have a fear of those that are the middle-men like Congress.  The middle men are taxing the creators of wealth too much and spending tax dollars with little concern for future wealth, investment and debt.

The stock market was down again Thursday indicating that Ms. Malkin may be on to something….even as the White House gears up to spend even more on health care, the bank bailout and a foreclosure rescue plan…..

Related:
Obama Urged Investors to “Buy,” But Stocks Dive Again Thursday

NYT Urges Obama To “Bail Out” Third World Too

 Most Americans Now Say America Could Go Bankrupt

 Obama Can’t Revive Economy With Socialism

American Workers, Businesses Cut Back; Obama Launches Spending Spree

Presidency of Fear

Obama’s Brazen Deception: Why The Stock Market Won’t Recover Soon

 Senate Halts Obama Spending; At Least For The Week End

 Obama plan to prevent foreclosures won’t help many California homeowners

Michelle:
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/05/finall
y-a-show-of-cojones-senate-gop-forces-delay-o
n-omni-pork-bill/

Stimulus Passes House: “Excessive Pork and Dubious Stimulative Value”

Michelle Malkin called the bill a “monstrosity” of  “excessive pork and dubious stimulative value.”

Related:
More Ideas on Stimulus, Bipartisanship from Rush Limbaugh in the Wall Street Journal

 Public Support for Economic Recovery Plan Slips to 42%

We’re For Bipartisanship, Transparency, Ethical Government and Against Lobbyists in Government and Can Sell You Swamp Land In….

 Stimulus: ” truly responsible government only a distant echo of our forgotten ancestors”

Obama’s Bipartisanship Lost In Nancy Pelosi’s Office; Now President Tries Senate GOP For Help with Recovery Bill

*****

By Liz Sidoti, AP

In a swift victory for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House approved a historically huge $819 billion stimulus bill Wednesday night, filled with new spending and tax cuts at the core of the young adminstration’s revival plan for the desperately ailing economy. The vote was 244-188.
“Another week that we delay is another 100,000 or more people unemployed. I don’t think we want that on our consciences,” said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the leading architects of the legislation.

Republicans said the bill was short on tax cuts and contained too much spending, much of it wasteful and unlikely to help laid-off Americans.

The party’s leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, said the measure “won’t create many jobs, but it will create plenty of programs and projects through slow-moving government spending.” A GOP alternative, comprised almost entirely of tax cuts, was defeated, 266-170, moments before the final vote.

On the final vote, the legislation drew overwhelming support among Democrats while all but a few Republicans opposed it.

The White House-backed legislation includes an estimated $544 in federal spending and $275 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses.

Read it all:
http://apnews.myway.com/arti
cle/20090128/D960EHJ00.html

Malkin:
http://michellemalkin.com/2009
/01/28/today-was-a-good-day-f
or-conservatism/