That was Senator John Tester (D, MT), by the way. Who is a different person than Senator Voinovich. And again, the reason the people who read the stimulus bill (and there were such people) didn’t see “the bonus clause” in it was because the bonus clause wasn’t in it. It was in AIG’s employment contracts, which are completely different documents than the stimulus bill.
Well, that certainly seems logical.
But if it works out that way, it will mean that this change is not merely moving a burden off the gov’t and onto private insurers, which is what the admin is saying it’s doing. In fact, it will mean the burden is moving off the gov and onto military families (especially for enlisted, who face the greatest risks and are lowest-paid).
Maybe we’re talking about different things, but there was language in the stimulus bill specifically protecting bonuses.
It was written by Senator Dodd (Senate Banking committee Chairman) who receieved money from AIG as did Senator Max Baucus (Senate Finance committee Chairman), Senator McCain, and Senator Obama. I’m sure there were others. $120,000 was donated after the first bailout payment in September.
Left out the link showing Dodd admitted it.
CNN reportsthat according to the concerned parties, TPTB wanted to protect the bonuses because AIG was contractually and therefore legally obligated to pay the bonuses, and to force AIG to strip the bonuses would be to invite lawsuits (that presumably couldn’t be won). It’s not enough to say that they added the language protecting the bonuses; one should explain why they did so. You imply it was because they were essentially bribed to do so. But that’s is clearly not the only reason one might support the move to preserve the bonuses. Now you could agree with this guy:
But to disagree with him is not obviously crazy or corrupt.
I agree with the bonus package, I’m just showing the hypocrisy of the monkeys in Congress who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about and don’t take their job seriously enough to break down a 1200 page report so they (and the public) can make decisions about what’s in it. They will take money from companies, pass legislation, and then act surprised about their own actions if it looks bad publicly.
My last job involved individual projects involving budgets of 30 to 100 thousand dollars. I had to quantify all of my recommendations with hard numbers. The decisions were leveraged against multi-million dollar contracts. Congress should explain their own decisions and be able to quantify them. The larger the amount spent, the greater and more detailed the explanation.
I haven’t waded through all the posts, so maybe this idea has already been floated:
I suspect that VA hospitals/Clinics are spottily distributed across the country, and inconvenient to reach for many, many of our military in need of medical attention.
So, with a private sector medical plan, a warrior could get treatment frm the doctors/hospitals close to home.
BTW I was horrified by the proposal, and I kept wondering what Obama was thinking. This is all I’ve got.
Well, it doesn’t much matter any more, because Obama has dropped the proposal. I guess he doesn’t want to waste political capital duking it out with veterans’ groups.
Hey, this IS fun!
INteresting title you put there, because I have yet to see a single poll about this issue. Seems to me that Obama proposed some policy that looked good in theory, but wheen presented with the true potential effects of the policy, realized that the policy was ill-adivised and removed it.
Yeah, I would rather have a President who doesn’t change his mind when presented with new information, that worked so well the last 8 years.
Now you’re being whooshed. It’s a joke about misleading headlines saying different things from the stories that they head, like the one in the OP.
Me, whooshed? Well I nev-…ohhh, that dog has a puffy tail!!
Is sex all you ever think about?
-Joe