Voter Outrage Has Its Place, Ignoring the Constitution? Never!

by jwright

American International Group, known familiarly as AIG, has generated some great headlines lately along with much self-rightous braggadocio emitting from many of our elected politicians in Washington, D.C. including our new president, Barack Obama. The latest brouhaha involving AIG stems from its paying out of $165 million in executive bonuses; bonuses that purportedly were part of previous contract agreements between AIG and some of their top level employees.

Politicians of all stripes in Washington, including many ordinary taxpayers who get their news spoon fed via the “main stream media,” became outraged. Sadly the outrage coming from Washington is a theatrical sham: the politicians knew about AIG’s proposed bonus payments weeks ago because it was written quite plainly in the “stimulus bill” signed earlier by nearly every elected Democrat in both legislative houses and enacted with President Obama’s signature.

Some of the politicians screaming the loudest are those who previously received huge sums of campaign cash from AIG before the economic collapse began, namely Senator Chris Dodd, D-CN. Now they are "outraged" at the behavior of one that has fed them.
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Beyond that, others of the outraged legislators have proposed ill-considered legislation (Read: Illegal) seeking to force AIG employees who received the taxpayer bonus dollars to return it. I’d suggest the legislators read the U.S. Constitution first, beginning with this: A Bill of Attainder is an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial. Bills of Attainder are forbidden by Article I, section 9, clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution.

Yet an outstate New York Democrat member of the U.S. House of Representatives is hell-bent on defying the Constitution. "I think its legal," she said. "Contracts get broken and rewritten all the time." Good grief! I have two questions: where do these people come from? Who elects them?

Voter outrage certainly has its place. Ignoring the Constituion is never acceptable.

jaq~


PS- for more interesting info regarding AIG's generous contribution to candidate Obama's presidential campaign, visit the following link:

http://www.examiner.com/x-268-Right-Side-Politics-Examiner~y2009m3d17-Obama-Received-a-101332-Bonus-from-AIG