That’s Right Nate

Much of the AIG bonuses will go towards family expenses like cars for their children to get to school.

The American dream is in jeopardy.   Imagine what it is like to work long days and longer weeks in the hopes of getting a bonus to help get you by in lean economic times.   Now imagine that congress uses the power to tax in order to take all that money away from you simply because they resent your success.  The power to tax is the power to destroy and the Democrats in congress have no trouble wielding this power.  It is enough to make successful people simply “go Galt” and refuse to work.  Afterall, they won’t see the fruits of their own labor.  Such is the plight for dozens of employees of AIG.

American, a country which used to aspire to the success of its elite, now resents it.   Let me tell you about these bonuses.  Companies like AIG have to pay these large bonuses in order to get the top people to work for them.  Without a million dollar bonus or retention payment or whatever you want to call it, many of these guys would just go into social work or teaching.  Companies pay these bonuses because that is the cost of doing business requires it.  Its just unfortunate that since the taxpayers are paying that cost, we have to pay the bonuses.  These bonuses will help stimulate the economy though.  They represent a potential $165,000,000 in sports cars, caviar, private planes, and luxury yachts.

And how does congress react?  Well according to Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), “My colleagues and I are sending a letter to [AIG CEO Edward] Liddy informing him that he can go right ahead and tell the employees that are scheduled to get bonuses that they should voluntarily return them,” Sen. Charles Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Because if they don’t, we plan to tax virtually all of [the money] … so it is returned to its rightful owners, the taxpayers.”

His fellow Democrat Bill Nelson of Florida chimed in by calling for a 90% excise tax on the bonuses, but it isn’t just the Democrats who seem to have problems with successful hard working men and women.   Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) took an even more extreme position, “But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.”

The AIG executives will get their hard earned bonuses and they will spend them, but I can promise you they won’t enjoy it.  Caviar and champagne just aren’t the same when somebody has killed your appetite.

The Louisiana Purchase cost the United States $15,000,000 and for that money we got 828,000 square miles.  With the amount of money that Obama is spending on his budget we could buy approximately 9,660,000,000,000,000 square miles from the French Government.  However, we’re not getting land.   We’re simply getting a budget that will destroy us all.

George Bush has been getting a lot of blame lately, but I wonder if even he could have foreseen how irresponsible Obama would be.  You can be sure that he wouldn’t have spent the large surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton if he knew that the next President would turn out to be such a big time spender.  Bush was counting on having a reasonable and intelligent successor who would be thrifty.  That’s why his Harvard Business School educated mind decided to bite the bullet and give tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals in our country.  Instead, we now have Obama trying to bungle his way to prosperity.

Let’s talk about those rich folks who are being taxed so unfairly.   There is a horrible misconception that these people are super wealthy, but they’re not.  These are the people you see everyday in your condo, playing tennis at your club, or in your board meeting.  They are lawyers, plastic surgeons, NBA point guards, shipping magnates, self-storage company owners, and hedge fund managers.  A family making $350,000 a year would see their tax bill rise by as much as $4600.  That $4600 would pay for 1/4 of a car.   Maybe not for the parent, but surely for a teenager.  Hedgefund managers would actually see their income tax rate go from 15% to 39.6% as their income would be treated as income instead of capital gains.  This is an outrage.

George Bush worked very hard to raise the standard of living.  The rich saw their incomes increase under Bush and that’s as it should be.  The top 1% of the country pays 40% of the nation’s taxes and that is despite only owning about 48% of the country’s property.  This hardly seems fair to me.  By reversing Bush’s tax cuts Obama is sending us back to the horrible economic times of the Clinton administration.

George Bush was a man of God.  He knew that this country would be spared from all natural disasters if we just prayed hard enough.  Bush knew that with God on our side there was never any reason to set aside money for natural disasters.   Obama has put $20 billion aside for natural disasters.  God has protected us the past 8 years President Obama.  Why isn’t that good enough for you?  I guess that’s what you get when you go to church services about how whitey is keeping you down instead of about how Jesus is lifting you up.

George Bush was always finding ways to stretch a dime.  Do you know how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost US tax payers?  $50 billion? $100 billion? $500 billion?  Try 0.  George Bush never had to add the wars to the budget because he knew he could just take the money from some other program.  Iraq was probably just fought with waste he trimmed off of the PBS budget.  Obama after crying about the wars Bush had us fighting immediately jacks up the spending on them.  Instead of Bush’s free wars, Obama is spending $50 billion.  I hope they’re using gold plated bullets at that price.  Its time for Republicans to take a stand against this kind of wasteful spending.