Ok, so everybody is up in arms about AIG bailout and bonuses.  Here's a few of my points that I hope you think about:

1) $165 million out of the $165 billion given to AIG by Geithner accounts for 0.10% of the handout-- that's 1 tenth of 1 percent!  If you gave me $10, it would be the same to complain about how I spent 1 PENNY.

2) Let's not forget who gave AIG the money, and told Chris Dodd to remove any restrictions on bonuses... Obama and Geithner!

3) Do you know what the difference is between performance and retention?  The bonuses given out are RETENTION bonuses.  It's for keeping people around.  Let's see-- if your company was going out of business, would you stick around till the end?  Or would you start looking for a new job?  Duh-- look for a new job as soon as you could, right?  AIG is paying bonuses to keep people around.

4) Keep in mind that WE WANT THE BAILOUT MONEY BACK (and I'm talking about the $165 BILLION.)  How do you expect that to happen if you take away contractual bonuses, meant to keep people around in the first place!!!!  It makes no sense to me, to want to take away 0.10% of the money and expect people to stay around, to work on getting $165 billion back to the taxpayers.  Sheer stupidity if you think it's going to happen by magic dust or fairies.

5) Tell me this-- if you worked for a company, and they gave you airline tickets as a Christmas bonus, then 2 months later, said you cannot use them and to give them back, would you really want to work there?  Keep in mind that the minute we think the government can break contractual labor and payment agreements, then we have opened up the door to just about anything.

6) As for creating a special tax to try and reclaim the bonus money, the government is constitutionally FORBIDDEN to single out any body, person, business, entity and punish them financially.  But, I have to digress on this because, in reality, there's not much left of the constitution left, under the past few years of a DEMOCRATIC controlled congress, and now under the Obama administration.

THINK WITH COMMON SENSE!  Don't blindly follow CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC/MSNBC/NPR/WP and the other 80% liberally controlled media.

By Phil Kerpen
Director of Policy, Americans for Prosperity

Promise #5: Sunlight Before Signing

What he said:

"Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days." (BarackObama.com campaign Web site)

What he did:

Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter bill, the SCHIP/cigarette tax hike, and the stimulus bill all with far less than a five-day waiting period that he promised–and continues to promise–on his campaign Web site.

Promise #4: Lobbyist Revolving Door

What he said:

"No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration." (BarackObama.com campaign Web site)

What he did:

Obama appointed Goldman Sachs lobbyists Mark Patterson chief of staff at the Treasury Department, where he directly oversees his former employer, a recipient of $10 billion of taxpayer funds from the TARP. Obama also appointed Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn to be an undersecretary of Defense.

Promise #3: No Tax Hikes on the Poor

What he said first:

"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." (September 12, 2008, Dover, N.H.)

What he did first:

By signing H.R. 2 into law, Obama happily signed onto the idea that smokers should pay for a $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP). Cigarette taxes are going up 61 cents a pack starting April 1. Obama signed this bill knowing that the majority of smokers in the United States are working poor, and one in four lives below the federal poverty line.

What he said next:

"If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime." (February 24th, 2009, Address to a Joint Session of Congress)

What he did next:

Ignored the already-hiked cigarette tax at the time of the statement and then this restated promise was broken just two days later, when the Obama's budget proposal was released. His new budget raises 45 percent of its revenue from energy taxes that will be paid by everyone who fills a gas tank, pays an electric bill, or buys anything that was grown, shipped, or manufactured.

Promise #2: Pork Barrel Earmark Reform

What he said:

"The system is broken. We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress' seniority, rather than the merit of the project. We can no longer accept an earmarks process that has become so complicated to navigate that a municipality or non-profit group has to hire high-priced D.C. lobbyists to do it. And we can no longer accept an earmarks process in which many of the projects being funded fail to address the real needs of our country."

(Statement on Earmarks, March 10, 2008)

What he is expected to do:

The White House has signaled that it intends to sign the $410 billion Omnibus Appropriations bill, which according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, contains 8,570 earmarks totaling $7.7 billion, including dozens of wasteful pork-barrel projects. These earmarks were awarded based on seniority, not on merit, and were mostly the result of high-priced lobbying, precisely the process that Obama promised to end. When the omnibus reaches his desk later this week or next week, we'll find out if this is one more broken promise.

Promise #1: Big Government

OK, so this one is more of a statement than a promise, but it's the biggest whopper of all.

What he said:

"Not because I believe in bigger government — I don't." (February 24, 2009, Joint Address to Congress)

What he did:

Obama proposed a budget that is breathtaking in scope, a blueprint for the biggest permanent expansion of government in history right on the heels of a sweeping trillion dollar stimulus plan. The budget lays the foundation for a government takeover of the health care and energy sectors and dramatically increasing spending across the board, other than defense weapons programs. Spending as a percentage of the economy under this budget will reach the historic level of 27.7 percent this year. The deficit as a percent of the economy, at 12.3 percent, is set to be the biggest in the entire history of the country outside of the four peak years of World War II. Anyone who offers such a budget can only fairly be described as a believer in bigger government.

On Friday, February 13 Congressman Peter DeFazio and seven cosponsors, introduced H.R. 1068: "Let Wall Street Pay for Wall Street's Bailout Act of 2009", which aims to impose a 0.25% transaction tax on the "sale and purchase of financial instruments such as stock, options, and futures." I believe this move would kill trading.

If you want our markets to remain the most liquid on the planet, then you need to oppose this bill. Not doing so will turn our markets into the same illiquid CDOs and CMO markets that have crushed 99 percent of the banks and financial institutions in the United States.

The proceeds of this tax are to pay for the "net cost" TARP and emergency Federal Reserve programs.

We strongly oppose this bill, believe the bill is based upon misstated facts, and challenge the underlying premises of those alleged facts. We believe that passage of this bill could lead to serious disruptions in the capital markets at a time the markets can least afford them.

Wrong Facts:

The bill is based upon a claim that the $700 billion TARP is intended to "protect Wall Street Investors; therefore, the same Wall Street investors should pay for this infusion of taxpayer money." In fact Wall Street investors have lost an additional 30.2 % of their investments since the passage of the TARP on October 3, 2008 as measured by the S&P 500 index.

Infusions of money under the TARP have been accompanied by the government's protection of taxpayers in the form of its receiving warrants and preferred stock, as well as imposing restrictions on compensation and mandating corporate and operational changes at the institutions. The TARP has been used by the Treasury Department to stabilize the banking system and prevent an unprecedented economic meltdown. The monies approved and spent under the "TARP" authority have not been used to protect investors or Wall Street, but instead to protect Main Street and the financial system.

The premise of the above flawed "findings" is even more troublesome.

Suggesting that Wall Street Investors caused the turmoil facing the economy and the markets shows a blatant disregard for the facts. Blame can be assigned to many different players in the economy; consumers taking out a mortgage they could not afford, mortgage broker industry practices that resulted in loans being made without adequate verification of income and financial condition, the mortgage lenders who were forced to compete with government subsidized competitors, securitizers who blindly packaged and repackaged sub-prime mortgages for resale exponentially raising the risks they contained, the existence of an unregulated secondary market for mortgage backed securities that allowed lenders to shift the risks of originating loans, credit rating agencies that failed to adequately assess and report the risks of default of securitized products, and the national policies of promoting home ownership, which while laudable, did not take into account the ramifications of promoting home ownership to people who might not have the financial resources to afford it..

Wrong Target:

The incidence of the tax fall squarely on the very victims of the financial crisis who have seen the value of their investment decrease by 40-50% over the last year, that is, individual taxpayers, savers, small businesses, endowments and those relying on retirement plans. This legislation purposely hits these victims of the meltdown one more time, asking them to pay for a financial bailout of a market meltdown that they did not cause.

Ill Timed:

It is a tax on capital formation and especially targets the final frontier of liquidity in the financial markets marketplace, the stock, options and futures markets. These markets have been remarkably resilient and liquid in a time of extreme stress and illiquidity. These exchange markets should NOT BE TAXED, but should be applauded for being able to function in the manner for which they were designed in such tumultuous times. This ill advised tax will be aimed at these important national market centers and will hurt their ability to remain highly liquid. In short it may worsen the financial crisis.

Will Hurt the United States at a Time of Extreme Financial Stress:

The rate the bill would impose---0.25% is very large and meaningful—and will most certainly drive stock, options and futures trades offshore to foreign venues. For example, a $10,000 trade (or approximately 100 shares of stock in Apple, Inc.) would increase the cost of a round trip transaction by $50 which is a very large amount in a trading environment where fractions of a cent profit are the norm. Likewise a Eurodollar contract is based on a notional $1,000,000 and 0.25% of that amount is $2,500. By way of reference an exchange may charge about $0.08. These very large tax burdens will result in less trading activity, less saving and investment, and most certainly less business in the United States, thereby damaging the United States' position as a world financial center at the very time that we are experiencing extreme market distress.

The Bill will Impair Liquidity and Price Discovery:

By adding to the execution costs of an individual trade, the transaction tax would greatly increase the cost of doing business for the essential liquidity providers on U.S. futures exchanges. These market makers, whose constant participation and rapid turn-over is the major source of market liquidity, operate on razor thin margins. Many of these Market Makers are at the margin of profitability. This tax will expose them to the choice of continuing on the exchanges at a profit level unjustified by the risks assumed or taking their business elsewhere or simply close their doors forcing their employees onto the government dole.

The exit of liquidity providers means decreased efficiency of the markets, wider bid ask spreads, more volatility and less facility for other market participants to make effective use of markets. Moreover, stock, options and futures markets provide significant benefits to market users and to persons seeking meaningful information, including pricing, in order to guide their decision making on investment, crop planting, herd management, etc. The deeper and more liquid the market, the better the price discovery and related information provided. Impairment of liquidity lessens the value of the information and the functioning of our market based economy.

We urge you to oppose this bill which penalizes investors and further erodes confidence in the U.S. capital markets. This bill is wrong for Americans and Wrong for America.

PLEASE OPPOSE H.B. 1068.