Obama-messiah top recipient of campaign donations from AIG

If you’re starting to feel as if you’ve been hosed, my friend…it’s because you have!

 

– Spencer

 

Obama top recipient of campaign donations from AIG

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000123

AIG: All Recipients

Among Federal Candidates, 2008 Cycle

 

Name	Office	Total Contributions
Obama, Barack (D-IL)	Senate	$104,332
Dodd, Chris (D-CT)	Senate	$103,900
McCain, John (R-AZ)	Senate	$59,499
Clinton, Hillary (D-NY)	Senate	$37,965
Baucus, Max (D-MT)	Senate	$24,750
Romney, Mitt (R)	Pres	$20,850
Biden, Joseph R Jr (D-DE)	Senate	$19,975
Larson, John B (D-CT)	House	$19,750
Sununu, John E (R-NH)	Senate	$18,500
Giuliani, Rudolph W (R)	Pres	$13,200
Kanjorski, Paul E (D-PA)	House	$12,000
Durbin, Dick (D-IL)	Senate	$11,000
Perlmutter, Edwin G (D-CO)	House	$10,500
Rangel, Charles B (D-NY)	House	$9,000
Edwards, John (D)	Pres	$7,850
Corker, Bob (R-TN)	Senate	$7,400
Smith, Chris (R-NJ)	House	$6,900
Neal, Richard E (D-MA)	House	$6,500
Rockefeller, Jay (D-WV)	Senate	$6,500
Reed, Jack (D-RI)	Senate	$6,000
Udall, Mark (D-CO)	House	$5,800
Maffei, Dan (D-NY)	House	$5,000
Nelson, Bill (D-FL)	Senate	$5,000
Warner, Mark (D-VA)	Senate	$5,000
Bean, Melissa (D-IL)	House	$4,750
Shelby, Richard C (R-AL)	Senate	$4,500
Mahoney, Tim (D-FL)	House	$4,000
Crowley, Joseph (D-NY)	House	$3,500
Fimian, Keith S (R-VA)	House	$3,300
Huckabee, Mike (R)	Pres	$3,300
Leavitt, David O (R-UT)	House	$3,000
Murphy, Chris (D-CT)	House	$2,800
Franken, Al (D-MN)	Senate	$2,700
Berman, Howard L (D-CA)	House	$2,500
Dole, Elizabeth (R-NC)	Senate	$2,500
Garrett, Scott (R-NJ)	House	$2,500
Cornyn, John (R-TX)	Senate	$2,300
Culberson, John (R-TX)	House	$2,300
Goode, Gregory Justin (R-IN)	House	$2,300
Landrieu, Mary L (D-LA)	Senate	$2,300
Lummis, Cynthia Marie (R-WY)	House	$2,300
Shays, Christopher (R-CT)	House	$2,200
Davis, Tom (R-VA)	House	$2,000
Hoyer, Steny H (D-MD)	House	$2,000
Inouye, Daniel K (D-HI)	Senate	$2,000
Pomeroy, Earl (D-ND)	House	$2,000
Visclosky, Pete (D-IN)	House	$2,000
Weiner, Anthony D (D-NY)	House	$2,000
King, Pete (R-NY)	House	$1,843
Gillibrand, Kirsten E (D-NY)	House	$1,500
Shaheen, Jeanne (D-NH)	Senate	$1,500
Grassley, Chuck (R-IA)	Senate	$1,250
Nelson, Ben (D-NE)	Senate	$1,200
Wicker, Roger (R-MS)	Senate	$1,100
Baker, Richard (R-LA)	House	$1,000
Barrasso, John A (R-WY)	Senate	$1,000
Bennett, Robert F (R-UT)	Senate	$1,000
Brady, Kevin (R-TX)	House	$1,000
Capps, Lois (D-CA)	House	$1,000
Coleman, Norm (R-MN)	Senate	$1,000
Collins, Susan M (R-ME)	Senate	$1,000
Cooper, Jim (D-TN)	House	$1,000
Donnelly, Joe (D-IN)	House	$1,000
Ellsworth, Brad (D-IN)	House	$1,000
Engel, Eliot L (D-NY)	House	$1,000
Enzi, Mike (R-WY)	Senate	$1,000
Gordon, Bart (D-TN)	House	$1,000
Graham, Lindsey (R-SC)	Senate	$1,000
Harkin, Tom (D-IA)	Senate	$1,000
Himes, Jim (D-CT)	House	$1,000
Jones, Stephanie Tubbs (D-OH)	House	$1,000
Kind, Ron (D-WI)	House	$1,000
Kirk, Mark (R-IL)	House	$1,000
Lautenberg, Frank R (D-NJ)	Senate	$1,000
Lowey, Nita M (D-NY)	House	$1,000
Maloney, Carolyn B (D-NY)	House	$1,000
McMahon, Michael E (D-NY)	House	$1,000
Olson, Pete (R-TX)	House	$1,000
Pryor, Mark (D-AR)	Senate	$1,000
Salazar, Ken (D-CO)	Senate	$1,000
Tiberi, Patrick J (R-OH)	House	$1,000
Towns, Edolphus (D-NY)	House	$1,000
Wilson, Charlie (D-OH)	House	$1,000
Mielke, Daniel Ernest (R-WI)	House	$900
Huelskamp, Timothy A (R-KS)	House	$750
Laesch, John (D-IL)	House	$750
Tinklenberg, Elwyn (D-MN)	House	$750
Vilsack, Thomas J (D)	Pres	$700
Harrison, Stephen A (D-NY)	House	$604
Brownback, Sam (R-KS)	Senate	$500
Courtney, Joe (D-CT)	House	$500
Crapo, Mike (R-ID)	Senate	$500
Davis, Geoff (R-KY)	House	$500
Fossella, Vito (R-NY)	House	$500
Gilchrest, Wayne T (R-MD)	House	$500
Hastings, Alcee L (D-FL)	House	$500
Musgrove, Ronnie (D-MS)	Senate	$500
Myers, Chris (R-NJ)	House	$500
Pelosi, Nancy (D-CA)	House	$500
Pierluisi, Pedro (3-PR)		$500

METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions from PACs and individuals giving $200 or more. All donations were made during the 2008 election cycle and were released by the Federal Election Commission. Figures for the current election cycle are based on data released on March 02, 2009.

Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.

 

Million dollar bonuses for bankrupt AIG leave Obama-messiah in hot water with taxpayers

People on both sides of the aisle are beginning to understand what a calculated liar we’ve got as president.

First our great messiah promises to reign in the political corruption and ban lobbyists from working in his administration.  Then he begins appointing one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history, and gives “waivers” to some of the wealthiest and most influential lobbyists in the world to come work for him.

 

Next, he promises to go over every budget with a fine-tooth forensic comb, and cut out all of the pork, wasteful spending and earmarks.  Then he passes a gargantuan budget laden with pork and wasteful spending and earmarks.

 

Finally, he promises to smack down the greedy and thoroughly corrupt Wall Street banksters and their derivatives-laden cronies in the financial insurance industry.  Then he rewards them with additional tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer “bailout” money and lets them take million-dollar-apiece bonuses (while your taxes go up in order to pay for it).

 

How many people remember the days when bonuses were given for positive performance, not negative?

 

As the popular new bumper sticker says, “Give me my money, my freedom and my guns, Obama.  You can keep the change.”

 

– Spencer

 

Anger Over Bankrupt AIG Million Dollar Bonuses Depletes Obama’s Political Capital

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/16/AR2009031600640_pf.html

 

By Michael D. Shear and Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, March 17, 2009; A01

 

President Obama’s apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda.

 

Politicians in both parties flocked to express outrage over $165 million in bonuses paid out to executives at the company, demanding answers from the president and swamping yesterday’s rollout of his efforts to spark lending to small businesses.

 

The populist anger at the executives who ran their firms into the ground is increasingly blowing back on Obama, whom aides yesterday described as having little recourse in the face of legal contracts that guaranteed those bonuses.

 

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, peppered with questions about why the president had not done more to block the bonuses at a company that has received $170 billion in taxpayer funds, struggled for an answer yesterday afternoon. He explained that government lawyers are “looking through contracts to see what can be done to wrest these bonuses from their recipients.”

 

Obama himself sought to channel the public’s sense of disbelief yesterday. “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” he said, declaring the bonuses an “outrage” that violate “fundamental values.”

 

White House aides grasped for actions that could soothe sentiment on Main Street and in the halls of Congress, where the fate of the new president’s sweeping agendas on health care, climate change and education will be decided. They suggested that the government will use its latest pledged installment of $30 billion for the ailing company to recover the millions in bonuses paid Friday.

 

But the damage control did not seem to satisfy incredulous lawmakers in both parties, who said the image of financial executives taking huge bonuses from a taxpayer-funded rescue puts the president in a politically impossible position.

 

“I warned them this would be met with an unprecedented level of outrage,” Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), the chairman of the banking committee and part of a group of senators who pressed Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to stop the bonuses, said yesterday.

 

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the bonus issue added to his belief that there will be almost no Republican support for any expansion of a bank-bailout program that passed Congress last fall with broad bipartisan support.

 

“What is the government’s exit strategy from this sweeping involvement in private business?” he asked in a statement, adding that “taxpayers are not receiving an adequate accounting from either the Treasury or the management of the companies that received taxpayer funds. Unfortunately, we have not yet seen such a plan.”

 

The rhetoric grew so heated yesterday that Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested in a radio interview that AIG executives ought to “follow the Japanese model . . . resign, or go commit suicide.” An aide later explained he does not actually want executives to kill themselves.

 

More than 80 House Democrats signed a letter demanding that the money used to pay the bonuses be recouped from AIG. New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced that he will subpoena the Manhattan-based company, seeking data documenting who received the bonuses and the justification for them.

 

“You could argue that if taxpayers hadn’t bailed out AIG, the contracts wouldn’t be worth the paper they were signed on,” Cuomo said.

 

The Obama administration was already facing a skeptical public and members of Congress critical of the huge sums of money the government has allocated to shoring up the devastated financial system.

 

News of the latest AIG bonuses only compounded the political problems that the huge expenditures pose for the president. The administration has tried to manage the public anger by expressing empathy with the outrage over the large outlays to financial firms, while explaining that they are necessary to stabilize the economy.

 

Earlier this month, the administration added to the bailout money needed to keep AIG functioning, saying failure of the company would be disastrous for the larger economy. And the administration is all but certain to return to Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars more to aid the financial system.

 

But the bonus issue, in particular, is hounding Obama as he pursues his larger goals, in part because of the president’s own repeated declarations of outrage — offered again yesterday — aimed especially at the firms that are feeding at the public trough.

 

In February, Obama announced tough new restrictions on executive compensation that promised an end to massive salaries for executives of failing companies. Similar rules were eventually written into legislation and hailed as evidence that executive compensation would be checked.

 

But reports about the latest AIG bonuses quickly undermined whatever political capital Obama has earned with his past efforts.

 

Over the weekend, White House officials expressed outrage at the bonuses paid out by AIG but said there was nothing they could do to stop them. After news of the bonuses dominated news coverage for two days, the administration took a newly aggressive stance.

 

Asked why the administration is attempting to claw back the bonuses now but did not do more to block the payments earlier this month when it was authorizing the latest $30 billion in new loans to the struggling insurer, Gibbs was unresponsive.

 

“The administration is taking the steps today to go back and see what can be done,” he said.

 

Staff writers Michael A. Fletcher and Scott Wilson contributed to this report.