Good Golly....

So apparently earning larger amounts of money in America is no longer a good thing. According to Obama if you do so you are "selfish and greedy" (im sorry Mr. Obama, How much do you make a year?). There is a huge issue going on with the company AIG right now and it's retention bonuses to employees (which were guaranteed in their contracts by the way). The government gave AIG a large some of bailout money to help during the econmoic crisis. The Obama Administration gave the company permission to use the money in part to pay the employees their promised retention bonuses, but when the public heard and became outraged, Obama's Administration denied ever giving the company permission to do so. Now the population is extraordinarily angry that these people were given their hard-earned promised money through the tax payer's dollars. The government is demanding that the recipients of the bonuses return them and there has been a proposed 90% tax on the money. It is even being demanded that the names of the people who recieved the money be released to the public. That would be horrible! There are already death threats out for these people! This is why I would like to talk about some letters that were written to the New York Times about the letter sent by "Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G." I personally applaud Mr. DeSantis for standing up for himself when his company wouldn't. I think that he earned the money that he recieved and that he shouldn't have to return it. So people are upset that it is taxpayers money, who cares? Its not like the money was gonna go to anything useful anyway (shall we send more to studying the smell of pigs? I think not). No one complained when money was sent out to the thousands of americans (most of whom dont even pay taxes) as a part of the stimulus package. Some of the letters that were sent in to the New York Times were from people who were saying that Mr. DeSantis' option to donate all of the bonus money to charity was selfish and that "his unwarranted self-pity and sense of entitlement truly poison the gesture." No Mr. DeSantis, it is not selfless to donate $742,006.40. We want that money to go straight back to the government to be used for more pork. I dont see any of these people donating anything they have to charity, so I think they need to get off of Mr. DeSantis' back. I feel like this whole AIG issue has gotten blown way out of proportion and has distracted the people from more important issues. I guess when you are "selfish and greedy" you lose anything promised in the Bill of Rights.

You can read Mr. DeSantis' letter at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?ref=opinion
and the letters to the editor at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/opinion/l26aig.html?_r=1