Bribes, bonuses and bills of attainder

A week ago  a weeping Manny Aragon, former Democratic leader of the state Senate, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in federal prison for attempting to defraud the taxpayers of New Mexico of some $4 million. U.S. Attorney Greg Fouratt declared after Aragon’s sentencing that “the era of picking the taxpayers’ pockets is over.” Is it?  Let’s just say I’m a little more cynical than Mr. Fouratt.  Would-be grifters in the Santa Fe state House might be a little more careful for a while, I’m sure, but the ever-popular sport of picking the taxpayers’ pockets is alive and well in Washington, D.C.

There’s a difference, of course.  Manny Aragon’s attempted theft of $4 million was illegal, and so he went to prison.  The Pelosi-Reid Congress’ theft of more than a  trillion dollars (a sum that makes poor old Manny’s skimming look positively insignificant) from our children and grandchildren is perfectly legal.  Between TARP and the unprecedented spending spree masquerading as a stimulus, Congress has saddled future generations of Americans with a debt that contains more zeroes than Manny Aragon ever imagined in his wildest fantasies.  And now that they’ve spent a substantial chunk of my grandchildren’s inheritance, those pious hypocrites on Capitol Hill are screaming in self-righteous outrage about AIG paying its executives $165 million in bonuses.

I’m not going to tell you that $165 million is a mere pittance beside the staggering mountains of money Congress has already spent over the past several months.  Now, $165 million is $165 million.  To most of us, it’s a tremendous amount of money.  The company failed, which means its executives didn’t do such a great job, and yet they’re being given millions in bonuses anyway.  The company was bailed out with taxpayer money, and many of those taxpayers are in danger of losing their homes.  It’s ludicrous, really, which is precisely why AIG’s CEO Edward Liddy asked those executives to return half the bonuses, and why many of the executives have voluntarily returned not just half but all of the bonuses.

That’s not good enough for Barney Frank, however, whom Mona Charen aptly likened to Madame Defarge.  Also waxing indignant about the bonuses is Charles Rangel, who has a long and complicated history of trying to line his own campaign coffers with AIG cash.  Also outraged was Christopher Dodd, who was demanding to know how this travesty had come to pass when it was actually he himself who was responsible for the language in the stimulus bill that ensured the previously negotiated AIG bonuses would be honored.  Dodd lied outright, flatly denying that he knew how something like that had slipped through, but once caught, admitted that he was responsible, but whined that the Obama administration had pressured him to do it.

Sensing the way the populist winds were blowing, the House on Thursday passed a bill taxing bonuses to executives at bailed out companies at 90 percent.  Never mind that the Constitution expressly forbids both ex post facto laws and bills of attainder.  In a staggering display of both shameless demagoguery and contempt for the Constitution, more than 300 members of Congress essentially sold their souls for 165 million pieces of silver.  After all, the long-dead authors of the Constitution aren’t going to write any checks to their re-election committees, are they?  Dead founders don’t vote, except maybe in Chicago.   People who are angry enough to get on buses and travel to AIG executives’ homes to protest the bonuses do vote, however.

My fellow columnist here at the New Mexico Independent, Arthur Alpert, writes that he is not outraged by the AIG bonuses.   He is not outraged because he thinks capitalism is corrupt and therefore such things are to be expected. I believe, on the contrary, that humanity is corrupt and therefore such things are to be expected.  Capitalism is corrupt only because capitalists are human beings, and human beings are corrupt.  The communists who sat on the Soviet Politburo in days gone by were every bit as corrupt as any American capitalist.  The Roman oligarchs and medieval European kings who ruled centuries before anyone had heard of Adam Smith or Ronald Reagan were as venal as any Wall Street CEO.  Greed is not born of capitalism.  Greed is born of human nature.