Still, there is good in Bonus Rage. It's a sign of life. As the president said this week, "I don't want to quell anger. People are right to be angry. I'm angry. What I want us to do is channel our anger in a constructive way." My sentiments exactly (this must be a first), although I'm sure we differ when it comes to what constitutes a "constructive way."
For starters, Bonus Rage should finally drive Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd from office when he runs for re-election in 2010 -- unless he peels off the blindfold and sees the error of his ways sometime sooner. Dodd, after all, is the largest recipient of AIG largesse, "most of it," as John Batchelor reports, "from a dozen AIG executives whose bonuses are protected under the legislation Dodd now admits he wrote."
Ouch. For several days this week, the influential Senate Banking chairman -- he who never met a sweetheart deal he didn't find irresistible -- lied about his role in writing legislation that protects AIG's bonuses. Repeatedly, Dodd insisted that he had had nothing to do with the bonus-protection language in the, ahem, Dodd Amendment until, mirabile dictu, he remembered that he had. As he finally told CNN on Wednesday evening, he actually wrote the provision himself with, he added, input from the administration. Did I mention President Obama was the No. 2 recipient of AIG largesse? Dodd received $103,100. Obama received $101,332. Now Dodd, after being scorched by these disclosures, says he'll give his AIG money back. Will Obama? Does it matter? The proof is already in the pudding, even if the burnt offerings go back to the kitchen.
Fume, baby, fume. But there's more. The nationalization of AIG is not just bankrupting the country by throwing billions of our dollars at AIG's toxic assets. The nationalization of AIG is forcing the American taxpayer to support a very different kind of toxic asset. I refer to AIG's promotion of Sharia (Islamic law) in its Takaful division, the Sharia-compliant insurance sector of AIG. Since we the people own 80 percent of AIG, we the people now promote Sharia, too.
Don't believe me? Takaful insurance, our very own AIG Takaful Web site explains, "avoids prohibited elements in accordance with the Sharia law," adding: "We do not invest in anything that is haram (prohibited under Sharia). We do not borrow, lend or enter into any financial transaction that is unIslamic."
At the very least -- aside from promoting from the law of the Koran, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, the mullahs of Iran, the clerics of Saudi Arabia (not to mention Afghanistan, whose Sharia-supreme "justice" system recently upheld a journalist's 20-year prison sentence for "blasphemy") -- taxpayer support for AIG is by definition sectarian and therefore in violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.
It is on these grounds -- that the American taxpayer is now directly funding sectarian Islamic religious activities -- that a lawsuit, conducted by the Thomas More Law Center, has been filed against the government. Recently, the Justice Department, another U.S. taxpayer-funded entity last time I checked, entered the case to defend the AIG bailout, filing a motion to dismiss, the Thomas More Law Center notes, based on this being a time of "crisis."
You better believe this is a time of crisis -- but not the crisis envisioned by Justice officials charged with safeguarding gross government fecklessness. Only two of our elected officials -- Reps. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., and bless them for it -- have publicly decried the government's AIG Sharia-bailout; that's a crisis. Chump change bonuses arouse the wrath of the nation -- not the nefarious movement to nationalize the marketplace; that's a crisis, too. The American people are angry, good. But we need to understand there are far more important things to be angry about.