It's been a while since Americans have had a corporation that they could really rail against. It feels like ages since everyone raised their pitchforks over the AIG bonuses. Well, maybe the time has come again, as AIG makes its way back into the news. The original outrage, you may remember, came when AIG announced that it was going to pay $120 million in 2008 bonuses to about 6,000 employees.

You'll be happy to know that this $120 million isn't even close to the amount AIG will actually pay to employees in the form of bonuses for 2008. Try $454 million ... that's quadruple what Americans were outraged over before.

AIG's explanation is that this $454 million is the answer to a different question than what as previously asked ... this new figure "'reflects all types of variable compensation across all of our businesses,' while the $120 million figure he provided earlier reflected only bonuses paid to corporate headquarters executives and high ranking officers at its major businesses around the world."

So if it has been a while since you have let your wealth-envy really get the best of you .... Just remember that all of these evil people working for this evil corporation are going to be getting bonuses!

Last week, all of America had their pitchforks ready for the roast .. of the evil AIG employees who received retention bonuses. The House passed a bill that would tax the bonuses at a rate of 90%.

Fast-forward one week later .. the House Financial Services Committee adopted a milder version of the bill. The new legislation allows bailout companies to pay bonuses so long as the government feels the compensation is not "unreasonable or excessive."

Oh. That makes me feel so much better. So it will be Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and tax cheat Tim Geithner who will determine what is considered "unreasonable or excessive." We all know that government would make such a good judge of the unreasonable and the excessive ... like spending taxpayer's money on butterfly gardens, for instance ... or lobster sex.

Question: How long will it be before these power hungry DC Despots decide that their ability to regulate bonuses and executive pay for some financial institutions is so durned fun that it ought to be expanded to the entire private sector? Isn't having power fun!

Well it isn't often lately that we highlight to good news coming out of Washington. And even today, we are gonna have to dig deep. But here it goes ....

Democrats in the House have decided that they will not include controversial global warming initiatives in Barack Obama's budget. You may remember that by including it in the budget, reconciliation would ensure that Senate Democrats could pass the budget (and therefore global warming legislation) with a simple majority vote. But poor Nancy Pelosi really has her thong in a wad about this one, but her Democrat minions won't let her have her precious global warming initiatives in the budget bill. Special budget procedures WILL however be used to remake the healthcare system.

Let's try this one on for size ... legislation to tax the AIG bonuses at a 90% rate have hit a wall. The bill passed by the House last week will be pulled from the Senate fast track as people put down their pitchforks and re-read a little document called the Constitution. So if and when the Senate takes up the issue of taxing bonuses or targeting executive pay, it will probably look a heck of a lot different than what Nancy Pelosi and Barney "Sylvester" Frank concocted last week. Just for the record, here are the names again of the 85 Republican Representatives who thought it would be a good idea to support the AIG bonus tax legislation. But there does seem to be one stubborn Democrat in the Senate: Harry Reid. He is still saying "To hell with the Constitution, full speed ahead to tyranny!"

And RINO Arlen Specter must really be in CYA mode right now. He knows that he has an election coming up in 2010, and he knows that there are a lot of Pennsylvanians that would rather see Daffy Duck as their Senator. So Specter has decided that he is going to oppose the union card check bill. If you'll remember, the Democrats only needed one Republican vote to get this legislation passed, and the pressure fell on Specter who indicated that he would support it. And he has decided not to.

Just in case Harry Reid gets his way and the AIG bonus bill comes up pretty quickly in the Senate, here is something to note. The House-version of the bill would lead to the loss of one million American jobs. That is according to a senior economist at JP Morgan.

Michael Feroli, an economist at JP Morgan, concluded that the restrictions of compensation for companies receiving TARP money would put them "at a severe competitive disadvantage for talent relative to foreign banks which have not received such funds." Gee, ya think?

I make more profit from the advertising on this website than the Atlanta Journal-Constitution makes from publishing a newspaper. Now that's a bit scary, isn't it? But .. give them credit. They're trying some new things to turn things around: Looking for a new conservative columnist, for instance. Mallard Fillmore in the comics and that Wall Street Journal two-page insert on the weekend might help.

Unbeknownst to me some of the people that I work for (who just happen to also own that newspaper) have made inquiries over the years about the paper publishing a Neal Boortz column once or twice a week. The suggestion has been met with howls of what could be either laughter or outrage, usually followed by the phrase "no way in hell."

What if they did publish a column? Well, here is what might have run yesterday. Instead it was published on Townhall.com. Read the comments ... a few people actually liked what I wrote:

You know, I think I'll start writing more columns. Beats the hell out of having to do a television show, and columnists don't do book tours.

Did you hear about these protesters in Connecticut over the weekend? Some protestors went to the houses of AIG executives in Connecticut and they came up with this brilliant battle-cry ...

"Money for the needy, not for the greedy!" Now there are some brilliant government-educated ignoranuses for you.

Are these people really this brain dead? There is no doubt that these were Obama voters. If you heard some of the comments from the protesters, they spoke of "sharing the wealth" and moaned about the size of the houses. (That's called wealth envy, by the way.)

And then we find out this little piece of information about these protests. They were organized by The Connecticut Working Families Party. And guess what? It turns out that this party was jointly founded by ...... ACORN! Imagine my surprise.

Yesterday's vote in the House was completely expected. Overwhelmingly, your representatives in Washington voted huge taxes on bonuses for AIG employees. Nancy Pelosi said, "We want our money back and we want our money back now for the taxpayers." Funny .. after recently passing a bill with more than 8,000 earmarks worth over $400 billion, the hollow-eyed hippy from Haight-Ashbury and her flying monkeys are suddenly worried about the taxpayers.

First point. It is not "their" money. The money, whether you like it or not, belongs to the people to whom they were paid. Those bonuses were paid pursuant to a valid contract and are now the rightful and legal property of the payees. Let's us also remember that the amount paid in those bonuses was less than one-tenth of one percent of the bailout money received by AIG. Remember, though ... politicians believe that ever penny you earn actually belongs to the government. In the official language of Washington any money from your paycheck that these political hacks allow you to keep is a "tax expenditure." You earned it ... but if you're allowed to keep it they treat it as a government expenditure. To the Democrat mind, and in the mind of all too many Republicans, all wealth is owned by government. Produced by the people, but owned by government.

Second point. This is absolutely unconstitutional. Con su permisio I'll explain.

So the House succeeded in passing a 90% tax on bonuses given to employees of AIG and any company receiving at least $5 billion in bailout money. But only with those evil rich employees whose family income is above $250,000 a year will have to pay this 90% tax.

You just cannot like what you're seeing here. These politicians are targeting specific individuals out there who have received some money that the politicians, for political purposes, just do not want them to have. So they pass a law allowing the government to seize that money. Can you imagine where this goes from here? How about Ann Coulter? She delights in writing books that just irritate the ever-luvin' puddin' out of Democrats and liberals. Let's say that one of Nancy Pelosi's flying monkeys reports to the Princess that Coulter made $1.5 million from her last book. This money was legally paid to Coulter pursuant to a contract. Sound familiar? But Pelosi feels that Coulter has made this money by promoting divisiveness in the population, so she decides that punishment is in order. She then has her minions pass a bill establishing a 90% tax on the royalties from all books and writings that promote political dissention and defame public servants in the Congress of the United States. Come on now, you tell me the big huge difference between a confiscatory tax on legally earned bonuses and one on legally received book royalties.

This is going nowhere folks. It will never make it through the Senate. If the members of the House had any appreciation at all for the Constitution it wouldn't have gone this far. And why, pray tell, would that be? That would be because of one pesky little clause found in our (once) supreme law of the land.

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 5 - United States Constitution

"No bill of Attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed."

Do you know what that means? The key is the word "attainder." Let's go to Websters: It's a 15th century word meaning "extinction of the civil rights and capacities of a person upon sentence of death or outlawry usually after a conviction of treason." A definition, this one from the Catholic Encyclopedia, describes "bill of attainder" thusly: "A bill of attainder may be defined to be an Act of Parliament for putting a man to death or for otherwise punishing him without trial in the usual form. Thus by a legislative act a man is put in the same position as if he had been convicted after a regular trial."

Well, in this case the Congress isn't trying to put anyone to death ... they're just trying to steal some money. They are trying to deprive some individuals of property that is rightfully and lawfully theirs without accusing them of a crime and without the benefit of any trial ... except, that is, for this trial that has been taking place in the media for the last week. Well, there's that pesky little Constitution again. A man cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process, and in our country due process means a trial before a jury of one's peers. Barney Frank et al are trying to take these people's money through legislative action without a trial. I would truly hope there isn't a federal judge in this country that wouldn't smack this idiocy down at the earliest opportunity.

This isn't about whether or not those people deserved those bonuses. Perhaps not. But the bonuses were paid pursuant to a legally enforceable contract. The property is theirs. Now we have politicians who are trying to take it away just because they're unhappy and embarrassed because they didn't take care of this little problem before the bailout money was paid.

On to the Senate. Let's hope someone over there has read the Constitution.

One of the most prominent phrases we heard in this AIG hearing yesterday was "give back." That phrase is such a mindless liberal talking point. You might have heard my discussion with a caller yesterday. I just hate this "give back" nonsense. I'm heavily involved in charitable giving. My wife has a 501C(3) charitable foundation. But I am NOT giving back. I'm giving. The money I give I earned. It was not given me. Therefore ... I am not giving it back. I'm convinced this whole "giving back" nonsense was created to cause people to subconsciously believe that whatever wealth a person might have was given them, not earned.

Did you happen to listen to those parts of the hearings yesterday where Slobbering Barney was demanding the names of the AIG employees who got the bonuses? These people committed no crimes .. yet here is the Imperial Federal Government demanding their names and sputtering about subpoenas. This is not only disgusting, it's chilling. You do something perfectly legal, and suddenly you have this politically powerful troll demanding your name.

Barney said that if AIG honcho Ed Liddy didn't turn over the names, he would ask his committee to vote to subpoena the names. Even though AIG employees are receiving death threats from the dumbmasses who couldn't tell their head from a hole in the ground .. Barney wants to make sure that we get those names!

But other members of Congress didn't seem to think this was a bad idea. Senator John Tester said, "Is there a downside? If they don't give the money back, they ought to have their names released." Senator Ben Cardin suggested that if the bonuses were not returned, the names should be given to the Justice Department and Eric Holder would decide if they should be released. Cardin said, "These bonuses have to be given back ... It's just unconscionable, and we can't allow that to happen. If necessary, we should take legislative action."

And let's not let this comment from Barack Obama go by the wayside. He said on the South Lawn yesterday, "People are rightly outraged about these particular bonuses ... But just as outrageous is the culture that these bonuses are a symptom of that have existed for far too long." Just what culture is PrezBO talking about? The culture of capitalism?

There was so much more.

Perhaps the hokiest statement came from Rep. Paul Hodes, a Democrat from New Hampshire. He said that AIG stands for "Arrogance. Incompetence. Greed." How cute.

But moving right along ... AIG CEO Edward Liddy did ask that some of these bonus recipients give at least half of the money back. Those receiving retention payments of $100,000 or more were asked to return at least half of those payments.

Today in Washington we are going to have a Congressional beat down of AIG CEO Edward Liddy. He is going to appear in front of a House financial services subcommittee. And I think we can safely say that he is going to get a less than pleasant welcome. Liddy is going to have to defend the concept of abiding by the terms of your contracts with your employees. Look for Maxine Waters ask Liddy some questions ..

"What is a contract?" would be a good start. Mensa Maxine is so darn good at this sort of stuff. We'll also be treated to some posturing from the man most responsible for this mess ... and that would be Barney Frank.

So it turns out that AIG paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 of its employees. Eleven of those bonuses went to former employees. The contracts were written in March 2008, and they guaranteed 100% of their 2007 pay for 2008. They were not based on performance. Apparently the top individual bonus was more than $6.4 million, and the top seven received more than $4 million each. Did these people really earn this money? Possibly not. But they were parties to a contract .. and if the money had not been paid they would have most certainly sued for it.

Here's something I'm guessing you don't know. The Financial Services Division of AIG is headquartered in Wilton, Conn. In Connecticut they have a little gem called the "Wage Act." This law says that if an employee has to sue for wages payable pursuant to a contract they recover twice the amount that is contractually owed. That would have meant $330 million instead of $165 million. Add some attorney's fees on top of that. So ... you're running AIG. What would YOU do?

Now ... here is just a sampling of some of the comments coming out of Washington.

I'm sure that Chuckie Schumer would like to have his way with Edward Liddy. Did you hear what he had to say about these AIG bonuses? If not, here's a brief synopsis of what Chuckie had to say on the Senate floor:

"My colleagues and I are sending a letter to [AIG CEO Edward] Liddy informing him that he can go right ahead and tell the employees that are scheduled to get bonuses that they should voluntarily return them. Because if they don't, we plan to tax virtually all of it. He should tell his employees that if they don't give the money back, we'll put in place a new law that will allow us to tax these bonuses at a very high rate so it is returned to its rightful owners, the taxpayers. So for those of you who are getting these bonuses be forewarned, you will not be getting to keep them."

He wasn't the only one who had something to say about these bonuses. Harry Reid declared on the Senate floor, "Recipients of these bonuses will not be able to keep all of their money."

And slobbering Barney can't let a good wealth-envy moment go to waste. He's still sputtering about all of these bonuses asserting, "The time has come to exercise our ownership rights. We own most of the company. And then say, as owner, 'No, I'm not paying you the bonus. You didn't perform. You didn't live up to this contract."

Oh and we're not done yet. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus says, "They're not going to get the financial benefit of those bonuses."

And Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan introduced a bill into the House that would tax at 100% bonuses above $100,000 for any company receiving bailout money. Ryan says, "We will use any means necessary ... It boggles my mind how these executives can be so unaware of what the American people are going through." Democrat Rep Steve Israel also sponsored this bill. Israel says, "If we can't kill the bonuses, we'll tax the bonuses." He says, "American families shouldn't be forced to reward these professional financial failures with extravagant bonuses that could buy fancy cars and yachts ... AIG may not like it, but since they had to come to the federal government for help, the federal government now has a say in how they spend taxpayer money."

Another bill introduced by Democrat Rep Gary Peters would "create a 60 percent surtax on bonuses over $10,000 to any company in which the U.S. government has a 79 percent or greater equity stake in the company. Currently, AIG is the only company that meets this threshold."

This is an absolute orgy of pandering to wealth envy. In the meantime the government cruises along operating a Ponzi scheme that makes Bernie Madoff look like he's selling brushes door-to-door. That would be Social Security. Someday we're going to face a meltdown over this soon-to-be welfare program that is going to make AIG and Madoff look like two-bit operators.

I mean, c'mon folks. Are you listening to yourselves? The outrage over these bonuses from the general population .. the very people that put Barack Obama in the White House .. is filled with mind-numbing wealth envy.

I'm reading just one story about America's reaction to these evil, greedy AIG executives. Here is some of the reaction. Are you ready?

Tess Beauchamp runs a restaurant in Lubbock, Texas. She isn't going to cut AIG any slack, "I think this country has a serious problem with executive entitlement .. I think it's outrageous. I think this country could stand a redistribution of wealth and not to AIG executives or corporate execs, for that matter."

Gary Jarvis of Herron, Illinois lost his job as a forklift driver. He says that AIG executives are "not going to bleed to death because I'm not sure that they've got blood. I think it's ice water that runs through their veins ... To me, it's just stunning to think they're not even ashamed of their disgusting greed."

And then we get this line from Maria Panza-Villa. She asks, "Wasn't Obama supposed to fix this?"

I've said it before .. but in 40 years of talk radio I've never seen the level of hatred and envy against the wealth as intense as it is right now. I propose that everyone out there who hates the rich quit their jobs and go get one from a poor person.

Holy flying pasture fritters! I don't think I've ever stood quite as alone as I did yesterday on this AIG bonuses thing. I don't think I had one call yesterday from one single person who agreed with me on this issue. That's fine. I believe I'm right .. and not being on the side of the majority won't bother me.

Here's the point I was trying to make yesterday. The American people have $165 billion invested in AIG. We don't have the money, so we are going to have to borrow it. From who? Well, perhaps from China! Maybe China will buy the treasury notes issued to back up this newly printed currency. So ... who do you want to pay this money back? How about your children and grandchildren? That would be just swell, wouldn't it? AIG fails, the $165 billion is shot to hell, and there's nobody around to pay it back except for future generations of Americans through increased taxes.

There is another option. Why don't we let AIG pay it back? Why don't we stand back and let AIG take reasonable steps to turn its fortunes around and once again become a profitable financial powerhouse? Certainly you see no problem with that! The question, of course, is just how do they do that? They do it with management expertise, that's how. They do it by retaining the best minds they can and putting those minds to work on solving AIG's problems. There is no shortage of competition for the type of business minds that can change the fortunes of AIG. There are other companies out there who could use that help .. and who aren't under Barney Frank's thumb. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the efficacy in allowing the best financial minds out there to gravitate toward companies that haven't received TARP funds while the companies that have borrowed so heavily from the taxpayers make do with second-rate executive talent. So how do the companies with the bailout funds keep the executive talent that will likely lead them to profitability? Well, they pay them! That's how. They live up to their contractual obligations. If they don't pay them, someone else will.

The issue here is not that AIG paid bonuses ... bonuses that amounted to less than 1/10th of one percent of the bailout money it received. The issue should be to whom those bonuses were paid. If they were paid to the perps who put AIG into this mess - and that's supposing the mess was caused by AIG execs and not by the federal government essentially forcing AIG investors and subsidiaries into making and buying hideously bad mortgages - then we have a problem. If the bonuses were paid to people who are working hard to solve AIG's problems and achieving some success, then no problem.

Let's take this angle. When was the last time you looked at the retirement plans for members of Congress? Some of these congressmen created the Community Reinvestment Act monster that coerced banks and lending institutions into making many of these subprime mortgages. These congressmen urged Fannie and Freddie to reduce their credit guidelines so that these quasi-government agencies to buy most of those bad loans. These congressmen and senators are going to retire with fat retirement funds that are completely safe while tens of millions in the private sector will retire with retirement funds decimated by this economic meltdown. Much of the problem was caused by the Barney Franks in Washington .. why aren't they paying the price like the rest of us?

New York Attorney General Cuomo (No relation to Perry) wants a list of people who got those AIG bonuses. What? Now we have crimes being committed here? The attorney general is going to investigate people who receive payments pursuant to a contract? Cuomo - clearly playing to the political message here -- says that "we owe it to the taxpayers to take every possible action to stop unwarranted bonus payments to those who caused the AIG meltdown in the first place." Cuomo is going to investigate who received the bonuses and who developed the bonus plans.

What in the hell is going on around here? Are we going to adopt a standard where contracts are only enforceable if they're popular with political class and the public? If that contract is unpopular what are we going to do? Sic the attorney general after the parties if they live up to its terms? Do you know where this is going to go? Well, what if you were some sort of a financial genius, and AIG or some other institution receiving bailout funds wanted to hire you to help turn them around. You're going to think: "Hmmm ... sounds like a nice opportunity. I can help those people and make some pretty good change in the process .. but do I want to be the subject of a criminal investigation by the attorney general if I accept a bonus? Do I want the president calling me greedy and telling the congress to pull out all of the stops to take the money I have earned back? I think not. I'm going to stay right where I am."

A lot of what we're seeing here is the anti-capitalist, pro-government left seeing an opportunity to demonize the private sector. The same politicians who are so adept at getting the public whipped into a frenzy over these bonuses seem somehow unable to gin up any degree of outrage over taxpayer money being spent on lobster sex and tattoo removal. At least there's a chance AIG is going to pay the money back. Let's see if some gang-banger gone straight offers up the money spent to remove his tats.

I, for one, am a lot more curious as to what Barney Frank's lover was up to at Fannie Mae while he was busy protecting that institution from President George Bush's attempts at reform, than I am in sending the New York Attorney general on a witch hunt for executives who received bonus payments pursuant to a contract.

Yesterday, President Obama and tax cheat Tim Geithner outlined their plan for small businesses. But before doing that, Obama wanted to make sure he had his say about these AIG bonuses. And not surprisingly, he believes that they are outrageous. Not only that, but he wants tax cheat Tim Geithner to "pursue every single legal avenue" to block the payments.

Obama, of course, just had to use this occasion to play into the wealth envy. He used one of my favorite words ... "greed." He said, "This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed ... This isn't just a matter of dollars and cents. It's about our fundamental values ... All across the country, there are people who work hard and meet their responsibilities every day, without the benefit of government bailouts or multi-million dollar bonuses. And all they ask is that everyone, from Main Street to Wall Street to Washington, play by the same rules." What rules would that be, PrezBO? Abiding by your contractual obligations? That rule?

Here we have Obama wants to worry about fundamental values. Where were those values when he nominated a tax cheat to be the Secretary of the Treasury and the head of the IRS? Willfully cheating on your taxes is OK. Getting a bonus for the work you've done pursuant to a contract is not.

The White House says that the Treasury Department will use a planned $30 billion infusion into AIG as leverage in order to compel the company to repay the bonuses of financial-products group employees. The infusion won't be final until the company and the Treasury figure out some sort of repayment options. OK .. here's an idea. The bonuses, as I've said, amounted to 1/10th of the amount of the bailout funds. So take this new $30 billion and reduce it by 1/10th of one percent. That would be $27 million Then everything will be square.

Over the weekend, one of the big stories was these AIG bonuses. If you'll remember, AIG has received three government bailouts totaling $180 billion. But yesterday, the company paid out $165 million in bonuses to employees. The fact that AIG had to pay millions in bonuses, considering its massive failings, has politicians irate. Politicians don't get irate when millions of dollars are spent by government on blueberry research or lobster farms .. but let the private sector pay that type of money pursuant to a contract and all hell breaks loose. We're certainly not at all shocked to find that one of the ticked-off politicians is none other than Barney Frank. He says that we need to figure out whether or not these bonuses are "legally recoverable." Barney wants to know, "Who said and at what point, 'We're going to give these bonuses no matter what.' And I do think it's inappropriate for those people to stay in power at that company."

Hey Barney ... some taxpayers out here might want to know whether some of the pork you clowns throw around to buy votes is legally recoverable as well. Remember - if you had to put the blame for this economic mess we're facing right now on just one person in Washington, that person would, without a doubt, be Slobbering Barney. Maybe someday we'll get the full story about Barney protecting his boyfriend who worked at Fannie Mae while this mess was building.

AIG Chairman Edward Liddy says that "the firm was legally obligated to make already-committed 2008 employee-retention payments, the value of which were set early last year before problems at its Financial Products unit became public."

Here's the new reality my friends. Government can seize and spend as much as it wants where it wants and when it wants. The private sector? Not so much. God forbid a company should reward performance. Rewarding performance is something very foreign to politicians and they don't like it. They're used to punishing performance, not rewarding it. The private sector rewards performance and punishes failure .. just the opposite for Barney and his clown circus.

Yesterday the taxpayer ensured the fate of Citigroup to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. Citigroup will live to see another day. And maybe another bailout ... who knows. Now get this: despite the fact that it is now on the taxpayer hook, and recently fired 53,000 employees, Citigroup says it plans to maintain its $400 million contract with the New York Mets. They will pay the Mets $400 million so they can call their new stadium "Citi Field."

Now that just ain't right.

And it's not just Citigroup, folks. AIG pays a British soccer team $125 million to put "AIG" on their uniforms. This is the same AIG that just got a $150 billion loan from the taxpayers. Someone from a group called Taxpayers for Common Sense says it would be more accurate for the soccer team to put "US Treasury" on their uniforms. How about "U.S. Taxpayers"?

There are more examples. Bank of America took a $25 billion loan for the Treasury's Troubled Assets Relief Program. Meanwhile, Bank of America wants to pay the New York Yankees $20 million per year to be their sponsor. Bank of America also has its name on the Carolina Panthers football stadium ... that cost them $140 million.

Look, folks ... I'm sure that there are a lot of companies out there that have done it right. But there are a heck of a lot, especially on a larger scale, that just don't seem to get the message.