Dinhternet

So there’s been a lot of anger about the AIG bonuses lately. Some­one I know recently Tweeted “AIG = Arro­gance, Incom­pe­tence, and Greed.” The Huff­in­g­ton Post put up this satir­i­cal post about why these bonuses were well-deserved. If you didn’t know, AIG used bailout money to pay “reten­tion bonuses” to mem­bers of its Finan­cial Prod­ucts Divi­sion, which got them into their cur­rent dire circumstances.

AIG has stated that they must pay the bonuses for two rea­sons. First, because they are con­trac­tu­ally oblig­ated to pay. Sec­ond, because the peo­ple who got them into this sit­u­a­tion are the only ones who can get them out again, by unwind­ing their own mess. Yes­ter­day, NPR tore both of these argu­ments apart. First, the con­tract to pay bonuses was shady from the start. Deals to assure bonuses to an entire divi­sion are unheard of. Also, the lan­guage sug­gests that it was signed know­ing that the FP Divi­sion was in trou­ble and they were needed to unwind the prob­lems. As for the sec­ond argu­ment, indi­vid­u­als who have left the com­pany were still paid the bonuses, which seems to negate that defense.

Now, dif­fer­ent parts of the gov­ern­ment are falling over each other to be the ones to fix the prob­lem for the Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers. Obama told his staff to use every legal means to get the money back. AIG CEO Liddy asked his employ­ees to return “at least half” of the bonuses. The New York Attor­ney Gen­eral and the Con­necti­cut Gov­er­nor are both pur­su­ing cases to get the money back. And now, Con­gress is vot­ing to put a 90% tax on all bonuses paid by com­pa­nies sup­ported by bailout money as well as sub­tract­ing the bonuses from AIG’s next install­ment of bailout money.

Wouldn’t this have been a lot eas­ier if we hadn’t bailed out the banks in the first place? If only we had taken more bold action instead of try­ing to put a band-aid on the trauma.

Today, I tuned in to Pres­i­dent Obama’s coro­na­tion inau­gu­ra­tion. (From Nate Beeler polit­i­cal car­toons.) And speak­ing of tight­ened secu­rity, not every ticket-holder got to see the cer­e­mony today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not try­ing to soil the day or any­thing. It was a beau­ti­ful day, and despite the fum­ble on the oath of office -

which is to me the most impor­tant part of the day, his inau­gural address was mov­ing, and I, like many oth­ers, have high hopes that he can take our coun­try for­ward in the right direc­tion. (And a lit­tle word­ing prob­lem isn’t even close to what has gone wrong in the past.)

But are our hopes and expec­ta­tions too high? Obama is a man, not a super­hero (from Sin­fest), a saint, or a mes­siah. He received a man­date of the peo­ple to become Pres­i­dent, not a man­date of heaven to be King. The Found­ing Fathers wanted us to have a sim­ple cer­e­mony to remind us of that fact, but with every new pres­i­dent, it gets cra­zier and cra­zier.

And of course, there’s the grow­ing cov­er­age. Mov­ing way beyond the old-school tele­vi­sion and radio, we have online stream­ing footage, a crowd-sourced pho­to­synth, and even satel­lite cov­er­age by Google. (Which was claimed by CNN.)

I guess this is all a round­about way of say­ing, we all want the coun­try to move for­ward, but don’t expect Pres­i­dent Obama’s 100th day in office to end with the Rap­ture. (I don’t agree with Lim­baugh, I just think pun­dits will always have a place.)

Do you hold stub­born to your ideas, or do you tend to inter­nal­ize oth­ers’ ideas eas­ily based on cir­cum­stance? (From Graph­Jam.) I feel that I tend to fall onto the stub­born side of things, but like to think that I do stay open-minded to new suggestions.

I read an opin­ion piece by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Jour­nal today, and even though I gen­er­ally dis­agree with his poli­cies, I feel he does raise some good points. Obama’s cam­paign promises are grand indeed. Even if he doesn’t accom­plish them, though, I hope that as Pres­i­dent, he can at least shift poli­cies in the direc­tion I want to see them take.

On a com­pletely dif­fer­ent topic, what do you think hap­pens after death? Will you go to heaven/hell? Get rein­car­nated? Rot in the ground? I’m not sure, but I like this idea a lot, even though I also “know” it won’t hap­pen. (From A Softer World.)