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When You Are Losing An Argument, Change The Subject

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DONALD J MYERS

A Mind of My Own

Published: March 21, 2009

Our Congress had a field day this week grilling the CEO of AIG, Edward Liddy, and making hay about bonuses that the company paid to some of its executives from bailout money.

One would think that that these same congressmen had absolutely nothing to do about this incident. Aren't they the ones who wrote the legislation?

It seems like each of these huge bills that have been passed over the past several months all had to be done quickly and, obviously, no one actually read the final drafts.

The amount of bonus money is small in comparison to the size of the total bill. It amounts to less than one-tenth of 1 percent, but one would think that this alone is going to destroy the country.

It is a diversion and we are falling for it.

No one can factually state who exempted the bonus money from limits in the final bill. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., stated that he did not exempt the bonuses from taxes or limits.

When the bill went to conference between the Senate and House, someone had to write it. Since no one read the more than 1,000 pages, I guess we should not be surprised.

Of course that happened on Tuesday and by Wednesday, Sen. Dodd said that he did put the bonuses in the bill but that was because the administration said to do it.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was the head of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and deeply involved in all of the work leading up to the bailout of AIG, and yet we are told that he learned about the bonuses only last week.

I seem to recall that when he was initially nominated to be the Treasury Secretary we were told that he was the only American with enough experience and knowledge about the problems to be effective.

We learn on Thursday that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are also including bonuses. These are the government-run companies that had a significant contribution to the failed home loans and acted as a catalyst for the entire debacle we are in.

Last week, Rush Limbaugh was the distraction. How could anyone possibly want the president to fail was the outcry?

I suspect that most of those who took offense with Rush never listened to what he had to say.

He spent a significant amount of time explaining various proposals by the administration that would move the country to the left and have negative effects on our basic values. Then he said that he wanted him to fail with those programs.

That gave fodder for the mainstream media for more than a week, but the debate about the actual programs was dismissed.

Now the president is in California and pushing what must be called amnesty for illegal aliens.

Let's see, we want to nationalize health care, reduce carbon emissions with cap and trade, push unionization with card check, close Gitmo, raise taxes and a few other items.

I think that some concentration on the economy would be the best thing.

Donald J. Myers, a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, is a regular columnist for Hernando Today. He lives in Spring Hill and can be contacted at dmyersusmc@aol.com.

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