"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."That's the third clause of Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution. Like the rest of Section 9, it puts limits on the powers of Congress.
I'm no Constitutional scholar, but I think it means that a bill passed yesterday by the U.S. House of Representatives -- the one that purports to recoup $165 million of The People's money by slapping a one-time 90% tax on bonuses already paid to AIG's top managers -- almost certainly violates the Constitution.
If this retroactive tax makes it through the Senate and gets the President's signature, it's equally certain that it'll be mired in court challenges for years. The only thing it'll accomplish is allowing our government to assure us, temporarily, that it feels our pain.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is called a stunt.
I'll stipulate to the status quo: I'm pissed, you're pissed, everybody's pissed about the bonuses. It's our money, dammit, and now it's lining the pockets of the same jerks that blew up the American Dream. Pitchforks, rails, tar and feathers and all that.Problem is, our rage is both simple-minded and misdirected. First, it's the height of naiveté to act as if bonuses like these are somehow unusual. Anyone who's worked on corporate America's carpet, as I once did, knows firsthand that this is the way that big business works, for better or worse -- and anyone who hasn't been asleep for the last 20 years should know the same thing.
The AIG bonuses may have been outrageous but they weren't illegal. No matter where the money came from, in this nation of laws neither the government nor The People has grounds to demand a refund -- these default-swap snakes earned their compensation legitimately.
That's because our elected representatives gave AIG legislative permission to award the bonuses. The populist push for a punitive tax is nothing more than an attempt to hide the fact that virtually no one in Congress actually read and understood the provision which authorized bailed-out companies to spend taxpayers' money precisely as AIG did.
In short, Congress made it impossible to require AIG to return the misspent money. That sort of sabotage should come as no surprise -- it looks like these same legislators haven't read and understood the Constitution, either.
See, when the campaigns end and the governing begins in our nation's capital, the folks we've elected are off faster than a prom dress -- like it or not, the real work that affects citizens' lives is done by a subspecies of ambitious ideologues employed by our elected officials. These ladder-climbing staffers and self-absorbed bureaucrats have about as much in common with our interests as Hugo Chávez does.
But if it's misguided to pin the current mess on Congress and AIG, and since we must have our piñata, who's to blame?
Got mirror?
As investors in companies like AIG, whether directly or through institutions, when we obsess over our monthly statements but ignore corporate conduct, our show-me-the-money attitude endorses their outrageous bonuses, private jets and the like.
Every time we elect a member of the Old Guard, every time we spend more energy defending party or ideology than we devote to the defense of liberty, we perpetuate a government detached from the will of The People.
And when we're quicker to pick up a pitchfork than we are to pick up the Constitution and think critically, we -- along with our liberties -- become willing grist for our government's mill.
Our indignation is hollow because our culpability is beyond dispute.
Make no mistake -- I'm not ok with my government spending The People's money on fat corporate bonuses, nor do I have any particular love for AIG or its overpaid managers. No matter how pissed-off I am, however, I won't be a sucker for ignorant populist bullshit.
I don't know where you live, but in my country we don't stand up and cheer when our government singles-out and punishes our fellow citizens with laws made after the fact -- we don't stand for it at all. We find other, legal ways to hold robber barons to account.
In the meantime, we'll file this one right next to the Patriot Act.
