Politicians, agh!

Following the news this week, one could not help but notice the AIG bonuses that were featured almost everywhere. These bonuses, given to executives making far more than most Americans were funded by tax payers, and were the product of the Dodd Amendment to the stimulus bill that was passed and signed in February. Now, in real irony, the House has passed a resolution to tax 90% of the bonus money to reclaim what they voted to allow AIG to give people in the first place. 

More irony - Senator Dodd (D-Conn) indicated last week that he was not the author of the Dodd amendment, then revealed that he and the Treasury department had worked on it together. 

Yet even more irony - AIG has a political action committee (as most corporations do) and the biggest recipients of funds from them in the past year has gone to - Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton. To be clear, the Senator who chairs the finance committee and the three biggest contenders for the presidency last year received huge contributions from the same company that just gave away taxpayer money to employees in the form of bonuses. 

Some critical questions before I end my rant:

Wasn't the stimulus bill supposed to be reviewable by all taxpayers before it was voted on? 

Weren't we told to hold government accountable a few weeks ago?

Is this the "change" both parties said we needed?

In something as serious as spending billions of dollars, shouldn't the people voting on it have read the legislation? 

It's hard not to be cynical in times like these, no matter how much change arrives in Washington, not much appears to be different.