AIG bonus recipients gave campaign cash to Dodd

Dodd is scrambling for cover, again.




edited to add photo

The government is bought and paid for. Hopefully not the executive branch, this time.

Now, I do NOT think anyone "bought" Obama (or Clinton or Kerry in their Presidential campaigns). Looking at the aggregate given by employees doesn't tell the whole story. It is possible that all people in a company were pushed to give money to someone perceived to be good to the company or it could simply be that they were inspired to support the candidate.

It does suggest that we need REAL campaign reform - such as the bill that Kerry and Wellstone wrote in the late 1990s.

There was a post floating around here recently claiming that Obama was their #1 recipient with McCain at #2 and Hillary at #3 or 4.

Sorry, I can't find it anymore.

Oh, yeah - they were the 3 people who raised the most money summed over all companies . Do you work for a company? Did you contribute to Obama? Then your contribution - given with no strings attached because you wanted Obama as President - is included on similar reports for your company.

Democrats and 3 Republicans.

Boy......y'all are buying the rope for the hanging, hey?

AIG Bonuses---> trees
2010 Budget ----> Forest
EFCA---> Forest
Health Care reform ---> Forest
Defense Dept. Cuts ----> Forest
Education Reform ----> Forest


Republican agenda
2010 election ----> Forest

We don't know the full story....nor should we care in the way that you are presenting it.

The point is this is going by way of investigations and hearings....
and if we ain't willing to do that with the Bush criminal family,
Then I'm not sure why we'd want to do this in reference to the current administration,
or Democrats in congress for that matter.

but then blames mysterious, unnamed staffers at Treasury for putting "pressure" on him.

If he denied involvement, how could Greenwald have accurately said before the CNN interview that Dodd "gave in" to pressure from the Treasury?

I think that both congress and the administration could improve their populist creds, but this rises nowhere near the level of say, torture or wiretapping.

Get those sorted out first, then figure out why Dodd relented on his initial insistence that execs wouldn't get bonuses from bailout funds. Or not, I really don't care, I just want it to not happen again.

We're perseverating over .01% of the estimated problem.

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What exactly do you mean?

Workers gave Dodd money.
Workers gave Obama money (see ABC headline of link I provided)

AIG is one of the biggest underwriters of his so-called "think tank".

Obama could have collected $130,000 dollars from paper pushers and lower level managers who saw what was happening and were inspired by his promise to fix the mess for all we know. These stories are a joke because they are meaningless without the background and are meant to sensationalize and smear instead of help get us to the truth.

Just another distraction.

The ABC article does not break it down but says the stats come from adding PACs and executives.

sites have the detail, it is beyond me why they are not always reported separately. The chart I saw on Freddie Mac is an example of why you would want to do that. That chart had the cumulative since some point in the 1990s - the total numbers, widely reported, were for the total dollars. Obama, Dodd, and Kerry were the highest. But if you looked at the PAC numbers - Obama had $6000 and Kerry $2000 - putting them pretty low had the list been sorted on that. Dodd was higher, but the top three were all Republicans on the House or Senate banking committees.

I have not seen a similar report for AIG, but I would speculate that Obama's contributions from "them" was similarly from the employees. (As to executives, remember they are limited to $4,600 if they contribute to both primary and general election and there are a relatively small number of executives.)

If anything, the Obama team pointed at Dodd without saying they pushed him to make the change. As Dodd is likely in a tight race in 2010, if it is true that Treasury wanted that change, they should have stood behind it and explained their reasons. Neither Treasury or Dodd come out well on this. As Frenchiecat says above this fight between Democrats on who is to blame hurts us.

The trees are the individual corrupt sociopaths who violated ethics, and likely laws, to create this mess; lax laws that attracted these clowns to easy money in the 1st place; and lack of oversight that allowed them to get away with it.

Not that you said this here but...taking everyone's bonuses away, whether or not they participated in creating this mess, might make the public feel better, but won't resolve the problem and will likely make matters worse. The same sociopaths will go somewhere else, maybe another industry, and continue to act the same. (i.e., Are any of the AIG employees ex-Enron employees or from mafia backgrounds?) The innocent will be punished and their lives destroyed which gives me no satisfaction. I want these guys nailed to the wall, not smirking at their co-workers facing that fate as they slip through the cracks on their way to different easy money.

There are plenty of people out there who are motivated to be successful who know where the line is and don't cross it. The bonus system works for millions of workers and the vast majority do not commit treasonous or criminal acts to get them. Congress needs to focus on these corrupt individuals and not just take the easy road of the blanket punishing of everyone whether or not they contributed to the problem. It's harder to do the former, but more effective in the long run.

That being said, I have no problem whatsoever taxing excessive income at a higher rate. But it should be done for everyone in the U.S. starting in 2010, and not as a punishment for one select situation. One way to prevent sociopaths and criminals from destroying our country is to place limits on the amount of money they can get to do it with. I think a top rate of 60% for anything over a couple million and 90% for anything over 10 million would go a long way toward resolving this.

It is wholly undemocratic and needs to be outlawed. No citizen or group should have more say then any other. No group should have unfettered access to the government that any other group could not get. And corporate money should have absolutely no say in our government what so ever.

N fucking t.

by quite a numerous batch.

administration when they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Or when republican Senators or Congressmen were caught taking money from corporations, corporations affected by legislation introduced by these same greedy jackals.

It is an absolute disgrace that people will make excuses for it when a democrat does it. But typical.

I live here. Hartford is the insurance capital of the United States and other CT towns have some insurance companies headquartered in them as well. Most major industries of a state give to their Senator or Congressman. I don't see that as scandalous. We need to hear all the facts first before we dump all over Dodd.

As well.

with simply being valid campaign contributions. Given that he did not take matching funds - both Bush's and McCain's numbers look high compared to his.

AIG was a respectable company and the employees were mostly upstanding members of their communities.

"democrats"... -spit-

As long as we don't have public financing of elections, politicians need to raise money. These contributions look bad when they are aggregated by the "employer". In Dodd's case, he also did get PAC money and his share of the AIG is high - so I am not saying there is nothing there. No one is looking at any the Republicans on the Banking Committees numbers.

By the way, the newspaper is wrong - he chairs the Banking committee, not Finance, which Baucus chairs.

But they did seem to give a lot to Dodd.

Among Federal Candidates, 1989-2008

Dodd, Chris (D-Conn) $281,038
Bush, George W (R-Texas) $200,560
Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) $111,875
Obama, Barack (D-Ill) $110,332
McCain, John (R-Ariz) $99,249
Baucus, Max (D-Mont) $90,000
Kerry, John (D-Mass) $85,000
Johnson, Nancy L (R-Conn) $75,400
Sununu, John E (R-NH) $69,049
Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) $61,515
Lieberman, Joe (I-Conn) $57,900
Rangel, Charles B (D-NY) $53,582
Giuliani, Rudolph W (R-NY) $50,250
Lazio, Rick A (R-NY) $48,600
Ensign, John (R-Nev) $44,569

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000123&type=P&state=&sort=A&cycle=A

:patriot:

for the financial services devision. This is ridiculous. Every single Senator takes money from big companies in their states. This is about campaign finance reform, not about signaling our Dodd.

I posted the list more to show the inclusion of Republicans, including Bush at the #2 spot.

Moments ago, MSNBC named off a few AIG recipients, but only Democrats...

Fuckers.

:donut:

equal amounts to both parties in hopes of getting influence from any of them.

With obvious exceptions, such as womens' rights and gun issues.

Here is the defense industry, for example:

Defense Aerospace: $7,606,310
51% to Dems / 49% to Repubs

Defense Electronics: $4,575,454
55% to Dems / 45% to Repubs

Misc Defense: $2,081,644
51% to Dems / 49% to Repubs

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/sector.php?txt=D01&cycle=2008

But consider that Joe Lieberman is also from Connecticut and they both ran 3 Senate campaigns and similarly unsuccessful runs for President. Dodd's Senate races in this interval were all runaways - where he was 20 points ahead of the Republican and there were no primary challenges.

Dodd raised about $9.5 Million for his Presidential campaign - http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapApp.do?cand_id=P80003387 Lieberman raised $14 million (scroll down to chart in this document - http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/presfin04.html )

So, if anything Lieberman raised more money overall in his Presidential run and he had an expensive 2006 primary challenge (which he richly deserved). So, why does Dodd have more than 4 times the AIG contributions?

This is NOT to say that there was quid por quo - but that the top line numbers suggest that it is worth looking further - you can't rule out that there is a problem.

the PAC and individual amounts.

Lacking that, it might be a good idea to do the following:
1) Separate out the Presidential candidates. AIG has offices in many states - I know they have (or had) offices in both NY and NJ in addition to CT. Obama, McCain, Bush, Kerry and Clinton all likely got contributions by people inspired by them. It is interesting to note that Hank Greenberg, a former AIG CEO was a top Bush fundraiser. Also, remember McCain took federal funding in 2008 and Obama didn't.

2) As this goes back to 1989, consider that different people have different number of races - for long term Congressmen, that could be 11 races. The detail will tell FAR more than the sum - ie if Rangel's 53,582 was a total of less than $6,000 in each race - it is hard to see this as AIG influencing him. It would be a problem if most years were zero or near zero and one year was $50,000. (To be damaging, you would also need an atypical vote at that time favoring AIG or some other favor.) Long term Senators who ran in 2008, including Kerry and Baucus, have 4 Senate elections here. (Other long term Senators have 3 races in the interval)

Looked at this way, most of the list seem reasonable. There is a correlation to being on the banking or Finance committee (At least in the Senate, I am not sure who the House people are.) Here are the ones, that look like they could be out of line,

Dodd - Dodd got over 3 times as much than Kerry - though Kerry was also on the Banking, then Finance committee and ran 4 Senate races to Dodd's 3. Kerry raised a huge amount of money in 2004 in the primary season once he was the likely nominee - he had the record on raising internet money until Obama broke it in early 2008. Another comparison is that he got over 4 times what Joe Lieberman got and they are from the same state, both had 3 Senate runs and both had very unsuccessful runs for President.

Bush - because Greenberg was one of his "Rangers" The numbers aren't that far out of line - they are for 2 Presidential races where he took matching funds in the general election. If the amounts were equal in both years, Bush got more than Kerry, even though Kerry's numbers include 4 Senate elections as well. This could be simply people voting to keep their tax cuts though.

Baucus - Baucus had 3 elections - in Montana - all very non-competitive. It might be that this financially attuned company were impressed by him and spontaneously contributed - or that AIG's PAC gave him the money.

the lone ranger. Why the outrage against Dodd alone?

It's a sort of non-issue, all hyped up by the MSM.

Imagine that.

:P

They hardly gave Shrub a wacking and are raking Dodd over the coals.

it ever was, but I sure do wish people would not take the damned bait.

but this is exactly what Rethugs want.

Dodd got significantly more money than anyone else. He got more than Bush, while Hank Greenberg was one of his Rangers (big fundraisers), where two Presidential races were there. If you remove the people who raised big money for Presidential campaigns - because far more people - working for any company - contributed to them, Dodd has almost 3 times the amount of the next highest.

The fairest comparison is with Lieberman - they are both from CT, both had very unsuccessful Presidential campaigns and 3 elections in the same state. Even though Lieberman had a primary challenge making his state runs more costly and he had better luck raising money for his Presidential race, Dodd got 4 times as much. No one ever said that Lieberman was anti-corporation.

I was with you - until I saw the numbers.