What's really going on here?

[Michael]

I'm sure all of us here are wondering what the hell is going on with the phony "outrage" going on in Congress with the AIG bonus payouts. The chattering class, also known as NBC, CNN ect are all in a huff.
"How dare these people use taxpayers money to pay out money to people who lead the company off a cliff and force taxpayers to bail them out!!" I have a couple of quick thoughts on this but I need some help here.
My information could be wrong. I'm out here, only receiving news here and there, never the complete picture.

I was against the bailout to begin with. Let the companies fail. Is that what free enterprise is all about? Companies either succed or fail baised on if the can live in the marketplace. Or did the rules change without anyone looking?

All the "outrage" should be directed at people who wrote the bill to begin with. This bill had to pass or all hell would brake loose. Did anyone bother to READ the bill before voting on it? I would understand the rush if lives were on the line. Now we have to deal with the aftermath of a bill that makes me wonder if we would have been better off just doing nothing.

I've also come across some web postings that make me wonder if the "outrage" was just a smoke screen.
It seems the house passed the "Give Act of 2009". This would give the govt power to create a new govt agency that would employ people (250,000??) to respond as "necessary" to the needs of the govt. Do we really need another govt dept at a time when money is tight? We already have great govt dept such as FEMA and Homeland Security, can we really afford any more help from the govt?

Let me know if I'm correct or should I just shut up and continue to shop till my credit is gone.

[Michael]

An update-check out Sen. DeMitt's comments that are posted on the website Human Events. Someone has come out against the Give Act. He makes a good case for defeating this bill.
Is anyone listening>

[Valerie Rumer]

no, we canNOT afford more government help.
More government help is exactly what is going to cause immeasurable problems for people like us who are labeled the new american insurgents just because we may have Googled self-sufficiency, use the word constitution and support third parties (yeah, totally not related to this conversation.. sorta)!!!!

This whole situation is about to come to a head and I fear it won't be pleasant for us!

[Richard (L-Resigned)]

First let me say I'm glad to see someone else mentioning the GIVE Act. The little attention by libertarians to this Act has had me asking myself "what's going on here". G.I.V.E is the mandatory National Service Act that we've all been warning the public about for more than a year. Yet it went through without so much as a whisper of libertarian opposition let alone any kind of concerted attempt to try and prevent it. If the suspicions of a "smoke screen" is true, then it certainly worked. Which brings me to a point I've been regularly trying to make with Lp reformers/libertarian-conservatives.

Consistency, Consistency, Consistency!!!

I've been reading the comments and discussions over AIG that's taking place on media websites, political groups/blogs/forums. Many "libertarians" are allowing themselves to be lured by the statists into debates over the "details" as well as those "bizarre hypothetical scenarios" that Kent McManigal mentioned in a recent article I quoted in my blog yesterday. Essentially these libertarians allowed themselves to be distracted thereby easily "smoke screened".

As Kent said in his article "authoritarians are frightened" by our consistency. It's our greatest weapon against them. Our shield is a 400 year old rock solid philosophical principle. Our sword is the torch of consistency that illuminates their inconsistency and forked-tongue double standard hypocrisy. Distraction from the core of an issue is the only weapon they have. They will lure you into the dark wilderness of details irrelevant to the bottom-line principle. They want to make the debate more complicated than it actually is. Libertarians must resist the temptation to "show off" over petty details.

I've been kicking peoples ass on this bonus-gate issue with a single simple question. First I allow them to chose the word that describes the "wrongness" of the bonuses ie "disgusting", "immoral", "atrocious", "criminal" etc. For the sake of this discussion we'll use the word "immoral". I simpley ask - How, or why, is it immoral for a business to reward it's employees for failing performance, but it's not immoral for YOU or a representative acting on your behalf, to reward a business for failing performance? I usually follow up with the all illuminating question Don't you think that's a little inconsistent/ double standard / hypocritical?

The response I usually get is "But it's not their money" to which I respond Yes it is their money. You GAVE it to them. A representative who acts on your behalf took out a loan in your name, on your credit, and gave it all away to his friends, leaving you on the hook to repay the loan plus interest. Now you're pissed off at the people your representative gave the money to, when you should be pissed off at your representative. DONE! Nothing more needs said. You've iluminated the truth. Move on. Anything else is irrelevant details that will distract you from other battles that need fought. Such as the GIVE Act.