Saturday, March 21, 2009

AIG Scandal May Be Last Straw for Chris Dodd's Career

HARTFORD, Conn. – Howard Rosenblatt voted for U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd five years ago. He won't do that again.

"It's time for Chris to resign," said the 62-year-old owner of Rosenblatt's department store in Naugatuck, Conn., a working-class borough of more than 30,000. "He sits on the Senate banking commission, and he had his hands on funny money loans."

Earl Reilly, a 59-year-old factory worker from Naugatuck, shares Rosenblatt's anger with the state's senior senator.

"Don't get me started on Dodd," he said. "He's been doing the job too long, and he's got a hole in his canoe and it's sinking."

While Dodd, 64, has only recently found himself in the nation's political hot seat because of his role in the AIG bonus debacle, it has become clear that his issues with voters back home have been festering for two years. The AIG controversy appears to have exacerbated his popularity problems. ....

Cops mowed down by rules of engagement - die first, shoot later...

by Jaxon Van Derbeken & Carolyn Jones

Four Oakland police officers were shot and critically wounded this afternoon and a suspect killed after a car stop went bad.

Two of the officers were gunned down about 1:15 p.m. after they pulled over a car in the 7400 block of MacArthur Boulevard, not far from the Eastmont Town Center. Two other officers were shot two hours later when a SWAT team went after the suspect, who had barricaded himself in an apartment building at Hillside Street and 74th Avenue.

The suspect, who has not been identified, shot at the officers, who "returned fire in defense of their lives," said Officer Jeff Thomason, a department spokesman. The suspect, whom police believe was acting alone, was killed.

"We've received four officers in the trauma center," said Patricia VanHook, a Highland Hospital spokeswoman who said no other information was available.

About 100 officers were gathered outside the entrance to the hospital's emergency room, waiting desperately for information about their wounded friends and colleagues. Some of them were wearing SWAT gear, while others were wearing baseball jerseys after having raced from a game.

While the Alameda County coroner was called to the hospital in response to the shooting, information could be slow in coming, Thomason said.

"This is a highly sensitive situation that we're dealing with right now," he said. "We're still trying to notify family members that their family members were hurt."

First reports of the incident came from a 911 call at 1:16 p.m., reporting that two officers had been shot, possibly with an assault-type rifle. The suspect fled from the scene, sparking a huge manhunt that involved officers from at least five different law enforcement agencies.

Another 911 call reportedly told police that the suspect was in an apartment building just blocks from the original shooting. Officers went to the building and went into the building, where the final shootings took place.

Oakland police opened a substation at the Eastmont Mall in 1992, responding to neighborhood complaints about crime and violence in the area. But the substation, built in an old tire shop, did not end the neighborhood's problems.

In 1996, a rowdy rap concert in the mall turned into a melee, with a crowd lobbing bottles and rocks at police, cars and buses. Some of the concert-goers started racing their cars up and down the streets, and two men died after their car crashed through the fence of a nearby school playground.

In 1999, an Oakland police technician was shot at outside the police substation. In 2002, Michelle Horton of San Leandro was shot and killed as she drove on Bancroft Avenue near the mall.

Chronicle staff writers David R. Baker and John Wildermuth contributed to this report

Is this the end of America?

U.S. law-making is riddled with slapdash, incompetence and gamesmanship

By Terence Corcoran

Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U.S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.

As an aghast world — from China to Chicago and Chihuahua — watches, the circus-like U.S. political system seems to be declining into near chaos. Through it all, stock and financial markets are paralyzed. The more the policy regime does, the worse the outlook gets. The multi-ringed spectacle raises a disturbing question in many minds: Is this the end of America?

Probably not, if only because there are good reasons for optimism.

We the People Stimulus

(Compiler's note: Must read - listen)

This audio will be heard more & more -- it is time that "We the People" of these United States present a stimulus of our own to our current and soon to be past elected government leaders. The gov't has long forgotten that they work for us!

Thanks for listening.
Bob Anderson

Bankruptcy, Not Bailout

by Newt Gingrich

"Outrage" is the word on everyone’s lips to describe the fat bonuses being paid with taxpayer funds to the failed executives at AIG -- and it is an outrage.
It’s an outrage that the American people are being asked to pay for the bad behavior of people who should have known better, be they reckless traders on Wall Street or reckless borrowers on Main Street.
But the cure for our outrage is not merely, as President Obama is demanding, that AIG be prevented from paying its executives. The $165 million in planned bonuses -- as manifestly undeserved as it is -- is chicken feed compared to the $170 billion in taxpayer funds AIG has received so far.
Nor is it acceptable to ask Americans to keep throwing their tax dollars at failed companies and their leaders.
The answer is an old fashioned one: AIG should choose between receivership or bankruptcy. It should not be allowed to choose more bailouts from the taxpayer.
Restore the Rule of Law: Allow Failing Corporations to go Bankrupt
Under U.S. law, Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows a company to reorganize. Chapter 7 allows a company to dissolve itself.
The choices for AIG, as both an insurance and non-insurance company, are more complicated, but ultimately boil down to the same options. And for other companies either receiving or looking to receive a bailout from the taxpayers, the option should instead be bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy would send a needed message to U.S. investors: Don’t assume the government will bail you out when you do something stupid.
And most importantly, bankruptcy would replace the rule of politicians over U.S. financial institutions with the rule of law.
Geithner Didn’t Inherit the Policy of Throwing Billions at Failing Companies -- He Helped Create It
Because when it comes to Washington’s handling of the financial crisis, so far we’ve had the rule of politicians, not the rule of law.
Most prominent among the politicians in question is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
As Americans’ level of outraged has risen, so has the level of finger pointing by Geithner and others for the mess we’re in.
But Treasury Secretary Geithner is disingenuous at best and untruthful at worst when he says that he “inherited the worst fiscal situation in American history.”
The truth is that Secretary Geithner didn’t inherit the policy of throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at failing companies -- he helped create it.
Even before he was Treasury Secretary -- when he was still head of the New York Federal Reserve -- Geithner was so deeply involved in the government’s bail out of Bear Stearns, its take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and its bailout of AIG that this was the Washington Post’s headline from September 19, 2008:
“In the Crucible of Crisis, Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner Forge a Committee of Three”
The first meeting of the first bailout -- of Bear Sterns -- was held in Geithner’s office. And the first meeting of what has become a $170 billion bailout of AIG was held -- where else? In Geithner’s New York Fed office.
Why Not Bankruptcy for AIG? Because Wall Street Wouldn’t Have Done As Well
From the outset, Geithner was central to the developing policy of having the taxpayers bail out ailing financial institutions like AIG rather then allow them to go bankrupt. And for months now, we’ve been told that these bailouts were necessary to avoid a wider, cataclysmic, financial meltdown.
But now it’s clear that other, less noble, considerations were at play.
As the Wall Street Journal editorialized yesterday, the real outrage over the AIG bailout isn’t executive bonuses, it’s that billions in taxpayer funds intended for AIG have been passed through to benefit foreign banks and Wall Street behemoths like Goldman Sachs.
And as former AIG CEO Hank Greenburg testified last October, these financial institutions wouldn’t have faired as well if AIG had filed for bankruptcy protection rather than do what it did, which was to negotiate a bailout with Timothy Geithner’s New York Federal Reserve.
Here’s how Greenburg put it:
“Although AIG stockholders could have fared better if the company had filed for bankruptcy protection, other stakeholders -- like AIG’s Wall Street counterparties in swaps and other transactions -- would have fared worse.”
For the Cost of Bailing Out AIG, Every American Household Could Have Free Electricity For a Year
So now everyone is outraged, and rightly so. But the lavish executive bonuses being paid with taxpayer funds are just the beginning of the story.
So far, the American taxpayers are on the hook for $170 billion to AIG -- that’s an astounding $1,224 per taxpayer.
What else could we have done with all this money?
$170 billion would pay for more than doubling the Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers.
$170 billion would pay for a four-year education at a public university for more then two million Americans.
$170 billion would cover the electricity bill of every household in America for an entire year.
When You Reward Failure, All You Get is More Failure
What Washington should learn from all this outrage is to return to the common sense that should have guided it all along: When you reward failure, all you get it more failure.
A company that needs a $170 billion taxpayer bailout is a failed company. The executives that led that company are failed executives. But instead of having to face the consequences of their failure responsibly through bankruptcy or receivership, AIG and its Wall Street “counterparties” are being rewarded for their recklessness -- with our money.
Thanks to the Bush-Obama-Geithner policy of bailing out failing companies, we now have the worst of all possible scenarios: A taxpayer subsidized, government supervised private company; an unsustainable public/private hybrid that is too public to make its own decisions and too private to be responsible to the taxpayers that are keeping it alive.
Outrages like the fat cat bonuses currently dominating the headlines will only continue as long as the rule of politicians supplants the rule of law on Wall Street.
Congress should rethink this entire process. The dangers of a domino-like financial meltdown are real. But so, too, is the danger that the outrage of the American people will reach the point that we no longer trust the dire warnings -- or the righteous indignation -- coming from Washington.

Mexican drug wars now worse than Iraq

Mexican drug cartels are now as heavily armed as America’s enemies during the Iraq war and are extending their bloody conflict into the United States, say security experts.

By Tom Leonard in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Law enforcement agencies in American cities close to the border with Mexico — including San Diego in California, and El Paso in Texas — are “gearing up” for street confrontations with the drug gangs, which are armed with rockets and grenades and have brought death and chaos south of the border.

The confidence of the cartel chiefs has increased so much that they are moving to affluent neighbourhoods in America to kidnap Mexican businessmen and smuggle them across the border to be ransomed, a private security consultant told The Daily Telegraph.

Van Bethea, the operations director for the Steele Foundation, an American private security company that has protected foreign businessmen in Mexico as well as Iraq, said the two countries were now comparable in terms of the potential danger.

“Quite frankly, in Mexico you can’t be armed enough,” said Mr Bethea. “The dynamic of this combat is approaching the early days of the Iraq war. The cartels’ men are well trained, disciplined and are armed with the latest weaponry, including armour-piercing bullets, rocket-launchers and grenades.”

His claims were backed by Congressmen in Washington, who have said money and guns smuggled from the US were fuelling violence that was now creeping over the border.

In Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican border city of 1.5 million people, five deaths a day in January and February were attributed to drug violence.

But the recent arrival of more than 10,000 troops and federal agents has succeeded in quelling much of the violence. Soldiers have disarmed and replaced a local police force, many of whose members were believed to have been working for the cartels.

But despite the success in Ciudad Juarez, officials estimate that the Mexican cartels are already established in 230 American cities. The gangs have been blamed for killings as far afield as Anchorate, Alaska, and Atlanta, Georgia, as well as 366 kidnappings in Phoenix, Arizona, last year alone.

Mr Medea said many Western businesses, including British companies, had invested heavily in the Mexican factories and were unable to give up doing business in the country easily.

The cartels’ ability to smuggle both guns and kidnap victims into Mexico has been facilitated by lax US border controls, although the Americans are starting to tighten up.

Janet Napolitano, the US homeland security secretary, has admitted that “carloads of cash and mega-weapons” were being transported out of America and into Mexico to fuel the fighting.

President Barack Obama will discuss the Mexican drug violence when he meets Felipe Calderón, the country’s president, in Mexico next month.

Supremes read Kansas blog?

from WorldNetDaily

A Kansas blogger who identifies herself as msplaceddemocrat.com and writes on a wide range of topics recently was surprised to find through her monitoring software that someone from the U.S. Supreme Court was reading her site, which routinely gets several hundred visits per day.

Then she tracked the page to her recent commentary about Orly Taitz, the California lawyer who is pursuing a number of challenges to President Obama's eligibility to be president.

Her commentary included Taitz' recent interviews, on which WND has reported, with Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts.

The blogger, Nancy Armstrong, had blogged:

"Dr. Orly Taitz, both a lawyer and naturalized citizen, has personally taken on the issue of Obama's eligibility. There is nothing wrong with her questioning this issue because Obama has literally hidden every evidence of his past. What has he hidden? All school records, passport records, employment records (forget his stupid story about ice cream and an ice cream shop….I believe it is another one of Obama's lies.) and his REAL birth certificate.

"Dr. Orly Taitz wouldn't even have to question anything if Obama was transparent about his life, something he continues to fight with law firms all over the country. Transparency would end all issues, but we will never see that from Obama…," the blogger continued.

"Dr. Taitz has been racing across the country, often times missing her three sons, to meet with Supremes….particularly Scalia and Roberts to further her 'quo warranto' case now at the door of the Supreme Court."

The screen view is posted here:


Screen shot of Kansas blog visitor, IP address 209.144.137.1, listed as the U.S. Supreme Court

Armstrong told WND she was writing about the issue because a friend asked her to do it.

"I just happened to go in and check. I brought my husband in right away. He was dumbfounded. There was the Supreme Court," she said. "It did surprise me.

"It may be that [Taitz] has checkmated the Supreme Court .... which means they are trying to dispense with her and her case," she said.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, some suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

The only statement Obama officials have made to WND about the claims is that all such allegations are "garbage."

Taitz to FBI: Investigate 'tampering' at Supremes

(Compiler's note: A must read - we will be hearing more about this in days to come. Even the main-stream media will eventually have to pick this up and report on it.)

By Bob Unruh

A California attorney battling on a number of fronts to obtain documentation of Barack Obama's eligibility to be president is asking the FBI and U.S. Secret Service to investigate suspected "tampering" at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Orly Taitz, who is pursuing nearly half a dozen causes through her Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, says the issue of Obama's eligibility to meet the Constitution's demand for a "natural born" president has been before the Supreme Court at least four times.

But she wonders whether the justices actually were given the pleadings to review.

"I believe … that there was tampering with documents and records by employees of the Supreme Court and the justices never saw those briefs," she alleges in a letter to the FBI's Robert Mueller, the Secret Service's Mark Sullivan and Attorney General Eric Holder.

"Three hundred five million American citizens … need to know whether a foreign national is usurping the position of the president and the commander in chief," she wrote.

Taitz raises questions about "forgery of court records, tampering with court records, cyber crime, erasing of court records from the docket, fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and other related crimes."

Specifically, she points to the handling of her own case, Lightfoot v. Bowen, which was submitted to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. Although it was scheduled for a conference, no hearing ever was held.

Join one third of a million people who are seeking the truth on whether Obama meets the Constitution's "natural born" citizenship clause.

Taitz notes that references to the case were erased from the docket of the Supreme Court on Jan. 21, shortly after Obama, the defendant, met with eight of the nine justices behind closed doors.

It happened just two days before her case was scheduled to be reviewed in conference.

Secondly, Taitz notes that in her conversation with Justice Antonin Scalia at a book-signing in Los Angeles several weeks ago, he appeared to have no knowledge of the cases that had been submitted.

She said she mentioned her case and those brought by Cort Wrotnowski, Philip Berg and Leo Donofrio.

"In the presence of several attorneys, law students and Secret Service agents Justice Scalia kept saying that he didn't know anything … even though all of the plaintiffs have received notification that all of those cases were reviewed by all nine justices," she said.

Taitz said she's also concerned that the Supreme Court docket was somehow modified.

"Did somebody from outside break and enter into the computer system of the Supreme Court or was it done by one of the overzealous employees who wanted to keep Obama in the White House?" she asked.

"I demand to see the printout of entries of both internal docket seen by justices and the external docket seen by the public to verify if those were identical at all times, particularly between January 20th and January 23rd," she said.

She also raised the possibility that justices' signatures may have been "stamped" on documentation.


U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts

Her allegations, she said, were part of what she submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts when she met him at the University of Idaho a week ago.

"Due to the … great urgency of the matter in relation to the national security of the United States … I demand immediate investigation of this matter," Taitz wrote.

Taitz also is developing a Quo Warranto case that has been submitted to Holder.

Essentially, the case demands to know what authority Obama is using to act as president. An online constitutional resource says Quo Warranto "affords the only judicial remedy for violations of the Constitution by public officials and agents."

As WND reported, Taitz already has submitted a motion to the Supreme Court for re-hearing of Lightfoot v. Bowen, a case she is working on through Defend Our Freedoms alleging some of her documentation may have been withheld from the justices by a court clerk.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, some suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Although Obama officials have told WND all such allegations are "garbage," here is a partial listing and status update for some of the cases over Obama's eligibility:

  • New Jersey attorney Mario Apuzzo has filed a case on behalf of Charles Kerchner and others alleging Congress didn't properly ascertain that Obama is qualified to hold the office of president.

  • Pennsylvania Democrat Philip Berg has three cases pending, including Berg vs. Obama in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a separate Berg vs. Obama which is under seal at the U.S. District Court level and Hollister vs. Soetoro a/k/a Obama, (now dismissed) brought on behalf of a retired military member who could be facing recall to active duty by Obama.

  • Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.

  • Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut's secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.

  • Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes headlines a list of people filing a suit in California, in a case handled by the United States Justice Foundation, that asks the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office. The case was dismissed by Judge Michael P. Kenny.

  • Chicago attorney Andy Martin sought legal action requiring Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle to release Obama's vital statistics record. The case was dismissed by Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Bert Ayabe.

  • Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama's eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama's citizenship. His case was denied.

  • In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.

  • Also in Ohio, there was the Greenberg v. Brunner case which ended when the judge threatened to assess all case costs against the plaintiff.

  • In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama's citizenship. The case was denied.

  • In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama's birth certificate. His request for an injunction against Georgia's secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.

  • California attorney Orly Taitz has brought a case, Lightfoot vs. Bowen, on behalf of Gail Lightfoot, the vice presidential candidate on the ballot with Ron Paul, four electors and two registered voters.

In addition, other cases cited on the RightSideofLife blog as raising questions about Obama's eligibility include:

  • In Texas, Darrel Hunter vs. Obama later was dismissed.

  • In Ohio, Gordon Stamper vs. U.S. later was dismissed.

  • In Texas, Brockhausen vs. Andrade.

  • In Washington, L. Charles Cohen vs. Obama.

  • In Hawaii, Keyes vs. Lingle, dismissed.

Pres. Obama Pulls Rug Out From Under Ex-Convict Pleading for a Job

By Roy Beck

Today's news reports on Pres. Obama's visit to California include a touching interaction with an ex-convict who has lost his job. But his comments about making sure that illegal aliens keep THEIR jobs illustrates the common occurrence of really smart people at the top of our government who just don't get it. They don't understand that there are a limited number of U.S. jobs and that when you fill those jobs with foreign workers (including illegal ones) American workers lose out. Look at what happened . . .

This is from Scott Wilson's report on Mr. Obama's visit in southern California in the March 19 edition of the Washington Post:

In one exchange, a man who said he was a convicted felon, thanked Obama for listening to him, then told him he had recently been laid off from Toyota after 13 years on the job.

'What am I going to do?' he asked.

After a pause, Obama told him, 'You have made amends for your past mistakes, you are rehabilitated, and you have proven yourself in the job market. Based on what you are telling,' the President said, 'what you are facing has less to do with the fact that you are a felon, than that the job market is really tight right now.'

This is the point you want the President to say that he'll do everything he can to help people like the questioner to be able to find a job later this year.

But the very next paragraph in the Post said that Mr. Obama pledged the opposite:

Obama pledged to work for comprehensive immigration reform but said it 'would not be a free ride' for those here illegally. He said successful reform would entail better control of the border -- an issue he said he intends to work on with President Felipe Calderon of Mexico in a visit there next month -- and a process that would allow 'those who have been here for a long time to come out of the shadow' and become citizens.

Studies show that most ex-convicts who have been released from prison are less-educated, the very same characteristic shared by most illegal aliens. The estimated 7 million illegal aliens who are working are holding jobs that are best suited for the hundreds of thousands of Americans being released from prisons.

We went through this same intellectual disconnect with Pres. Bush. Remember his grandiose State of the Union address in which he announced a program to ensure that people being released from prisons would find jobs so they can turn their lives around?

The problem was that Mr. Bush insisted on importing around 140,000 foreign workers a month in addition to enticing other foreign workers to come here illegally to take the jobs that the ex-cons needed. Not surprisingly, Mr. Bush's program for ex-cons never really took hold.

Well, we have a new President with the same set of blinders. And we have a news media that don't notice the disconnect, either.

I don't see any evidence that anybody thought it was strange that Pres. Obama could show such concern and compassion for the recently unemployed ex-con and then say that he intends to keep as many jobs tied up with illegal foreign workers as possible.

And now this morning, Fox News is reporting from sources inside DHS that worksite raids have for all practical purposes been suspended.

Very strange. The raids have been opening up jobs for unemployed Americans, primarily those at the bottom of the economic ladder. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that every job opened by driving out an illegal alien was quickly filled by a legal worker and that wages went up for all workers at those worksites after the raids.

Why would Pres. Obama want to stop helping American workers like that?

The answer is that political pandering to the radical extreme of his ideological base blinds him to even considering that illegal immigration has anything to do with unemployed Americans.

Banker fury over tax ‘witch-hunt’

Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.

There were fears that the backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m in bonuses to executives responsible for losses that forced a $170bn taxpayer-funded rescue would have devastating consequences for the largest banks.

“Finance is one of America’s great industries, and they’re destroying it,” said one banker at a firm that has accepted public money. “This happened out of haste and anger over AIG, but we’re not like AIG.” ....