Who has Congress And Obama Been Beating Up On?

Meet Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group financial products unit. He is also a private citizen who has had enough of being the whipping boy of a bunch of political thugs.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company – during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 – we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

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Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats – even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

Congress passed the law that required AIG to honor the contracts it had with people like DeSantis. Barack Obama signed it into law. Then they and the press spent weeks screaming, hollering, threatening and vilifying the recipients of the contracted payments. In other words, the spent the time diverting attention from their own behavior.

Cuomo and Blumenthal have used their positions to run nothing less than an extortion plot against private citizens. “Give the money to us or we’ll publish your names” is extortion.

When AIG finally collapses, (and, at this point I’m guessing it will) it will be because of these political thugs. They will have succeeded in driving away the very people they need to perform an orderly wind-down of the company.

The thugs will, of course, blame the private citizens. But those paying attention here will know who really caused it.