Monday, November 17, 2008

Your Tax Dollars at Work? $700 Billion Bailout Funds Subsidizing Corporate Junkets

On September 16, the Bush administration granted ailing insurance giant AIG a bailout that has since swelled to $150 billion, and according to Kamelia Angelova at the Business Sheet, this is what we as taxpayers get in return:

AIG company execs dropped modest $440,000 to recuperate at this luxury resort - the St. Regis in Monarch Beach, Calif. - from 22-27 September.


Photo credits: www.businesssheet.alleyinsider.com

And how's this for your taxpayer dollars at work: AIG ran up a 23 grand-plus tab for spa treatments at that Monarch Beach resort:



And here's a copy of the invoice that John and Jane Taxpayer has been saddled with:



While wrapping up its first post-bailout retreat and canceling a second one at the exclusive $400-a-night Ritz-Carlton in California's Half Moon Bay to save face, 50 AIG staff members did manage to squeeze in a $500,000 getaway to the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas during Sept. 28-30.



And if the shennanigans at AIG weren't enough to make your chest hairs stand on end, top brokers of Wachovia Corp jumped on the bailout-retreat bandwagon...on an all-expenses-paid cruise liner to the Greek Isles on Oct. 10, while taxpayers were possibly picking up the tab for the billion-dollars bad loans made by the ailing bank.



And the whole damned thing is spreading worldwide like a viral epidemic. Case in point: Halifax/Bank of Scotland, after receiving nearly $18 billion in public assistance, threw a post-bailout gala at the posh, five-star Prestonfield Hotel, running up a $516,000 bill.



Just when you thought the follies concerning Tyco International and its disgraced CEO Dennis Kozlowski (including the $6,000 shower curtains and the extravagant birthday bash he threw for his then-wife Karen, replete with the ice sculpture of the Statue of David urinating Stolichnaya vodka) were behind us, this disclosure takes the cake.

Perhaps some people just don't have the capacity to feel any shame anymore.

To paraphrase Gloria Steimen, not only does the truth set you free, it also pisses you off.

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