Senator Chris Dodd

This guy needs to resign.  He’s a failure and a crook.

Last year, he was caught up in a scandal when it was discovered he refinanced into a “VIP” mortgage loan program from Countrywide:

According to company documents and emails, the V.I.P.’s received better deals than those available to ordinary borrowers. Home-loan customers can reduce their interest rates by paying “points”—one point equals 1 percent of the loan’s value. For V.I.P.’s, Countrywide often waived at least half a point and eliminated fees amounting to hundreds of dollars for underwriting, processing and document preparation. If interest rates fell while a V.I.P. loan was pending, Countrywide provided a free “float-down” to the lower rate, eschewing its usual charge of half a point. Some V.I.P.’s who bought or refinanced investment properties were often given the lower interest rate associated with primary residences.

He got this while he was on the Senate banking and finance committees.  He’s now the chairman of the banking committee.  Conflict of interest?  Nah!  He’s a Senator, they don’t ever let a little thing like campaign contributions color their judgment, right.  He was also one of the shitstains who received the most campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie.  Apparently he was paid to look the other way as those government-sponsored companies were run into the ground while the Democratically-appointed executives at those companies looted the place.

Anyway, that’s old news.  Today’s news:

Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on Monday night floated the idea of taxing American International Group bonus recipients so the government could recoup the $450 million the company is paying to employees in its financial products unit. Within hours, the idea spread to both houses of Congress, with lawmakers proposing an AIG bonus tax.

While the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd unexpectedly added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,” which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax. The amendment is in the final version and is law.

So last month, he specifically added an amendment to the stimulus stating that the company could give bonuses to its executives, even though it received bailout money.  Huh?  OK, whatever.  But now that its been blown up in the media and even the president’s teleprompter is involved, he wants to pass a tax to specifically confiscate that contractually obligated bonus money that was legally distributed by a private organization to its employees.  Got that?  He wants to steal private money from people who received it completely legally from a corporation with a legal obligation to pay them that money.  But a month ago, he was specifically supportive of making sure they got that money.

Why did he include the exemption in the first place?  According to the story:

1. Sen. Dodd was AIG’s largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle with $103,100, according to opensecrets.org.

2. One of AIG Financial Products’ largest offices is based in Connecticut.

Well would you look at that.  AIG contributes generously to Dodd’s campaigns, and a large number of these powerful, influential, super-wealthy people live in his state.  Just another Democrat, looking out for the little guy.  His self-serving corruption, his utter lack of principles, and his mismanagement of the Senate’s role in monitoring and regulating government’s own puppet corporations (Fannie and Freddie) are a disgrace, and he should resign or be removed from office.