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CT Working Families Party plans bus tour of AIG Exec homes

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Another NY Times article was brought to my attention today about the anger being directed at AIG executives who got bonuses.

Mr. Haas walked on, his pink shirt a burst of color on a slate-gray afternoon. The words came haltingly. "You have to understand,” he said, “there are kids involved, there have been death threats. …" His voice trailed off. It looked as if he was fighting back tears.

"I didn’t have anything to do with those credit problems,” said Mr. Haas, 47. “I told Mr. Liddy” — Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G., the insurance giant — “I would rescind my retention contract.”

He ended the conversation with a request: “Leave my neighbors alone.”

Alright, so there is a limit to the expression of contempt and anger for AIG that one can show . Threats of violence aren’t really what I’d be condoning. Yet the world has to understand that the anger is justified.

Jean Wieson, who has lived down the block for 24 years, had stopped her car in front of Mr. Haas’s house before he arrived home. She was angry about the millions of dollars in bonuses paid to its executives, the credit-default swaps that brought American International Group to its knees, the $170 billion the federal government has spent to prop it up. "It makes me absolutely sick," she said. "It’s despicable. It’s disgusting what these people have done. They should be forced to give every cent back."

There are some that still don’t get it though.

One A.I.G. executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared the consequences of identifying himself, said many workers felt demonized and betrayed. “It is as bad if not worse than McCarthyism,” he said. Everyone has sacrificed the employees of A.I.G.’s financial products division, he said, “for their own political agenda.”

The public’s anger, he said, “is coming from bad facts as a result of someone else’s agenda — or just bad facts period.” Instead, he said, the so-called bonuses were in fact just payments that had been promised long ago to workers, including technical and administrative assistants.

I don’t think people are being misled at all. These executives played a major role in the disaster that is now AIG. This is reinforced by one of the executives doing the right thing.

The largest single bonus check, for $6.4 million, went to Douglas L. Poling, an executive vice president for energy and infrastructure investments. Mark Herr, an A.I.G. spokesman, said Mr. Poling had told him he was returning the bonus “because he thought it was the correct thing to do.”

And as for the CT Working Families Party they’re doing something interesting.

And there may be more protests. The Connecticut Working Families party, which has support from organized labor, is planning a bus tour of A.I.G. executives’ homes on Saturday, with a stop at the company’s Wilton office.

“We’re going to be peaceful and lawful in everything we do,” said Jon Green, the director of Connecticut Working Families. “I know there’s a lot of anger and a lot of rage about what’s happened. We’re not looking to foment that unnecessarily, but what we want to do is give folks in Bridgeport and Hartford and other parts of Connecticut who are struggling and losing their homes and their jobs and their health insurance an opportunity to see what kinds of lifestyle billions of dollars in credit-default swaps can buy.”

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Written by Jason Gooljar

March 20th, 2009 at 10:40 am

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  • Jack

    Maybe some of us who are not part of the union thug mentality will pay a visit to Jon Greens house? How would you like that Jon? How would you explain to your wife and children that they shouldn’t be afraid? Americans are tired of the threats often made by unions and we will act accordingly.

  • Jason Gooljar

    That’s right…but obviously Americans are not tired of being smacked around by AIG and other financial institutions. Furthermore, these people associated with Mr. Green are Americans too. I’m taking the flag back from you it’s not yours only.

  • Pingback: Video of CT Working Families Party at AIG Exec homes at Jason Gooljar: The Working Families Party Man — Kill the Corporation

  • Andrew Cole

    Mr Green,
    You appear to be simply an opportunist looking for self promotion. Your moronic party and views will end sooner than you think. Given your poor intellect you are clearly at the bottom of the food chain- no wonder you are calling for equality of income…that would suit a loser like you just fine. What a leftist, moron you are.

    Mr Cole (a non-banker, just someone who believes in free enterprise, hard work and rewards for those that make it)

  • Jason Gooljar

    I’m not Mr. Green. I will say that I disagree with your obvious agreement on social Darwinism Mr. Cole. I’m tired of this so called pull yourself up by your bootstraps – trickle down conservative junk. The world does not work like that. We are all in this together. People like those AIG execs are the greedy ones (although most of them have decided to return their bonuses so there might be hope). There are people working hard who are being done an injustice by these AIG executives. There are people working hard while executives at Enron made money by doing nothing.