AIG was bailed out by the American people but this fellow feels he can still put on a show.

According to numerous news reports, Benmosche has done everything from requesting corporate jets for personal use to saying he was prepared to tell Congress to "stick it where the sun don’t shine."

"We call that chutzpah," said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif. "He’s determined that the federal government will continue to shovel money at him, his counterparties and shareholders. But why would we allow that?"

AIG has $182 billion in government bailout funds available to it, of which it has already borrowed $120.7 billion.

I wonder if this is how he acts with his family telling his wife and kids to “stick it where the sun don’t shine.” What makes him think he can get away with this publicly after AIG was bailed out?

From Corporate Accountability International via Bloomberg News Service:

Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the former chief executive officer of American International Group Inc., lied repeatedly at a trial over whether his private company looted $4.3 billion, an AIG lawyer told jurors today.

AIG accuses Greenberg’s Starr International Co., or SICO, of breaching an unwritten trust to fund a deferred-compensation plan for AIG employees. SICO illegally converted the proceeds of AIG shares it sold after Greenberg’s firing in March 2005, AIG lawyer Ted Wells said in federal court in New York.

Wells cited “overwhelming” evidence that SICO began holding AIG shares in 1970 for a retirement plan to benefit AIG employees. Greenberg was enraged after his ouster, and SICO fabricated documents to show the shares benefited charity, not AIG, Wells said. Greenberg also lied to jurors about videotaped speeches in which he discussed the disputed shares, Wells said.

“He fabricated evidence,” Wells said in closing arguments at a civil trial that began June 15. “He lied from the witness stand. What he told you is not credible evidence. Mr. Greenberg gave you false testimony repeatedly.”

Why am I not surprised?

They are ratcheting up shareholder activism when it is needed most. They’ve started this fundraising drive to raise ten thousand dollars so they can go to the upcoming annual shareholder meetings of these corporations and directly challenge them.

I think it’s great that they filmed their bus trip from last weekend and put it up on the web.

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.”

I actually heard Rachel Maddow bring this up on her show this evening. Then I read about it in the Center for Media and Democracy’s email newsletter. AIG is on its fourth tax payer bailout and has retained the services of four PR corporations. This is rather pathetic because while they say they need the bailout money to function, they can still afford to pay these PR people.

While bailout recipients have been criticized for planning lavish retreats (which AIG has done repeatedly), using private jets and retaining lobbying firms, "some taxpayers and members of Congress could view public relations as unnecessary expenses," warns the New York Times. AIG "may legitimately need help talking to the crowds of journalists, regulators, legislators and investors," but the insurance giant has "given little clarity on taxpayer losses to date, or provided much communication directed towards taxpayers at all."

Then there’s the issue about one of the PR groups AIG has hired, Burson-Marsteller, where Maddow actually brought out the truth on who they represent on a previous show.

Let’s see representing corporations like Blackwater, Union Carbide (Bhopal disaster), and Phillip Morris can’t be good. Looks like bad PR for the PR flacks. “When evil needs public relations, evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed dial.” Rachel Maddow goes on to say “that’s why its so creepy that Hillary Clinton’s pollster and chief strategist in her presidential campaign was Mark Penn.” He’s the CEO of Burson-Marsteller.