Alright everybody, good night, and good luck.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I hope you did too.

Well, I guess I shouldn't be opposed to people abusing welfare either, since that's such a small tax payer expense relative to other government spending.

And honestly, I feel a better analogy is giving a homeless guy $10000 to get off his feet and off the street and the first thing he does with it is spend $10 on booze. Hey, he might use the other $9990 to clean up and fix his problems, but so far it isn't looking good.

This is what I know, Impala: Bonuses were paid out at AIG and in the sum of $165 million. That amount was divied up amongst its employees depending on their contracts. That's all the details anybody needs.

So I ask again, should AIG have paid out bonuses? Do you think that is irresponsible? Should AIG consider our tax dollars as cash in their pocket or should they have treated it as a loan?

The american people have cause to be outraged. And not just at AIG.

Impala, you idiot. EVERYONE got a bonus. Not just the executives. The question should be this: Would they have paid out a bonus if they got a multi billion dollar loan?

NO.

Now, stop trying to play the "well you guys don't know the details" bullshit and actually put forth an argument.

I confirmed AIG pays out bonuses based on company performance.

Source: My mother-in-law who has worked as a computer scientist for AIG for 10+ years.

I laughed when you started explaining to me what a "bonus" was.

For you non-corporate types, I will let you in on a little secret: Bonuses are typically paid out based on company performance. If your company doesn't meet its financial goals, no one gets bonuses. Now while I do not know how AIG pays out its bonuses, it is a pretty good bet that they pay out bonuses based on company performance like most other giant coorporations. Because in large coorporations, individual performance is very difficult to measure since so many people are involved, the general policy is to simply award everyone for a good overall company performance, rather than try to reward individuals, since that is prone to corruption and misappropriation of funds.

Now to my point. What I am infuriated about is not about the bonuses, rather that they consider the bailout as income (since they paid out bonuses to their employees). We can equate that to your 20 something spoiled brats who get themselves into a lot of financial trouble and then ask mommy and daddy for some cash. And instead of learning from their mistake, they treat parental help as a source of income and never try to fix their financial situation, but instead, keep partying and rely on that gift over and over again. I am mostly afraid that AIG will not mature from this experience. Their actions display to me that they are the spoiled brat, and instead of taking actions to slim down, become efficient, and work through this, they are taking our money and celebrating as if AIG is doing great! And when they mess up again, then what? Another bailout? When will it end? Will it end?

I am so happy that my government decided for me that I become a customer of AIG. And the great thing for AIG is they don't have to provide me with anything!

I think the government should use tax money to give me a $10 million bonus. Sure, it's less than pennies on the dollar compared to our GDP but I'm pretty sure if I or others just started receiving large amounts of money from tax dollars you (Impala and Hartmann) would be pretty outraged.

The reason people are ticked about this, is not because of the amount, but because people are living large on the people's labor depite poor performance. I wouldn't care if they gave some CEO only $1 million of our tax dollars, I would still be ticked. Because here's some guy who gets to live rich, go to resorts, throw parties, on my money, while I don't even get to do that on my money. And to add insult to injury, he's being rewarded for being a FAILURE.

So the question remains, would these CEO's have received a bonus without the bailout? If the answer is no, then they shouldn't have received the bonus with the bailout.

It sounds like you had a bad experience.

Supposedly, there is not a quota.

Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday!

Too easy, Chuck.

Take them to small claims court.

Guys who pick up chicks on the internet.

Thank you for standing up against it. More people need to.

When you make good money you're allowed to fat. And black.

narwhal is the coolest mother fucker on this message board.

Just your imagination.

Do you know Megan Murphey? She's an engineer there but I can't remember exactly what she does at NASA. I think it has something to do with training astronauts. I want to say she trains them to use the doors on the space station and shuttle, but I think it's a little more complicated than that.

My wife did not work 8 months last year due to my job moving us to several places (and paying for "living" expenses) so I paid taxes on two incomes even though we only had one.

Got back $5100.

They didn't defy physics. The structural strength of steel is derated at high temperatures (this means, at high temperatures, steel will fail at lower stresses). So if you have steel that is suddenly the strength of wood + the weight of the building and forces of wind, you have one doomed building.

Dogmeat is just too cool to let you know. Stop asking, geek. You don't get to be 'in', bitch.

There jonathan, I changed my signature just for you, baby. I know you bitched about it some time ago.