Aim outrage at elected officials

Published 1:18 pm Thursday, March 26, 2009

Most of us are outraged about the contractually legal bonuses paid to AIG executives. What is puzzling is the lack of outrage with our elected officials who authorized the bonuses to be paid.

They had the opportunity to place a caveat in the bill that would have prevented any company that received federal bail-out money from paying their execs performance or retention bonuses. This caveat was not allowed in the bill and the bonuses were paid. And then, our elected officials expressed outrage at AIG for paying the bonuses that they authorized and to further aggravate the situation they disavowed any knowledge of the bonuses and threatened all sorts of reprisals.

These are our elected officials who seem to check their honesty, ethical values and morality at the door when they are sworn in.

Mike Tastad

Lake Stevens