Thank God for Weasel Chuck Schumer’s mouth. Listen to him approve of torture techniques in 2004.

We ought to be reasonable about this.  I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake. Take the hypothetical — if we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city, and we believe that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off? My guess is most Americans and most Senators, maybe all, would say “do what you have to do”. So its easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used, but when you’re in the foxhole it’s a very different deal. – Senator Chuck Schumer

h/t: ReThinkTheGOP

As the furor over AIG bonuses continues, the rhetoric form Washington has intensified.  Today The Weasel Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and others have called on AIG employees who received bonuses to return them to the company and/or the government.  They went on to warn these individuals that the government might seek to tax the individuals receiving the bonuses at such a high level that the government would recover most if not all of the bonus income.

You can think AIG is evil and all of its employees deserve this kind of treatment if you want.  But be careful what you wish for.  Today its AIG, tomorrow it might be your employer.  And while most of us feel completely removed from the so-called excesses on Wall Street… you have to wonder what’s next.

Are you really going to accept the government correcting mistakes (that they were apart of) by taxing people to death?  Is it really American to score political points and seek vengeance through new, retroactive tax policy?

I’m not thrilled with AIG nor its performance before or after the bailouts began.  But that’s why you don’t bail them out.  If you didn’t want AIG to pay its contractual obligations, then you should have allowed them to go into bankruptcy (sounds good for GM and Chrysler too).  But when you don’t allow them to go into bankruptcy, then you have to accept the consequences… which include the organization fulfilling its contractual agreements.  But either way, you don’t punish a company or individuals by stealing their income through targeted tax policy.

Every American should be afraid.  Get past your anger about the bailouts and AIG and think about the ramifications of this.  If The Weasel Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, the White House and others don’t mind publicly discussing creating punitive tax policies to get people for supposed transgressions… what kind of additional threats are they discussing privately and on whom?  Should Pro-Life citizens worry about the tax policies they will face with a Pro-Choice President in the White House?  Should Conservatives worry about IRS threats with a Liberal running the show?  It doesn’t matter what your group or affiliation is… when your association or employer becomes out of favor and its politically advantageous to attack you… watch your back.  The Weasel Chuck Schumer and the White House are now readily admitting what many of us have always known… the tax code is one of the most powerful weapons in the government’s arsenal to settle a score.

Now matter how egregious AIG’s mistakes were… if we allow the tax code to publicly be used as a weapon to attack past mistakes, then every American needs to fear our government and its most powerful weapon, the IRS.

As was widely reported yesterday, Weasel Chuck Schumer (Senator from New York) famously said on the Senate floor that the American people don’t care about the pork in the stimulus bill.  As infuriating as that is, its not the worst thing Schumer said.

Yesterday Senator Schumer was on with Neil Cavuto’s show on FoxNews.  Stuart Varney was in for Neil, and asked Senator Schumer about this remarks and also about the hot air Treasury Secretary Geithner spewed yesterday.  In his response about Geithner’s new non-plan and the wild expense of this all, Senator Schumer said that Geithner’s plan used the Fed’s money and it wasn’t taxpayer money (man I wish I remembered to TIVO this).

Excuse Me?

Mr. Schumer has obviously forgotten a few things about this country and our government, so let me remind him.

• The government works for the people
• Everything the government “has” belongs to the people.
  • Every dollar they spend
  • Every ounce of gold in Fort Knox
  • Every piece of paper in their office and every brick in every building
  • Every single thing the government has belongs to us
• Every dollar the government spends is a dollar from the taxpayers pocket
• Every dollar the government earns is a dollar belonging to the taxpayer

Washington has nothing, NOTHING that doesn’t belong to us.  Whether it was earned through tax revenue this year, or through the spoils of war in years past… whether it was received as a gift from a foreign government, or from the labor of a government employee… every asset belonging to the Federal Government belongs to us.

Senator Schumer and others would do well in remembering that.

We do care about wasteful spending.  We do care about wasteful government.   If Senator Schumer doesn’t, then its time we replace him with someone who does.

You’ve probably read a lot of posts (this site included) complaining that the weasel Chuck Schumer’s disgraceful actions caused the bank run that led to the failure of IndyMac Bank.  If you want a good illustration of what a bank run is and why the Weasel Chuck Schumer is no different than the evil Old Man Potter, check out this post by Charlie Martin at Pajamas Media.

After Senator Charles Schumer made public comments about IndyMac that he should have kept to himself, surprise surprise, a run on the bank ensued and Federal Regulators indeed took over IndyMac today.

As much as I am opposed to the litigious nature of our society today, I hope the lawyers are already hard at work trying to find some way to pin shareholder loss on the weasel Schumer. If ever there has been a self fulfilling prophecy to the tune of billions of dollars, this was it.

If you think the economy, the mortgage market, and consumer confidence had bottomed out… sadly today you were proven wrong. Its going to get a whole lot worse. If IndyMac can be shut down by regulators, every other bank better watch out. I hate to say the sky is falling… but the stars just got a whole lot closer.

As a broker with long-standing relationships with IndyMac and Countrywide, I can tell you that these two are some of the good guys. In my experience their underwriting was sound and consistent. Granted I’m just a small player on a large stage… but there were/are countless banks and lenders who actually had shady practices and policies that these two giants did not. If IndyMac is now gone and Countrywide is under daily attack… virtually every other bank and lender in the country is in jeopardy.