Bill of Attainder

Definition: A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.

The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed.”

http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/attainder.htm

Our founding fathers realized the inherent dangers of putting the power of punishment in the hands of political entities.  That’s why we have the judicial branch and that is why each citizen is guaranteed due process.  This action by the House today is a direct affront to our constitutional rights!

This Pelosi/Reid majority is quickly becoming the joke of the century, but the joke ain’t funny!

Not a good move at all and it could be used as a sledge hammer by some politically ambitious souls.

I don’t think this is constitutional and I am sure it will be tested.

Like it or not, they had a contract for the bonus.  They did not have to take it but they did and I would wonder if any of you that was given a check for that much money and it was part of your contract for working for a company would just give it back.

Now taxing this money at that percent to get it back is just wrong.  This is opening a whole new can of worms that will allow the gov. to start taxing all types of bonuses and benefits at any rates they desire.  Mark my words, this is not a good move.

The markets were already nervous today because of uncertainty about the Fed printing a trillion bucks with nothing to back it up.  This new tax law will probably kill it again!

The scapegoating of Liddy all day yesterday and this tax vote today is just a loud-mouthed distraction coming from our Democratic legislature.  They were holding all the cards when the money was passed out and someone went to a great deal of trouble to insert language in the stimulus bill that would allow for these bonuses.

To try and blame it on a retired guy making a dollar a year is a little ridiculous.  To put this type of taxation power in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid is pure insanity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Government breaking legal contracts, that they knew about and inserted legislation into the stimulus bill to allow, this is a very tricky situation.  This could set precedence for other “tax” bills and take whatever they want whenever they want.  Our elected idiots in DC should have made the companies renegotiate these contracts before giving out our money but to have the government pass laws taking higher taxes on it, bad politics here. It would have been better for AIG to have paid the bonuses and also give the taxpayers an equal amount back.  Of course we will be bailing them out again, losing $60B dollars a quarter, the bailout money will not last but 6 months max.

They shouldn’t have gotten the bonuses in the first place and they wouldn’t have if our congress had read the stimulus bill before they passed it! 

This re-writing the tax laws is a whole other issue!  Where will it stop?  How can it be controlled now that it is out of the box?

BamaBob, you have got to be kidding me, thats our money that the executives are pocketing. If it had not been for the tax payers they would have all been without a job, much less the millions they took in a bonus. Show me someone worth a million dollar salary,the only people I can think of thats worth that kind of money is the people who do research to better our health. What a terrible problem these million dollar “babes” have gotten us into. Give everyone the $5.85 minimum wage, maybe the greed would stop. What are they going to do, move to another county, HA! they would be lucky to get $1.00 per hour there.

How does it put them in the poor house?

The 90% tax is on the BONUS, not on their wages.

That means TAXPAYERS get back 148.5 MILLION dollars (or $0.50 for EACH PERSON IN THE US POPULATION!)