Angry Mobs Target AIG Employees

RUSH: You want to hear something disgusting? You want to hear something that will make you ashamed of your fellow citizens? New York Times today: ”Scorn Trails AIG Executives, Even in Their Driveways’ — The AIG executive who was nicknamed ‘Jackpot Jimmy’ by a New York tabloid walked up the driveway toward his bay-windowed house in Fairfield, Conn., on Thursday afternoon. ‘How do I feel?’ repeating the question he’d just been asked.’ The media’s outside his house, asking him questions. ‘I feel horrible. This has been a complete invasion of privacy.’ Hey, Jimmy, who did you vote for? I wonder who James Haas voted for. I wonder who he gave money to. I don’t know, I’m just asking.

‘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 AIG, the insurance giant — ‘I would rescind my retention contract.’ He ended the conversation with a request: ‘Leave my neighbors alone.’ Too late. Jean Wieson, who has lived down the block for 24 years, had stopped her car in front of Mr. Haas’ house before he arrived home. She was angry about the millions of dollars in bonuses paid to its executives. ‘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.” Ms. Wieson, a convenient dupe. Why can’t she get mad at the real criminal waste and spending of her own elected officials who are spending her and her family into a debt that they will never see the end of.

‘These bonuses in years past helped make AIG executives into prominent local citizens. They owned big houses, they have contributed to a lot of charities, but now these executives are toxic, and those communities are rattled and divided. Private security guards have been stationed outside their houses, and sometimes the local police drive by. AIG employees at the company’s office tower in Lower Manhattan were told to avoid leaving the building while a demonstration was going on outside. The memo also advised them to avoid displaying company-issued ID cards when they left the office and to abandon tote bags or other items with the AIG logo. One AIG 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 AIG’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.

‘AIG employees are not the only ones seeking protection: An executive at Merrill Lynch, where bonuses have also come under fire, said that some employees had asked whether the firm would cover the cost of private security for them. … And there may be more protests. The Connecticut Working Families party, which has support from organized labor, is planning a bus tour of AIG 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.’ … The New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, said on Thursday that AIG had handed over a list with the names of the bonus recipients. But he did not release the list. ‘We are aware of the security concerns of AIG employees,’ Mr. Cuomo said in a statement, ‘and we will be sensitive to those issues by doing a risk assessment before releasing any individual’s name,” to the bus tour company. So your government in Washington and the government in New York is sitting idly by while angry mobs, fomented by lies and deceit from the US Congress, now target private citizens who couldn’t, in their wildest dreams, do the damage to this country that elected officials in Washington are in the process of doing.

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RUSH: By the way, where’s Larry Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff, warning about the spreading of hate and violence that I’m responsible for? Where were you today, Mr. Wilkerson, on what’s happening in the US Congress creating a mob against AIG people?