I just got an email from the people that do my payroll and it was addressing changes in regards to President Obama’s $787 billion Economic Stimulus plan. At first, I thought, “Woohoo! It’ about time small business owners get a break for creating jobs”. Then I read what the “Making Work Pay” tax credit was really all about:

For 2009 and 2010, the Making Work Pay tax credit is a credit of 6.2% of a taxpayer’s earned income. With a max credit of $400, or $0 if you earn over a certain amount.

WOW! $400 whole dollars off of my taxes? That’s really life changing. Now I’ll have to borrow $400 less to pay my taxes this year! Yay! Happy days are here again! I’m soooo glad I struggled through 2008 to keep all of my employees on payroll by borrowing money to keep them employed. The possibility of this $400 tax credit really makes it all worth while! Oh wait, no it doesn’t it’s actually a huge fucking insult.

So here I am struggling to keep people employed, and the government is using this $787 billion dollars to “bail out” all of these poor, poor little banks. Like AIG for instance. AIG has received $170 billion dollars in taxpayers money to help “bail them out” and they decided to use over $150 million of that bail out money to give their executives bonuses. Nice fucking “bail out”.

And, AIG isn’t the only bank that is living the highlife off of this “relief” funding from the government. Northern Trust (a Chicago-based bank) has received $1.6 billion in bailout money, so they went on to host a series of lavish parties as well as spend millions of that bailout money to sponsor a PGA event:

“Northern Trust flew hundreds of clients and employees to L.A. and put many of them up at some of the fanciest and priciest hotels in the city. We’re told more than a hundred people were put up at the Beverly Wilshire in Bev Hills, and another hundred stayed at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Still more stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Rey and others at Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica.”

And fancy hotels for clients and employees were just the beginning:

“Wednesday, Northern Trust hosted a fancy dinner at the Ritz followed by a performance by the group Chicago. Thursday, Northern Trust rented a private hangar at the Santa Monica Airport for dinner, followed by a performance by Earth, Wind & Fire. Saturday, Northern Trust had the entire House of Blues in West Hollywood shut down for its private party. Guests dined on seared salmon and petite Angus filet. Dinner was followed by a performance by none other than Sheryl Crow. There was also a fabulous cocktail party at the Loews. And how’s this for a nice touch: Female guests at the Chicago concert all got trinkets from … TIFFANY AND CO.”

Source: TMZ.com

Northern Trust laid off 4% of their workforce (450 employees) in December. I wonder if they were at least invited to the party us taxpayers threw?

And the truly sad part? These are just two examples of banks that got caught using bailout money for total bullshit purposes. You know all of the other banks aren’t eating PB&J and trading in their 7-series BMW’s and Bentley’s for Civics and scooters…

The government can take their $400 “Making Work Pay” tax credit and wire it on over to AIG so someone can get their Jag detailed. I sure as hell don’t want their pathetic attempt at “economic stimulus”. I can’t wait to take my business out the USA entirely.