Do you ever wonder how bad things actually got in Rome to cause it to burn while Nero fiddled?

 There has been a major uproar in this country that certain executives of insurance giant AIG were paid millions of dollars in bonuses for their fine work in leading that company almost down the proverbial toilet.

 AIG recently received $5 billion in federal bailout money. Now because, and only because, of the public uproar of taxpayers of this country, the wolves that now represent us in Washington, D.C. have passed a bill that would tax these unworthy managers 90 percent of what they received in a bonus given out by the troubled company.

 The wolves’ cousins in the senate have not acted on this proposed new bill yet.

 Another sad fact is that members of the same House, who just voted on this tax penalty, are some of the same ones who wrote the stimulus bill that gave AIG the money in the first place. A few were responsible for the special verbiage to ensure that the bonuses were paid.

 Increasing taxes on select groups is a scary start down a slippery road. If congress can punish this group so swiftly, especially for their own misdeeds, they can and they will do it to any group or organization at will.

 Putting a 90 percent tax rate on anybody’s money, earned or not earned, is criminal and we would dare say unconstitutional at best.

 Our forefathers brought about a revolution for just a few pennies of unfair taxes.

 The managers of AIG had contracts. We do not know what their bonuses were based on — apparently not much, but they did have a contract.

 A contract is a bond that should be honored.

 None of us like these people receiving a bonus for a job not done very well. What should be done is each manager should be brought in asked if he or she would voluntarily because of the circumstances give back their bonus. If they don’t, then they should immediately be fired.

 We doubt if they are fired that they will be allowed to ride the gravy train ever again.

 As for Congress, if they insist on taxing the managers of AIG for taking bonuses in spite of their bad performance, then we should be able to put the 90 percent rate on the salaries of Congress for their same bad performance.