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[Mr VJP]

Private emails detail Obama admin involvement in cutting non-union worker pensions post-GM bailout

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/22/private-emails-detail-obama-admin-involvement-in-cutting-non-union-worker-pensions-post-gm-bailout/#ixzz1Q9Z0yQiO

New emails obtained by The Daily Caller contradict claims by the Obama administration that the Treasury Department would avoid “intervening in the day-to-day management” of General Motors post-auto bailout.

These messages reveal that Treasury officials were involved in decision-making that led to more than 20,000 non-union workers losing their pensions. (General Motors not eager to be political talking point in 2012)

Republican Reps. Dan Burton and Mike Turner say that during the GM bailout, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner decided to cut pensions for salaried non-union employees at Delphi, a GM spinoff, to expedite GM’s emergence from bankruptcy.

At a Wednesday hearing, the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending started pushing the Treasury Department for answers on the effects of the bailout and on how much of a role the department played in picking winners and losers.

The key point of the Wednesday hearing was to show that the Obama administration advised GM on how to eliminate the Delphi workers’ pensions. The evidence suggests Geithner’s team played a significant role in that process, despite claims to the contrary.

In 2009 congressional testimony, senior Obama administration official Ron Bloom said the president told the Treasury Department to stay out of the management of these companies and downplayed any administration intervention.

“From the beginning of this process, the President gave the Auto Task Force two clear directions regarding its approach to the auto restructurings,” Bloom said then. “The first was to behave in a commercial manner by ensuring that all stakeholders were treated fairly and received neither more nor less than they would have simply because the government was involved. The second was to refrain from intervening in the day-to-day management of these companies.”

But the emails TheDC obtained show high-ranking Treasury Department officials, including Matthew Feldman of Treasury’s Auto Task Force, corresponding with senior GM officials on how to make certain decisions regarding who was going to win and who was going to lose.

“Have you guys begun a dialogue with the UAW over your desire to see the hourly plan terminated?” Feldman asked GM’s Rick Westenberg and Walter Borst in June 2009. This email shows Feldman and the Treasury Department were involved in GM’s day-to-day management.

“One concern I have is that while the PBGC [Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency that handles private-sector pension benefits issues] is likely to agree to terminate, it’s not clear what position they will take on the Benefit Guaranty,” Feldman continued in that email, demonstrating his involvement in union negotiations. “At a minimum this could get messy and the UAW should probably be brought into the loop.”

The exchanges go on to clearly demonstrate that the administration had a controlling stake in GM’s management timeline.

Borst replied that GM had not “begun conversations with the UAW pending hearing back from you and the PBGC. We can begin that dialogue but our reading of the benefit guarantee is clear that it’s for the benefit of the retirees and not the PBGC. The UAW may not be available to us this week as GM is in the summer shutdown.”

Feldman responded by reminding Borst the steps required to eliminate Delphi’s pension plans.

“Keep in mind we need the PBGC’s help to terminate this plan so we will have to deal with the PBGC,” wrote Feldman. “If you think there is a way to cause its unilateral termination (outside of Delphi going down an 1113 process) let me know.”

Another email chain TheDC has obtained shows that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s employees were advising GM executives and communications officials on how to craft their public messages and press releases.

In response to GM sending her a draft of a press release about the company ceasing operations at several factories nationwide, the Treasury Department’s Jenni Engebretsen wrote to GM officials on Friday, May 29, 2009: “We would ask that you move the reference to Treasury down to the third paragraph, taking it out of the lede. Please let us know if this presents any issues.”

GM’s director of policy and Washington communications replied to Engebretsen: “No problems. Done.”

Engebretsen then asked: “If there is an updated version at some point over the weekend we’d appreciate a final copy. Many thanks.”

These emails show the Obama administration was not only active in guiding GM executives’ decisions, but Treasury Department officials were influential in crafting GM’s message to the public.

With Engebretsen asking GM to move references to the Treasury Department out of the press release’s lede paragraph, it suggests the Obama administration wanted to publicly downplay its role in the GM bailout and the Delphi workers’ subsequent loss of their pensions.

[Mr VJP]

Report: Ending US horse slaughter destroyed market      A 62-page report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concludes that the 2007 closure of US horse slaughter plants championed by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other animal rights groups has resulted in a glut of horses and a seriously depressed market. Further, it has not ended the commercial slaughter of horses, but has merely moved it to Canada and Mexico. Billings Gazette.

[Mr VJP]

[table]    [tr]  [td][/td]  [td]  [/td][/tr]  [tr]  [td][/td][td]  Why am I not surprised???

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2...latestnews

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[Mr VJP]

AARP and CBO Realize What Democrats Don't -- Debt is Bad   

http://image.patriotpost.us/2011-06-24-digest.jpg[/img]

 

Hands are off current seniors' entitlements

  You know the debt situation is bad when even AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) changes its tune on Social Security. After staunchly opposing any and all reforms for years, the association announced last Friday that it would be willing to consider changes to the massive FDR-era entitlement program. AARP, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country with some 40 million members, concluded that it wants a seat at the table when change is discussed, and that meant offering concessions, even if it won't champion them. The association's board recognizes the impending demise of Social Security and felt it couldn't afford to ignore the momentum for entitlement reform that has built for years.

AARP was primarily responsible for killing President George W. Bush's partial privatization plan in 2005. So it's no surprise that the debate over its now-softened stance was contentious. Many members were so riled that AARP was forced to walk back a bit with a statement reasserting their complete support for Social Security.

It's important to note, however, that no one is talking about cutting benefits for today's seniors. Yet leftists have shamelessly demagogued the issue with that straw man. Their relentless smear campaign is labeling thoughtful reformers such as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as extremist. They have ignored the scope of the problem and the facts surrounding proposed solutions. Now that AARP might participate in entitlement discussions, the job for opponents of reform just became tougher.

In related news, the Congressional Budget Office released this week its 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook. CBO now predicts that in one of two scenarios -- depending upon whether the Bush tax cuts are extended or not -- federal debt will reach 101 percent of GDP by 2021, which is two years earlier than last year's outlook predicted. The other scenario, accounting for supposedly increased revenue if the Bush tax cuts expire, shows the debt reaching more than two-thirds GDP by 2021. For the current year, the CBO predicts a deficit of $1.4 trillion, and much of that is because of entitlement spending.

According to the CBO Director's Blog, those projections "understate the severity of the long-term budget problem because they do not incorporate the negative effects that accumulating additional federal debt would have on the economy, nor do they include the impact of higher tax rates on people's incentives to work and save."

As if on cue, the Federal Reserve issued a forecast for a weak recovery this year and next, despite the federal spending and money-printing binges undertaken over the last three years. Or maybe -- just maybe -- it's because of those things. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke insists, however, "I don't think that sharp, immediate cuts in the deficit would create more jobs," he said. "Deficit reduction is at best neutral for job-creation."

So how are deficit-reduction discussions proceeding? Not so good. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) have withdrawn from talks led by Vice President Joe Biden because, as Cantor said, they have reached an "impasse on taxes." In other words, Democrats insist on raising taxes, and Republicans refuse.

Not only do Democrats not "get it" on taxes, but they're actually calling for more spending -- even unabashedly referring to another "stimulus package." How is it that Democrats so consistently come up with the wrong solution?

[Mr VJP]

This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award  "If you don't touch revenues and you leave in place the tax cuts for the top 2 percent that were put in place by President Bush ... and you're trying to bring our deficits down over time, then you have to do exceptionally deep cuts in benefits for middle-class Americans and you have to shrink the overall size of government programs." --Treasury Secretary Tim "Tax Cheat" Geithner

The top 2 percent are often small business owners who create most of the jobs in this country. And heaven forbid we might have to shrink government!

[Mr VJP]

Hypocrisy on Display  Democrats have changed their tune on the national debt over the years. In 2006, under Republican leadership, they were spending hawks. Since their election wins that year, however, it's been an entirely different story.

[Mr VJP]

"If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn't say so." --Time magazine's Richard Stengel, who also asks if it even still matters.

Au contraire. Stengel must be the product of some gubmint-run educational institution preaching the gospel of a "living" constitution. Has he ever heard of the enumerated powers or Bill of Rights?

[Mr VJP]

The ObamaCare waiver program is quietly coming to an end, or at least morphing into something else to take it out of the news. In a typical Friday afternoon news dump, the Obama administration announced last week that it's changing the way it will grant waivers to temporarily exempt companies and organizations from complying with the health care law. The waivers were originally created to bridge a major flaw in ObamaCare that would have ousted millions of lower-wage workers from their current insurance plans. The waivers were meant to expire after one year, but can be renewed until 2014, at which point ObamaCare will have completely sunk its claws into the insurance market.

The 1,433 issued waivers have been a growing PR problem for the administration. The process of granting waivers has taken place completely behind closed doors, with each month's fresh tally further proving that ObamaCare is a disaster. After all, if it was such a good law, there wouldn't be a need for millions of people to be exempted from it, many of them the lower income families the plan was meant to aid in the first place. A massive granting of waivers to undeserving establishments curiously located in Demo Rep. Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district didn't help. The Government Accountability Office concluded that there was nothing suspicious about how the waivers have been distributed, but only last week did the White House release a list of applicants who have been denied. Republicans have been calling for months for this and other information.

The new method doesn't improve ObamaCare's transparency problem; it only removes the much-despised program from the news cycle in advance of next year's presidential election. Currently the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approves a new batch of one-year waivers every month. Now, applicants have until Sept. 22 to apply for waivers that will last until the end of 2013. Current recipients whose waivers will expire some time after the deadline may renew for the full two-year period. Regardless, there are many other flaws in ObamaCare, and it's certain to remain a hot topic in next year's election.

Another recently discovered ObamaCare screw-up is that it allows access to Medicaid by early-retiree couples earning up to $64,000. This costs an additional $450 billion over 10 years that would add three million non-needy people to an already overburdened program. Government budget analysts claim the error was caused by changes in the Medicaid eligibility calculation of income. Perhaps if there had been an opportunity to read the bill before it was rammed through Congress, this and other stupid mistakes would have been caught. But, then again, maybe they weren't mistakes at all.

[Mr VJP]

Several Senate Democrats introduced the Military Access to Reproductive Care and Health (MARCH) for Military Women Act this week to support taxpayer-funded abortions performed on military personnel while in the service. This bill, also introduced in the House by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), would reverse a ban that prohibits Department of Defense personnel from performing abortions at domestic and foreign DoD facilities. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Patty Murray (D-WA) co-sponsored the legislation, which quickly received support from the ACLU, NARAL and Planned Parenthood. This is only the latest in a long line of attempts to reverse the ban. None of the previous Senate attempts have ever reached cloture, and with more Republicans now in the chamber, it's difficult to imagine success this time. Bill Clinton introduced taxpayer-funded abortions in military facilities in 1993, but all military physicians refused to perform or assist in the procedures. The ban was put in place three years later.

[Mr VJP]

Under the Obama regime, it appears that federal employees, including the military, will provide a proving ground for various theories on how to make homosexuality palatable to the general public. Take the example of a sensitivity training model dubbed the "LGBT Special Emphasis Program" brought over from, of all places, the Department of Agriculture. The USDA training coins the term "heterosexism" to deride the belief that marriage should be between one man and one woman by equating this faith-based (and nature-based) principle with racism.

For example, proponents see a golden opportunity for changing hearts and minds in the military, which had until recently been subject to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for homosexuals serving within their ranks. It doesn't stop there, however, as USDA officials have asked the Office of Personnel Management to extend the training government-wide. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsask, in particular, is pushing the training. The former Iowa Democrat governor launched a department-wide "cultural transformation" and hopes to force that upon the rest of the government.

[Mr VJP]

It's not too shocking anymore to uncover a terrorist plot. Regardless of how small or insignificant it may appear to be, a nation on high alert always seems to catch someone in the planning stages of mayhem. So it was with the case of Yonathan Melaku, a 22-year-old lance corporal in the Marine Corps Reserves and a native of Ethiopia. He was caught with a cache of ammonium nitrate, which is the kind of stuff one can use to blow up a building when the proper materials are added.

Melaku's arrest was the talk of Washington because he was caught snooping around Arlington National Cemetery, which was closed at the time, and his car was later found near the Pentagon. More clues emerged when his notebook praising al-Qa'ida and the Taliban was discovered.

However, a key element of the story was missing. It wasn't the lack of co-conspirators or the assertion of the Associated Press that "the suspect is not thought to have been involved in a terrorist act or plot." (Sure, people walk around with potentially explosive ammonium nitrate all the time.) No, lost in most background reporting was the fact Melaku is Muslim.

So as not to equate the potential of terrorism with the Religion of Peace™, it seems that news organizations are hesitant to bring religion into the discussion except on those rare occasions when it suits their agenda (in other words, only when it involves a supposed Christian engaged in malfeasance). Apparently, we're supposed to forget that radical Islamic terrorists tried to destroy the very Pentagon at which Melaku's car was parked.

Perhaps it's now so common an assumption that would-be terrorists are Muslim that reporters aren't bothering to report that fact. Somehow, though, we doubt it.

[Mr VJP]

There has been much outcry over the enhanced "security" procedures implemented by the Transportation and Security Administration. Now the arrest of a TSA agent shows that Big Sis is not only stealing our dignity; her agents are stealing our belongings. A Houston agent was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor after an undercover cop posed as a Good Samaritan and turned in a wallet containing $1,000 in cash. The wallet, however, didn't go to lost-and-found, but instead found its way into the agent's backpack.

For those who think this is the isolated act of an underpaid government employee, think again. The thievery has become nothing short of epidemic. In fact, a Newark agent was arrested after it was discovered that he was moonlighting as an eBay merchant. His merchandise? A $40,000 trove of goods he had stolen from the luggage of unsuspecting travelers.

While agents at the New York City-area airports seem to be the biggest culprits, this is a nationwide problem. In fact, since its inception in the wake of the September 11th attacks, 500 TSA agents have been fired or suspended for ripping off airline passengers. Yet TSA continues to make excuses, saying that less than half of one percent of its employees are thieves. Now, imagine a private corporation offering up such a lame defense.

[Mr VJP]

Mexico, long a source of illegal aliens and southern border anarchy, now wants to export that lawlessness further into the U.S., all with the assistance of the usual American Leftist cadre. The state of Georgia recently passed an anti-illegal immigration law similar to one passed by the state of Arizona and subsequently shot down by the Despotic Branch. Georgia's new law would allow police to investigate the immigration status of certain suspects, as well as to punish people who transport or harbor illegal immigrants or who use fake identification to obtain jobs. It also requires businesses to use the federal E-Verify program to ensure that newly hired workers are in fact eligible to work in the U.S. In other words, just like the Arizona law, Georgia's statute seeks to ensure that we remain a nation of Rule of Law, and not of rule of men.

Naturally, Mexico and several other Central- and South American countries, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, and numerous other anti-American groups, are seeking to have the will of the Georgia people overturned by judicial diktat. Just as the Obama regime argued against the Arizona law, Mexico argues that Georgia's law is poorly conceived and would burden people who "look like illegal immigrants."

Mexico also argues that the law "substantially and inappropriately burdens the consistent country to country relations between Mexico and the United States of America." One might think that the murderous Mexican drug cartels who shoot and kill American citizens and federal Border patrol agents using illegal arms provided by the Obama regime's Department of Justice (more on that below) would be something that "burdens" country-to-country relations, but apparently not in Mexico's eyes. Sadly, it will be a Clinton judicial appointee who decides whether Rule of Law still holds in Georgia.

[Mr VJP]

The 28 member nations of the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced the release of 60 million barrels of oil reserves over the next 30 days to put downward pressure on oil prices. The Obama administration said that 30 million barrels would come from our domestic Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which currently holds 727 million barrels. The IEA claims the release is because of disruption of supply due to events in Libya. However, Libya produces just 2 percent of the world's oil (1.5 million barrels per day), most of which goes to Europe. Perhaps replacing that much will have a positive short-term effect (oil did drop $5 a barrel on the news), but it's not a solution to the problem of high oil prices, or for Obama's sagging poll numbers.

In 2000, Bill Clinton likewise released 30 million barrels of SPR oil over 30 days. As a result, the average price of gasoline fell by just one cent. By law, we must replace these 30 million barrels later, too, which means we're pouring oil from the deep end of the well into the shallow end. Instead of gimmicks like this one, the administration should remove restrictions to onshore and offshore drilling. Experts say that Alaska's wildlife reserve could supply one million barrels of oil every day. We know that "supply-side economics" is to leftists what holy water is to demons, but in this case and in so many others, it's the best answer. And adding supply for 30 days that must be demanded back later isn't it.

[Mr VJP]

While Barack Obama spews "job-creation" rhetoric, his administration's penchant for regulations tells a different story. Case in point: two proposed EPA regulations that will cost many, many jobs. According to a study by National Economic Research Associates (NERA), the Clean Air Transport Rule (CATR) and Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) requirement, both of which target the utility industry, will cost 1.44 million job-years by 2020(a job-year is one full-time job for one person for one year), while hiking average retail electrical prices for consumers by 11.5 percent. Manufacturers use about one-third of the nation's electricity, and any cost increase above 10 percent for these users is directly passed on to consumers. But what do a few jobs and higher costs matter in the quest for "environmental protection"? Apparently not much to this administration.

Meanwhile, speaking of the environment, global warming just got the cold shoulder from the U.S. Supreme Court. On Monday, the High Court rejected a lawsuit by states and conservation groups attempting to use the courts to force power plants to cut greenhouse gas emissions. In a unanimous opinion (Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused herself), the Court stated that the authority to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions lies with the EPA and not with the courts. Plaintiffs will now target the EPA to push for regulations. Of course, given the jobs already at stake should proposed regulations be implemented, one can only wonder how many more jobs the new regulations will cost. The answer can't be good.

[Mr VJP]

It used to be that the "Made in China" label translated to "inexpensive," but no more. The costs of imported goods are going up, due to a combination of a deflated dollar, a rising yuan, and higher wages in China. China is also consuming more as a nation, including cotton, the demand for which is driving up the cost of shoes and clothes. Rather than holding down inflation in the U.S. (as in days past), Chinese products are now costing more for the American consumer.

Experts say there is a simple remedy for this problem: The U.S. needs to start producing and shipping more goods overseas and importing less. As is often the case, the simplest answer is also the one that make the most sense. No one blames the Chinese for demanding better jobs, wages and lives. But we should be fighting for our national interests just as staunchly.

[Mr VJP]

http://www.nationalgunrights.org/its-getting-easier-and-easier-to-be-treated-like-a-terrorist-these-days/