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The Crime of the Century (General Motors)
America, You’ve been had!!!! When GM went (according to this chart by Tom McMahon with assistance from Larry Kudlow) “bankrupt” the outstanding funded debt of the corporation was $27 Billion. If you add the portion of the UAW retirement & medical benefit program that was “underfunded” you have another $10 Billion. Added together this is a total of $37 Billion. This debt was not really of comparable nature. The $27 Billion that was owed the Bondholders was senior to the unsecured and junior UAW liability. In a bankruptcy all senior obligations must be met in full before you move down scale to more junior obligations. In short, the bondholders should have received all the company, at least all the company that was divided between the bondholders and the UAW; however, GM only got 10% of the stock of GM (in lieu of debt) for $27 Billion while the junior and unsecured UAW liability of merely $10 Billion received 40% of the stock of the company. When the bondholders were cheated the effect was to steal money from the savings and retirement accounts of Americans.
This is a crime of monumental proportions and can be explained only as a political payoff to the unions since the labor movement was the single largest contributor to the Obama and Democrats political campaign. It would have been an interesting news item if 40% of the company had gone to Haliburton. This is an advantageous distribution to the UAW over GM Bondholders by a ratio of 10.8 to 1 (which itself does not take into consideration the seniority of the bondholders). It would be nice to receive a favorable distribution as compared to other creditors by the ratio of 10.8 to 1 when legal precedent dictated that you (UAW) would receive zero. This favoritism cannot be explained as anything but cronyism and political payoff. This is the crime of the century. But, what do the Democrats like to keep telling us? ….”elections have consequences” [and those consequences can be criminal when you have a “free” press in the tank with the administration.]
Blood for Votes (and other musings)
Obama claims that he doesn’t want to nationalize U.S. businesses, but as I see it, Obama has been in office a little over 4 months and he has turned our legal system upside down and stole the property that belongs to the “secured” and senior lenders to GM and Chrysler in order to essentially “give” those companies to the unions, his largest political financial supporters which are junior and unsecured. Nice payback payoff ……what is it they say; “elections have consequences.” This is more adept than the Russian Revolution of 1917. Remember the misery this brought Russia and others for nearly a century following that little experiment?
To the surprise of the executives in the car industry and dealers, he has dictated the closing of many car dealers nationally without a mechanism to insure that the survivors are not Political Favorites of Obama while many “successful and profitable” dealers are being closed outside of the parameters set up by the auto industry for continued existence. The only significant justification that you can deduce from this is that they are (as most in fact were) Republican supporters. He fired the head of GM and replaced him with an “Obama friendly” retired communications executive, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., who claimed on the day of the announcement that he “doesn’t know anything about cars.” Go figure.
Now he is running the banks and deciding how much their executives can earn. He has even hired a salary “czar” to establish their pay grade. He likes this idea so much that he is looking into expanding this to other industries. Steve Ballmer, CEO and co-founder with Bill Gates of Microsoft has been a supporter of Obama but stated that they will move Microsoft “offshore” if Obama continues down this punitive path of taxes and making companies non-competitive in foreign markets. While attacking US corporations that do business overseas and receive tax benefits for it and wealthy taxpayers not paying enough tax, he himself (according to his published personal taxes for 2008) almost exclusively invested those millions of book royalties U.S. Tax Exempt offshore companies and tax exempt bonds….check it out yourself.
We passed a $800 Billion pork laden program under the guise of “emergency stimulus” to save us from the “Bush economy” [see my link HERE on Obama and the “Community Reinvestment Act” that I posted this past October revealing the real cause of the financial meltdown] and used this urgency as the cover to violate his own campaign promise of posting legislation for 48 hours on the White House website so all could see its contents. He called it his “new transparency.” Instead he delivered the 1,000 page bill to the Republicans for first review at 11 PM with a final vote scheduled on it the following morning at 9 AM. Is this the transparency he promised? The only thing transparent is that we were played for fools.
The way we know that this bill has nothing to do with “emergency stimulus” (even as it was designed and written) is the fact that 2/3rds of it wouldn’t be spent until 2010 and 2011 with most of that being in 2011. But it couldn’t wait another 48 hours on the website for proper disclosure. After it was shot gunned through Congress, Obama took a vacation and didn’t even sign it till mid (the following) week. Heck, not even the rank and file Democrats had a chance to read it. But this has all turned out even worse than that because they have only spent 5% of it to date, but you probably recall that part of its sales pitch was that we had plenty of “shovel ready” projects ready to go to effect an immediate stimulus……….not so. The economy is now beginning to recover without much Federal Stimulus money and even though it will likely be a protracted recovery, maybe we should revisit this spending and cancel it and save our children and grandchildren much grief.
He further emphasized the urgent need of the “stimulus” package in order to avoid the unemployment rate from going over 9% this year. Well, that strategy worked and that ill designed “stimulus” package did pass and almost exclusively by Democrats but the unemployment rate already hit 9.4% last month. Now just yesterday he has fired the Inspector General who investigated some suspicious illegal activities of a crony of his own.
Every despot in the world is testing Obama and they are learning that they can get away with anything and they include not only Iran and Venezuela but N. Korea as well. N. Korea tested nuclear bombs and missiles in contravention of US and UN warnings and yesterday the UN passed a resolution permitting UN member countries to “interdict” N. Korean vessels suspected of caring weapons. Obama stated yesterday that he intends to challenge such vehicles on the open seas, but wouldn’t use force to board them………… Do you see what I see here? He has essentially neutralized even the weak action of the UN and stated IN ADVANCE that we wouldn’t actually stop them. What kind of leadership is this? Do you think N. Korea will be inclined to cooperate with the “spirit” of the UN action since we have notified them that we won’t enforce it?
He has been on a world wide tour apologizing for the “misdeeds” of America without mention the countries we saved, the poor people we have fed, etc. and he has even unilaterally stated to the nations of the world that the United States is NOT a Christian nation. Ok, I can live with that maybe if he let it go at that, but then he goes onto Moslem soil and states that the United States is one of the largest Moslem nations. Truth is, even by those metrics we are not. We would be far down that list. You may have noticed that he managed to exempt his own culpability from all these woes that America has brought on the world.
Obama and his party are doing everything to release real terrorist that we have captured while simultaneously strategizing to prosecute real Americans that protected us from them. Now Pelozi wants to release photos that even she agrees with U.S. Generals will cost American’s lives. People don’t understand why she would do that, but it is an easy assessment. She is playing to the political left in San Francisco that is demanding this. She has placed her reelection and position ahead of Soldiers lives. The Deomcrats once (often) said “Blood for Oil” as they criticized Republicans. I think this is much more clearly Blood for Votes. (You can’t come up with any other analysis of it.)
What is the cost of all this…………..? Essentially every economist (eliminating those with a White House connection) feel that the Obama program will bankrupt the country and leave our children with an insurmountable debt at a time they will already be going broke over the existing Social Security and Medicare problems. Obama said last week “you ain’t seen nothin yet.” With Cap & Trade and Cap & Tax he will permanently make the US non-competitive with the rest of the world so we can be seen as “politically correct” in solving a problem (global warming) that either doesn’t exist or is not caused by people. The primary Charlatan and Elmer Gantry of our era is Al Gore. He has already made $100 million propagating his junk science that he won’t debate with opposing scientists and he is on the threshold of making Billions by becoming the primary “broker” of carbon offset credits. Understand this is a Ponzi scheme that moves around the production of carbon but doesn’t reduce a single pound of emissions. Did I tell you that C02 is NOT a toxic substance and is necessary in the photosynthesis process? You breathe C02 in and out with every breath. If you didn’t you’d be dead.
Let me conclude and say I smell that Obama is on the threshold of betraying the Israelis in a fundamentally existential fashion and he is headed in the direction of being the biggest elected disaster in the history of the country………..stay tuned.
The Tax Exempt Cabinet
Obama was fortunate to receive an early Presidential endorsement from former Senator and Leader of the Senate, Democrat Tom Daschle. Obama has stated that Daschle has been a long time advisor in his Presidential campaign. In June of 2008 Obama declares victory over Hillary Clinton in race to secure the Democratic Presidential nomination.
Also in June of 2008 Tom Daschle claims that “SOMETHING made him think that the limousine and driver he had been receiving from his employer (InterMedia Partners) since the beginning of 2005 might be taxable income since he used it 80% of the time for personal use.” The total tax due on the unreported income of over $250,000 was $128,000 (plus $12,000 in interest and penalties).
His Accountant said yes that would be the case it could pose a problem for him. Since Daschle had not included this income on his tax return for the years 2005, 2006 & 2007 he was delinquent in his taxes and he would be required to notify the IRS and pay the late taxes and penalties immediately.
Daschle claimed he was going to take care of the delinquent taxes (already 3 years delinquent) in April of 2009 when he files his 2008 return and expressed it in a way that might lead you to think it would appropriately be part of his 2008 filing. Sorry, that is not the case, it is totally a separate issue and would continue to accrue interest and penalties for an additional 9 months. But, Obama had not been elected in June and it was entirely possible that he might not be elected at all and even though I am sure Daschle knew he was on the list for a top appointment, he couldn’t be sure he would even have to confront the Vetting process at all, so why rush to pay a tax he may never have to deal with. Also, if he waited to file his amended returns till 4/15/2009 curiously that is the date that the earliest of his delinquent years (2005) is released from liability by the statue of limitations and 2005 was the year of largest liability because duration of interest and penalties.
If Obama does not get elected there would be no compelling reason for him to file an amended return. If he does get elected he could file delinquently for years 2006 & 2007 (omitting the 2005 return) in April, 2009 and pay the piper in order to get the terrific powerbase as Health and Human Services Secretary. In that light it might be a small price to pay.
But subsequent events, to Mr. Daschle’s disappointment, have put the spotlight on Cabinet appointments after Obama appointed Tim Geithner as the Secretary of the Treasury and it turns out he didn’t pay all his taxes and he was going to be head of the IRS. Mr. Geithner filed amended returns AFTER the Obama vetting team found the underpayment on his tax returns. I am not sure why he had to wait for Obama’s staff to find it since he had received multiple notices from the IRS to pay the amount he owed, which he regularly ignored. Mr. Geithner even signed documents yearly with the IMF (the International Monetary Fund) his employer acknowledging that he knew he was responsible for this tax and he even submitted reimbursement vouchers to the IMF for said tax which they paid him, yet he did not remit that money to the IRS. Does this sound like an “error” to you? Don’t be a fool.
Back to Daschle. It was also discovered by the Obama transition team that over the 2005-2007 period Daschle took $15,000 of Charitable Contribution deductions for donations he didn’t make to qualified tax exempt organizations (I’m guessing Political Donations), AND…… in 2007 he received a consulting salary of $1,000,000 from InterMedia Partners of which he didn’t include $83,333 of that income on his tax return in 2007.
Add this to the previous report that Charles Rangel, (D-New York), the Chairman of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee who writes the tax laws failed to report many years of rental income on real estate that he owned, claiming he wasn’t aware of his liability.
These are the guys that have been the prime movers behind the tax laws over the last 20 years and they have repeatedly claimed that certain Americans are not paying their “fair share” and continued to push for increased taxes regularly. This is the true “culture of corruption” in Washington. But it is time to reward them with cushy political jobs with overwhelming power.