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Delphi Bailout-Obama's Downfall?
From Investor's Business Daily:
The White House is stonewalling three Congressional committees seeking to find out why GM bailout cash topped pensions of union workers while nonunion Delphi workers got stiffed. What are they hiding?
Something ugly is going on when an administration that claims always to be looking out for "the middle class" does a number on 21,000 quintessentially middle-class managers, engineers and secretaries at Delphi Corporation, the General Motors-affiliated auto parts manufacturer which got sucked down along with GM in the cratering of the auto industry.
As the bailout was hashed out, Delphi workers got their pensions cut as much as 70%, while the United Auto Workers and other unions were made whole.
How did this happen? None other than through White House and Treasury Department intervention.
Obama administration officials apparently muscled in on the work of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) — an independent pension agency for bankrupt companies that by law is not permitted to play favorites — and played favorites.
Emails obtained by dogged Daily Caller reporter Matthew Boyle show that the PBGC was "uninvited" to secretive meetings about what to do with worker pensions and the Treasury Department took over.
As a result, union workers were treated with favor, getting their pensions topped up to 100% in a special "voluntary" deal with GM premised on the fact that GM feared disruption of its supply lines (read: sabotage) while non-union workers got the shaft.
Well, some are now bankrupt, some in foreclosure, and some endure family break-ups as the massive stress of income cuts averaging 45% have taken their toll, according to retired Delphi engineer Bruce Gump, who spoke to IBD this week.
Now vice chairman of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association, his group is trying to gain equal treatment under the law.
"All of these words from the president and vice president — that if you work hard and play by the rules — have failed," Gump said. Obama administration officials have slammed doors in their faces, ignored their phone calls, and promised follow-ups at community meetings that never happened, he noted.
There have been popular demonstrations in Ohio and around the Midwest for the Delphi workers. That may be why Vice President Joe Biden, on a campaign stop last week in Ohio, mugged for the camera with a biker mama at a truck stop cafe as two toughs glared in a photo.
It made a news splash but what it really did was obscure the real news in Ohio that day — that hundreds of Delphi workers were in the streets demanding justice after Obama told them "you're on your own."
That's why three separate House committees all have found sufficient grounds for launching investigations into what they call the "closed door deals" around this Delphi deal.
The Obama administration is treating these committees with the same contempt it treats all congressional investigations, and already has missed its Sept. 7 deadline for delivering e-mails to one committee which could confirm what the Daily Caller reported — that Treasury and the White House were calling the shots on who would get a pension, and who would not.
As those emails dribble out, there's every indication that laws commanding equal treatment of all workers in bankruptcy and respecting the independence of the PBGC were broken. Obama officials are already on record as saying they were not responsible for treating workers unequally. But the emails suggest otherwise.
What does this say? It says that the $80 billion auto bailout that is now touted as a triumph by the Obama campaign was little more than a payout to Big Labor — one that came at the expense of non-union workers.
That's the truth that should see daylight, without another cover-up.
From The Daily Caller:
Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that former senior Treasury Department officials who orchestrated the 2009 auto industry bailout enriched their former employers and likely made personal financial gains from parts of the deal they negotiated. At issue is the termination of pension plans belonging to 20,000 non-union salaried retirees from Delphi Corporation.
Such self-dealing while an appointed member of a White House task force would violate federal law as well as an Ethics Pledge that an executive order from President Barack Obama said would apply to all appointees in the executive branch of the federal government from the date of his inauguration.
During the auto bailout, now former Treasury official Matt Feldman, Obama Auto Task Force adviser Harry Wilson and other administration officials drove the Delphi pension cutoffs for non-union retirees. Their actions violated a federal statute that identified the quasi-independent Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) as the only government entity legally empowered to initiate termination of a pension or make official movements toward doing so.
Since the bailout began, those officials have contradicted themselves in court filings, congressional testimony and press reports by claiming the PBGC, not they themselves, made the Delphi-related decisions. Internal emails TheDC published recently, however, indicate otherwise. (RELATED: Emails: Geithner, Treasury drove cutoff of non-union Delphi workers’ pensions)
Financial gain is one possible motivation for the actions of Feldman, Wilson and others.
“Politics appears to have played a role, but now we see a financial bias that could have played a role in the decision-making that could have benefitted their current and future business partners,” Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner told The Daily Caller in a phone interview.
“The more information we get about who was involved and who made these decisions, it’s clearer that bias was involved both politically and financially. This was just wrong. If the Delphi pensions had been made whole, it would have been a less financially attractive transaction for Wilson’s and Feldman’s past and future business and law partners.”
The New York Post has reported that the hedge funds Silver Point Capital and Elliott Capital Management earned a combined $1.3 billion on the Delphi deal. Those profits came in late 2011 when Delphi emerged from government-mandated bankruptcy and launched its initial public offering.
Silver Point Capital’s ties to Wilson and Feldman may indicate something beyond a successful hedge fund investment.
Wilson, a Republican, was a Silver Point partner until August 2008 and later joined Obama’s Treasury Department. He was cited as a conservative who approved of the auto bailout process in an effort to give it a bipartisan feel.
He ran in 2010, as a Republican, for the office of New York state comptroller. His Democratic opponent, Tom DiNapoli, accused him of having “stand[ing] to personally benefit” from his role in the auto bailout.
“It certainly appears that Mr. Wilson steered the bailout to ensure that his former firm will make billions off his inside job at the Auto Bailout Task Force,” DiNapoli told the Buffalo News.
“Harry Wilson must explain his role in this deal. He must disclose how much he’s going to profit directly or indirectly from the taxpayer-funded bailout he negotiated. New Yorkers have the right to know just how much more money he’s going to make from the restructuring of GM. What Harry Wilson did is tantamount to self-dealing.” (RELATED: Private emails detail Obama admin involvement in cutting non-union worker pensions post-GM bailout)
Despite his August 2008 departure from Silver Point, personal financial disclosure forms Wilson filed with the New York Public Integrity Commission show the firm paid him at least $250,000 in 2009. The Buffalo News reported that he was on track to earn still more from Silver Point in 2010 and in 2011.
Feldman came to the Treasury Department from Willkie Farr & Gallagher — the law firm that represented Silver Point Capital as it angled for a cut of the bankrupt Delphi’s debt load.
He returned to the same law firm after leaving the Obama administration and remains there. Silver Point is presently among his clients.
Silver Point Capital’s ties to Wilson and Feldman may indicate something beyond a successful hedge fund investment.
Wilson, a Republican, was a Silver Point partner until August 2008 and later joined Obama’s Treasury Department. He was cited as a conservative who approved of the auto bailout process in an effort to give it a bipartisan feel.
He ran in 2010, as a Republican, for the office of New York state comptroller. His Democratic opponent, Tom DiNapoli, accused him of having “stand[ing] to personally benefit” from his role in the auto bailout.
“It certainly appears that Mr. Wilson steered the bailout to ensure that his former firm will make billions off his inside job at the Auto Bailout Task Force,” DiNapoli told the Buffalo News.
“Harry Wilson must explain his role in this deal. He must disclose how much he’s going to profit directly or indirectly from the taxpayer-funded bailout he negotiated. New Yorkers have the right to know just how much more money he’s going to make from the restructuring of GM. What Harry Wilson did is tantamount to self-dealing.”
Despite his August 2008 departure from Silver Point, personal financial disclosure forms Wilson filed with the New York Public Integrity Commission show the firm paid him at least $250,000 in 2009. The Buffalo News reported that he was on track to earn still more from Silver Point in 2010 and in 2011.
Feldman came to the Treasury Department from Willkie Farr & Gallagher — the law firm that represented Silver Point Capital as it angled for a cut of the bankrupt Delphi’s debt load.
He returned to the same law firm after leaving the Obama administration and remains there. Silver Point is presently among his clients.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/05/em...#ixzz2BYI9WPOQ
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/05/em...#ixzz2BYGwUwlt
SO TO SUMMARIZE: OBAMA'S GM BAILOUT LINED THE POCKETS OF HIS BUDDIES AT YOUR EXPENSE AND ALSO BROKE FEDERAL LAW BY TREATING UNION AND NON-UNION WORKERS DIFFERENTLY UNDER A BANKRUPTCY AND THE BANKRUPTCY WAS UNDULY INFLUENCED BY OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO FAVOR THE UNIONS WHILE SCREWING THE NON-UNION MEMBERS SO THAT THE OBAMA FOLKS COULD LINE THEIR POCKETS-NO WONDER THE SCUMBAGS IN OHIO VOTED FOR OBAMA-HE SCREWED NON-UNION MEMBERS WITH YOUR MONEY WHILE GIVING ILLEGAL TREATMENT TO UNION MEMBERS-THAT IS AGAINST FEDERAL LAW!!!
IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE EMAILS YOURSELF, HERE IS THE LINK: http://www.scribd.com/doc/104951036/...ils-2012-09-05
IMPEACH OBAMA IN 2012!!!!!
The White House is stonewalling three Congressional committees seeking to find out why GM bailout cash topped pensions of union workers while nonunion Delphi workers got stiffed. What are they hiding?
Something ugly is going on when an administration that claims always to be looking out for "the middle class" does a number on 21,000 quintessentially middle-class managers, engineers and secretaries at Delphi Corporation, the General Motors-affiliated auto parts manufacturer which got sucked down along with GM in the cratering of the auto industry.
As the bailout was hashed out, Delphi workers got their pensions cut as much as 70%, while the United Auto Workers and other unions were made whole.
How did this happen? None other than through White House and Treasury Department intervention.
Obama administration officials apparently muscled in on the work of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) — an independent pension agency for bankrupt companies that by law is not permitted to play favorites — and played favorites.
Emails obtained by dogged Daily Caller reporter Matthew Boyle show that the PBGC was "uninvited" to secretive meetings about what to do with worker pensions and the Treasury Department took over.
As a result, union workers were treated with favor, getting their pensions topped up to 100% in a special "voluntary" deal with GM premised on the fact that GM feared disruption of its supply lines (read: sabotage) while non-union workers got the shaft.
Well, some are now bankrupt, some in foreclosure, and some endure family break-ups as the massive stress of income cuts averaging 45% have taken their toll, according to retired Delphi engineer Bruce Gump, who spoke to IBD this week.
Now vice chairman of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association, his group is trying to gain equal treatment under the law.
"All of these words from the president and vice president — that if you work hard and play by the rules — have failed," Gump said. Obama administration officials have slammed doors in their faces, ignored their phone calls, and promised follow-ups at community meetings that never happened, he noted.
There have been popular demonstrations in Ohio and around the Midwest for the Delphi workers. That may be why Vice President Joe Biden, on a campaign stop last week in Ohio, mugged for the camera with a biker mama at a truck stop cafe as two toughs glared in a photo.
It made a news splash but what it really did was obscure the real news in Ohio that day — that hundreds of Delphi workers were in the streets demanding justice after Obama told them "you're on your own."
That's why three separate House committees all have found sufficient grounds for launching investigations into what they call the "closed door deals" around this Delphi deal.
The Obama administration is treating these committees with the same contempt it treats all congressional investigations, and already has missed its Sept. 7 deadline for delivering e-mails to one committee which could confirm what the Daily Caller reported — that Treasury and the White House were calling the shots on who would get a pension, and who would not.
As those emails dribble out, there's every indication that laws commanding equal treatment of all workers in bankruptcy and respecting the independence of the PBGC were broken. Obama officials are already on record as saying they were not responsible for treating workers unequally. But the emails suggest otherwise.
What does this say? It says that the $80 billion auto bailout that is now touted as a triumph by the Obama campaign was little more than a payout to Big Labor — one that came at the expense of non-union workers.
That's the truth that should see daylight, without another cover-up.
From The Daily Caller:
Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that former senior Treasury Department officials who orchestrated the 2009 auto industry bailout enriched their former employers and likely made personal financial gains from parts of the deal they negotiated. At issue is the termination of pension plans belonging to 20,000 non-union salaried retirees from Delphi Corporation.
Such self-dealing while an appointed member of a White House task force would violate federal law as well as an Ethics Pledge that an executive order from President Barack Obama said would apply to all appointees in the executive branch of the federal government from the date of his inauguration.
During the auto bailout, now former Treasury official Matt Feldman, Obama Auto Task Force adviser Harry Wilson and other administration officials drove the Delphi pension cutoffs for non-union retirees. Their actions violated a federal statute that identified the quasi-independent Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) as the only government entity legally empowered to initiate termination of a pension or make official movements toward doing so.
Since the bailout began, those officials have contradicted themselves in court filings, congressional testimony and press reports by claiming the PBGC, not they themselves, made the Delphi-related decisions. Internal emails TheDC published recently, however, indicate otherwise. (RELATED: Emails: Geithner, Treasury drove cutoff of non-union Delphi workers’ pensions)
Financial gain is one possible motivation for the actions of Feldman, Wilson and others.
“Politics appears to have played a role, but now we see a financial bias that could have played a role in the decision-making that could have benefitted their current and future business partners,” Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner told The Daily Caller in a phone interview.
“The more information we get about who was involved and who made these decisions, it’s clearer that bias was involved both politically and financially. This was just wrong. If the Delphi pensions had been made whole, it would have been a less financially attractive transaction for Wilson’s and Feldman’s past and future business and law partners.”
The New York Post has reported that the hedge funds Silver Point Capital and Elliott Capital Management earned a combined $1.3 billion on the Delphi deal. Those profits came in late 2011 when Delphi emerged from government-mandated bankruptcy and launched its initial public offering.
Silver Point Capital’s ties to Wilson and Feldman may indicate something beyond a successful hedge fund investment.
Wilson, a Republican, was a Silver Point partner until August 2008 and later joined Obama’s Treasury Department. He was cited as a conservative who approved of the auto bailout process in an effort to give it a bipartisan feel.
He ran in 2010, as a Republican, for the office of New York state comptroller. His Democratic opponent, Tom DiNapoli, accused him of having “stand[ing] to personally benefit” from his role in the auto bailout.
“It certainly appears that Mr. Wilson steered the bailout to ensure that his former firm will make billions off his inside job at the Auto Bailout Task Force,” DiNapoli told the Buffalo News.
“Harry Wilson must explain his role in this deal. He must disclose how much he’s going to profit directly or indirectly from the taxpayer-funded bailout he negotiated. New Yorkers have the right to know just how much more money he’s going to make from the restructuring of GM. What Harry Wilson did is tantamount to self-dealing.” (RELATED: Private emails detail Obama admin involvement in cutting non-union worker pensions post-GM bailout)
Despite his August 2008 departure from Silver Point, personal financial disclosure forms Wilson filed with the New York Public Integrity Commission show the firm paid him at least $250,000 in 2009. The Buffalo News reported that he was on track to earn still more from Silver Point in 2010 and in 2011.
Feldman came to the Treasury Department from Willkie Farr & Gallagher — the law firm that represented Silver Point Capital as it angled for a cut of the bankrupt Delphi’s debt load.
He returned to the same law firm after leaving the Obama administration and remains there. Silver Point is presently among his clients.
Silver Point Capital’s ties to Wilson and Feldman may indicate something beyond a successful hedge fund investment.
Wilson, a Republican, was a Silver Point partner until August 2008 and later joined Obama’s Treasury Department. He was cited as a conservative who approved of the auto bailout process in an effort to give it a bipartisan feel.
He ran in 2010, as a Republican, for the office of New York state comptroller. His Democratic opponent, Tom DiNapoli, accused him of having “stand[ing] to personally benefit” from his role in the auto bailout.
“It certainly appears that Mr. Wilson steered the bailout to ensure that his former firm will make billions off his inside job at the Auto Bailout Task Force,” DiNapoli told the Buffalo News.
“Harry Wilson must explain his role in this deal. He must disclose how much he’s going to profit directly or indirectly from the taxpayer-funded bailout he negotiated. New Yorkers have the right to know just how much more money he’s going to make from the restructuring of GM. What Harry Wilson did is tantamount to self-dealing.”
Despite his August 2008 departure from Silver Point, personal financial disclosure forms Wilson filed with the New York Public Integrity Commission show the firm paid him at least $250,000 in 2009. The Buffalo News reported that he was on track to earn still more from Silver Point in 2010 and in 2011.
Feldman came to the Treasury Department from Willkie Farr & Gallagher — the law firm that represented Silver Point Capital as it angled for a cut of the bankrupt Delphi’s debt load.
He returned to the same law firm after leaving the Obama administration and remains there. Silver Point is presently among his clients.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/05/em...#ixzz2BYI9WPOQ
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/05/em...#ixzz2BYGwUwlt
SO TO SUMMARIZE: OBAMA'S GM BAILOUT LINED THE POCKETS OF HIS BUDDIES AT YOUR EXPENSE AND ALSO BROKE FEDERAL LAW BY TREATING UNION AND NON-UNION WORKERS DIFFERENTLY UNDER A BANKRUPTCY AND THE BANKRUPTCY WAS UNDULY INFLUENCED BY OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO FAVOR THE UNIONS WHILE SCREWING THE NON-UNION MEMBERS SO THAT THE OBAMA FOLKS COULD LINE THEIR POCKETS-NO WONDER THE SCUMBAGS IN OHIO VOTED FOR OBAMA-HE SCREWED NON-UNION MEMBERS WITH YOUR MONEY WHILE GIVING ILLEGAL TREATMENT TO UNION MEMBERS-THAT IS AGAINST FEDERAL LAW!!!
IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE EMAILS YOURSELF, HERE IS THE LINK: http://www.scribd.com/doc/104951036/...ils-2012-09-05
IMPEACH OBAMA IN 2012!!!!!
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