A sign of President Obama's contempt for his fellow citizens is the way he repeatedly puts out lies that are so ridiculously transparent.
The president traveled to Ohio last week to try and shore up his flagging support in the Buckeye State and made a huge deal out of the 'success story' of the government bailout and gifting to the unions of GM and Chrysler.
The president's talking point on Chrysler was this:
“Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency — and it repaid that money six years ahead of schedule. And this week, we reached a deal to sell our remaining stake. That means soon, Chrysler will be 100 percent in private hands.”
Gleen Kessler over at the WAPO's Fact Checker blog tears this one apart:
Wow, “every dime and more” sounds like such a bargain. Not only did Chrysler pay back the loan, with interest — but the company paid back even more than they owed. Isn’t America great or what?
Not so fast. The president snuck in the weasel words “during my presidency” in his statement. What does that mean?
According to the White House, Obama is counting only the $8.5 billion loan that he made to Chrysler, not the $4 billion that President George W. Bush extended in his last month in office. However, Obama was not a disinterested observer at the time. According to The Washington Post article on the Bush loan, the incoming president called Bush’s action a “necessary step . . . to help avoid a collapse of our auto industry that would have had devastating consequences for our economy and our workers.”
Under the administration’s math, the U.S. government will receive $11.2 billion back from Chrysler, far more than the $8.5 billion Obama extended.
Through this sleight-of-hand accounting, the White House can conveniently ignore Bush’s loan, but even the Treasury Department admits that U.S. taxpayers will not recoup about $1.3 billion of the entire $12.5 billion investment when all is said and done.
The White House justifies not counting the Bush money because, it says, that money was completely spent when Obama was making a tough political decision on whether to extend another loan. In other words, a decision to do nothing at the time would have resulted in the immediate loss of the $4 billion that Bush had extended.
This is chicanery. Under the president’s math, Chrysler paid back 100 percent of Obama’s loan and less than 70 percent of Bush’s loan. A more honest presentation would combine the two figures to say U.S. taxpayers got back 90 percent of what they invested. In fact, that is how the Treasury and other administration officials frequently portray it; it is just when Obama speaks that the numbers get so squishy.
The White House justifies saying that Chrysler will be in 100 percent “in private hands” because there will no longer be government ownership once Fiat completes its purchase of the U.S. stake. For the record, the United Auto Workers will own 46 percent of the company.
And this is just Chrysler. I've already covered the relevant details on GM previously. The gifting of the company to the UAW, the disenfranchisement of private equity holders, the dumping of stock at the US taxpayer's expense that would land a private company in jail, that $45.4 billion dollar tax credit against future profits at the American taxpayer's expense, the entire deal for both companies was structured for one purpose and one purpose only.
And that purpose had nothing to do with recouping the bail out money for the American taxpayer.
No, the real winners by far were the coffers of the United Auto Workers...and ultimately, the Democrats at election time, who will grab their share of the swag in campaign contributions.
Because that's where a big chunk of any profits coming from the UAW's equity in Government Motors will go, recycled straight into the Democrat party and President Obama as political donations.
It's the same sort of scam the Democrats have run with the public employee unions for years, getting the taxpayers regardless of political affiliation to subsidize the Democrats political efforts while the Democrats throw ever bigger contracts at the unions in exchange for ever bigger kickbacks.
It's the old Tammany Hall model, and it never changes.
when i read about this, it was not for the funny munny issue, but the fact that fiat will now own chrysler.
ReplyDeletein hussein's view, it doesn't make any difference, either US gov't owned or foreign owned. just not privately owned by US citizens.
How do the Republicans or any political party for that matter compete with the Democrats when the Democrats have such amssive structural aedvantages as this? With structrual advantages like this the Democrats should control 95+% of legislative positions.
ReplyDeleteYet while the Democrats control the government bueracracy, the public education system grades K-12, the professorships, administration, and management positions of the major universities, the IRS, the CIA, the FBI the publishing industry, and the news media they still do not have 95+% of the legislative positions. Perhaps the Republicans have survived by being "Democrat lite." The Repubicans have often been accuesd of being the "party of stupid." Perhaps this is inaccurate. Maybe they are simply "going along to get along." They may need to do this in order to survive. Its hard to imagine how anyone could expect to overcome the massive structural advantages the Democrats have and survive otherwise.
The unions are really for all intents and purposes part of the government. When "experts" talk about fixing the economy, it always seems to focus on sacrficies the investors and the "prviate sector" must make. For example, the bondholders need to be willing to "take a haircut" and things of that nature. It never focuses on what sacrifices the governemtn or its interests must give up. Perhaps the investors should "teke a haircut." The unions and the rest of the government should as well.
Until something is done to tackle the regulatory beast and the runaway entitlements, it seems unlikely we will be able to fix our economy. We can't simply focus on "taxing the rich" and forcing investors to "take haircuts."
Now there MAY just be a way to get our economy moving in the right direction AND keep all entitlements. IF we open up ALL of our oil and gas reserves for extraction, undertake a massive refinery building project, utilize coal to oil technologies, and relax most of the onerous regualtions thak make it extremely difficult, if not imposssible, to maunfacture things in America, this would generate MASSIVE numbers of high paying union jobs. It woudl also result in a massive addtion in taxes paid into the government. We just MIGHT generate enough tax reveune to keep all entitlements in place.
If only we could get the someone to stand up to the regulatory beast, it might work. I think its unlikely we could generate enough tax revenue to cover all entitlemtnts with this plan but it does give us a fighting chance, since we seem bound and determeined to keep our entitlements. After all it seems unlikely the Chinese and others will keep extending credit to us for an indefinite period of time.
Also, withdraw ALL military and intellegence personnel from the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. This would result in massive savings for the governemnt. Doing this has enormous political benefits to the politicians who would suggest it and actually work toward implementing and it has almost no cost. I must admit to be puzzled as to why this part has not been done yet.
After the withdrawl the next phase will have to be deploy the forces returning to America to our borders. Doing this will give them a fighting chance to defend our country and it will be far less costly than what we are currently doing. Not only that but it will much more effective for our national security!!