The Daily Caller reports that emails obtained under FOIA show that these statements made under oath appear to be false--that the Treasury Department and the White House were actively involved in the decision, and in violation of federal law, the PBGC was not involved in the decision:
Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company.
The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions.
The internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts about the sequence of events surrounding the termination of those non-union pensions, and that administration figures violated federal law.
Delphi, a General Motors company, is one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers. Twenty thousand of its workers lost nearly their entire pensions when the government bailed out GM. At the same time, Delphi employees who were members of the United Auto Workers union saw their pensions topped off and made whole.
One of the biggest flaws in the design of our national government is that the President appoints the Attorney-General -- and thus, the chief law enforcement officer of the land owes his job to someone is responsible for enforcing the laws, and appoints other officials who may nor may not obey the law.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/07/emails-geithner-treasury-drove-cutoff-of-non-union-delphi-workers-pensions/#ixzz22tbz31y0
I would like to think that the 20,000 Delphi non-union retirees, and their relatives, would be a powerful set of votes against Obama in November, but I am sure that many of them have already rationalized why it okay to vote for someone who gave them a lethal financial blow, rather than vote for that rich guy Romney.
I'm sure you understand the rationalization of Obama and his union supporters that anyone who is non-union deserves to be burned for not being a member of the brotherhood or sisterhood! Or in other words the Delphi folks deserved what they got as they are stinking scabs according to the UAW. It was punishment for not being in the Union plain and simple.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was a member of the Teamsters for ~30 years and was royally screwed by both the management of the company and the union. This was in LA county, CA so opting out of the union wasn't an option. This was in a manufacturing plant and my Dad was an industrial maintenance mechanic--always thought it was odd they were Teamsters as the rest of the local was RTD/OCTD bus drivers, UPS and other delivery drivers, trash, etc. In any case the corruption was amazing!
Now I suspect the Union might have been punishing my Dad for not being a Democrat. Don't know for sure as he never told me if he might have made the mistake of letting that fact out and as he died a long time ago of lung cancer at age 52 I can't ask him now, but boy they sure treated him like crap though they promised a hit would be made if that plant manager didn't stop screwing my dad over! Of course nothing was ever done....
They kept my Dad's pension (my parents were divorced) so I have no love for those SOB's. I had just shortly before stopped being homeless and my younger sister is disabled so that money would have commed in handy.
The Teamsters sure put out glossy magazines and newspapers in the 70's and 80's about why members should vote for Carter and later Mondale and why Reagan was the devil. I saw that garbage come in the mail to my Dad every election cycle.
What alternative to presidential appointment of the Attorney General would you have?
ReplyDeleteOr to presidential appointment of U.S. District Attorneys?
Would you have Federal prosecutions in the hands of non-elected, "non-partisan" officeholders? Any scheme for the selection of such persons could easily be captured by a faction. Note how the "non-partisan", "merit-based" Missouri Plan for appointing judges has been captured by trial lawyers and Democrats.
Then the Justice Department's prosecutorial/investigative functions would become a bastion of the faction that controlled it. When that faction was in power, it would enjoy complete immunity from Federal prosecution; if its opponents ever were in power, they would be hamstrung by Justice.
At least under the present system, a party winning the Presidency can clean house at Justice, and remove the other side's partisans.
Or should the AG and prosecutors be appointed like Federal judges? The present condition of the U.S. judiciary suggests that could be very dangerous.
In any case, the Obama DoJ has not been as bad as it could be. I note that they have indicted several black Democrat politicians for corruption, and they don't seem to be ginning up bogus prosecutions of Republicans.
I rather like the idea of electing the Attorney General separately from the President, as is common at the state level.
ReplyDelete