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POPSGoodbye, GM ...by Michael Moore
MM knows of which he writes 1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated. We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million dagger
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POPSUnconstitutional: Obama Seizes Private Businesses (Update) Think of this for a moment, your private dentist, or doctor, has been treating you for way ten years, along comes that warm fuzzy sounding “”Health Insurance for everyone”, where the Government comes into your dentist’s office, or your Doctor, and tells them, you must now practice out of this facility under this agency or you must stop practicing medicine/Dentistry, thereby forcing the closure of their private business. Its coming folks. The Federal Government is acting in a blatantly unconstitutional manner, and no one seems to be talking about it. The silence in the mainstream Media is nothing short of thundering. The Government is seizing private businesses, and this is just the start. Is this the hope and change you voted for? Government seizing private business? This is not hope. It’s the wanton destruction of the very thing that makes us a free people, the Constitution of the United States. 10th Amendment, 5th Amendment
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POPSOne Chrysler Dealer Who's Not Taking His Shutdown Without Setting Record Straight FItzgerald is smart, articulate, critical and offers advice to the "failed management" at both Chrysler and GM. Well worth a look and listen. Fitzgerald says he's bugged automakers to improve their consumer ratings for 20 years and, according to the Washington Times, has letters from former GM CEO Rick Wagoner and former DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche to prove it. Here's what Zetsche wrote to Fitzgerald in 2001: "We're putting a lot of effort into increasing the reliability and quality of our vehicles, which we're expecting will result in ... even more favorable ratings from Consumer Reports." In the magazine's April issue, which includes rankings of 2009 models, Chrysler was the lowest-rated automaker. GM was second lowest.
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POPSYou Won't Believe Where That $700-Billion Bailout Figure Came From "We just wanted to choose a really large number." Carl Lavin over at Forbes.com, points out a fascinating paragraph buried in a story on his website late last week by Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun. Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun 09.23.08, 6:39 PM ET The more Congress examines the Bush administration's bailout plan, the hazier its outcome gets. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing Tuesday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle complained of being rushed to pass legislation or else risk financial meltdown. In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy. "It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number." http://www.forbes.com/businessinthebeltway/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html
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POPSPaperToys These are Really good. find 1 and print it if you don't believe me
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POPSA Brief History of White House Thuggery
"Keep up the heat" translated into Organizing for America/Democratic National Committee attack ads on moderate Democrats who have revolted against Obamacare's high costs and expansive government powers over medical decisions. Looks like there won't be a health care beer summit anytime soon. The CBO and the Blue Dogs got off easy compared to inspectors general targeted by Team Obama goons. Former AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin was slimed as mentally incompetent ("confused" and "disoriented") after blowing the whistle on several cases of community service tax fraud, including the case of Obama crony Kevin Johnson. Johnson is the NBA star turned Sacramento mayor who ran a federally funded nonprofit group employing AmeriCorps volunteers, who were exploited to perform campaign work for Johnson and to provide personal services (car washes, errands) to Johnson and his staff. Walpin filed suit last week to get his job back -- and to defend the integrity and independence
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POPS“Nobody Wants To Take On The White House . . . . " While our sacred Constitution grants him no such authority, Obama has had no trouble firing the head of General Motors, rewarding union “activists” with control of Chrysler, unilaterally forcing health care executives to forego $2 trillion (with a “T) in future revenue, implicitly telling Citigroup and Bank of America that they must fire their CEO’s, and blackmail, extort, or threaten the state of California that unless it restores wage cuts to a union, he will rescind billions in already granted stimulus money. Four months into his presidency and Obama has removed all doubt that he is the most “activist” president of our lifetimes. He is an activist president who demonstrates his leftist leanings with almost every action and non-action. One such non-action being his decision not to reject or correct America-bashing strongmen Hugo Chavez or Daniel Ortega at last month’s Summit of the Americas. Why?
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POPS Stiffing GM's Creditors Will Backfire The Law: Sure as the sun rises, the U.S. government's manhandling of GM and Chrysler bondholders will ripple outward, striking not only companies and their creditors but the very basis for U.S. power and prosperity. Historians pinpoint the beginnings of U.S. power at 1811, with the liquidation of the First Bank of the United States, founded by Alexander Hamilton. Amid the winds of the War of 1812, First Bank ignored political pressure and insisted that even British bondholders, from the nation the U.S. was preparing to fight, be paid in full. The debt was paid because that was the law. This single act reverberated for years. Word got back to Europe that the word of this fledgling country was good, even with enemies. As a result, European capital to finance the great steamships, railroads and other engines of American growth flowed. "The return of their funds became an important chapter in American finance because it showed that the government was willing . . .
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POPSIn The Messiah's Fantasy World Of Rainbows & Unicorns In the Messiah’s world I guess Germany would be a valid example of going green if it was sustainable and if they were not dismantling a great deal of it at this time. The currently generate 15% of their energy through renewable sources. As it turns out Germany has neither much sun nor much wind and renewable energy companies are mostly on the government dole at a huge expense to the country. Sounds Obama-like with some sort of thing they call a “feed-in-tariff” whereby the producers are guaranteed a price 7 times higher than the wholesale rate for the next 20 years. The German electricity bill went up 38% in one year in 2007. And the Germans have discovered that renewable energy is very inefficient in all respects thus it will always be tremendously costly compared to other forms of power. And what about the Obama fantasy called cap-and-trade which is also a disaster in Europe.
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POPSAre Republican car dealers getting picked on? Well, no, despite what you may have read in the right-wing blogs. The % of shuttered dealers who are Republicans is the same as the % of still-open dealers who are Republicans. Fact is, a lot of car dealers are Republicans.
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POPSObama Threatens To Smear Investors In Chrysler Somebody needs to pursue what’s going on in the White House behind the scenes, and stop playing games and making nice. American citizens, whatever walk of life they’re in, should not be threatened by the White House. (They) should not be told, “We’re going to drag you through the mud with the White House press corps.” So confident is the White House that they have the White House press corps wrapped around their little finger. …. Do you know how much of this must be going on in the shadows, with the banks and the financial systems? What must be going on with one business after another, threatening them, warning them, punishing them? We’ve got a little mob activity going on in that Oval Office, ladies and gentlemen, a little mob activity.
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POPSObama's theft... What is this man doing? Will he & Congress completely bankrupt our Country and destroy all of our futures?
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POPSWho Would the Teabaggers Hate More Than Obama - Reagan
From the article: The graph looks at total federal debt (blue line) and debt as a percentage of GDP (red line). Obviously World War II represented a significant period of the spending with the government taking on debt (much of it in the form of war bonds) to finance the war (see the redline which represents debt as percentage of GDP). This high debt load was unwound over the following decades. In 1981 this downward trend reverses and begins to rocket back upward. That upward trend is not arrested until 1994 when it flattens and starts a downward trend until 2001 when it starts to climb up again. During the 1980s the debt blossomed from $700 billion to nearly $3 trillion establishing a credit card bill so high (in comparison to near-term past decades) as to engender America with a "fuck it" attitude. The teabag argument that high deficit spending leads to inevitable tax hikes has credibility. George H. W. Bush who was the president immediately after this period was forced to
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POPS Banana Republic Part II One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight. That's how hard it is to stand on this side of the fence. Beckman: Was that Perella Weinberg? Lauria: That was Perella Weinberg. There is a pattern here. Financial institutions holding billions of Chrysler's secured debt are being held hostage by the TARP loans they are not permitted to pay back. They are being forced to accept just pennies on the dollar for loans they made in good faith less than two years ago. Just like mob loan sharks, the administration wants them under its thumb so they can extort more and more concessions.
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POPSDealergate: 40 Democrat-Friendly Dealerships Become 42 After The Dust Settles; Their Competition Gut advise her husband on who to protect and who to punish. Democratic donor Sidney Deboer is Chairman of Lithia Motors. He donated over $14,000 to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). Lithia Motors lost only two of its 29 dealerships while gaining as many as five additional ones in the resulting carnage. A quick review of the Dealmaker Auto Group reveals the following, uhm, issues: * Watertown Daily Times: HSBC: dealer owes $10.2m: Lender says DealMaker Auto Group defaulted on loans, notes from 2006... A commercial lender is seeking a $10.2 million judgment against DealMaker Auto Group, claiming that the car dealership defaulted on a series of loans and notes provided in 2006. Watertown Daily Times: DealMaker implements companywide procedural training: In the wake of an investigation by the state attorney general that cost the company $2 million in payments, DealMaker Auto Group has begun an aggressive training campaign . . . .
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POPSWH Threats to Chrysler Creditors Confirmed What keeps going through my mind at this point, though, is what will the bankruptcy judge do? Judge Arthur Gonzalez has 200 years of bankruptcy law precedent that he applies with every bankruptcy that comes before him. Will he follow the law this time, which says these secured creditors get paid first and in full or as much as they can be, or will he bow to the pressure from the White House? Can you imagine the firestorm if he actually upholds the law and tells Obambi to take a hike? He will get every leftist anal analyst in the country after him.
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POPSCronyism in My Hometown A must read letter by the president of a local Dodge dealer. In the past year, we have embarked on several creative initiatives in order to remain profitable and out of bankruptcy court. Though Dodge district sales are down by about 50%, our new vehicle sales actually increased comparing April 2008 and April 2009. Though I am a Washington, DC-educated attorney and former employee of the US Department of Labor and the US Senate and an active advocate of the American way of life, it is difficult for me to view this abrogation of our franchise rights as anything more than a manipulation of US bankruptcy court and law so that Chrysler LLC can transfer wealth between dealers they like and those they dislike, those that have agreed to under-table favors and those that haven't, and to settle old vendettas. This is not the purpose of US bankruptcy protection and, surely, it isn't why the US Treasury has given billions to Chrysler to keep them in business.
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