Posted on 03/28/2010 10:37:37 AM PDT by American Dream 246
Dems Threaten Congressional Show Trials After US Companies Leak Real Economic Damage of Obamacare
Late last week several US corporations leaked how the democrat’s health care bill will kill their businesses. The radicals in Congress were not pleased that these corporations would go public with this devastating information. In response, democrats threatened to call for Congressional show trials to publicly humiliate these corporations. The Wall Street Journal reported:
It’s been a banner week for Democrats: ObamaCare passed Congress in its final form on Thursday night, and the returns are already rolling in. Yesterday AT&T announced that it will be forced to make a $1 billion writedown due solely to the health bill, in what has become a wave of such corporate losses.
This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or “political.”
…Henry Waxman and House Democrats announced yesterday that they will haul these companies in for an April 21 hearing because their judgment “appears to conflict with independent analyses, which show that the new law will expand coverage and bring down costs.”
In other words, shoot the messenger. Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. Should these companies have played chicken with the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid this politically inconvenient reality? Democrats don’t like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet.
On top of AT&T’s $1 billion, the writedown wave so far includes Deere & Co., $150 million; Caterpillar, $100 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; and Valero Energy, up to $20 million. Verizon has also warned its employees about its new higher health-care costs, and there will be many more in the coming days and weeks.
The last paragraph says it all about the democrat’s trickery:
The Democratic political calculation with ObamaCare is the proverbial boiling frog: Gradually introduce a health-care entitlement by hiding the true costs, hook the middle class on new subsidies until they become unrepealable, but try to delay the adverse consequences and major new tax hikes so voters don’t make the connection between their policy and the economic wreckage. But their bill was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected.
Byron York at The Washington Examiner has more on the show trials.
Waxman is also demanding that the executives give lawmakers internal company documents related to health care finances — a move one committee Republicans describes as “an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents of the Democrats’ flawed health care reform legislation.”
…Waxman has ordered the executives to explain themselves at an April 21 hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative subcommittee. That subcommittee just happens to be chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who held out his vote on health care reform until a few hours before final passage on March 21, giving the bill’s opponents the unfounded hope that he might vote against it.
Waxman’s demands came Friday in letters to several executives. “After the president signed the health care reform bill into law, your company announced that provisions in the law could adversely affect your ability to provide health insurance,” Waxman wrote to Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T. A few hours before Waxman sent his letter, AT&T announced it will take a $1 billion charge against earnings because of the tax provision in the new health bill. AT&T also said it will be “evaluating prospective changes” to its health care benefits for all workers…
Waxman’s request could prove particularly troubling for the companies. The executives will undoubtedly view such documents as confidential, but if they fail to give Waxman everything he wants, they run the risk of subpoenas and threats from the chairman. And all as punishment for making a business decision in light of a new tax situation.
These democrats in Washington are nothing but thugs. They’ll try anything to keep the truth from coming out about their disastrous legislation.
They think they can get a lot of milage out of casting these companies as cruel and heartless and only concerned about profit rather than the lives of the retirees who worked so long and hard to make the company prosperous.
I predict that along with the honchos at these companies, there will be panels of retirees offering sob story after sob story about how this is action is going to ruin their lives and the lives of their families because they won’t be able to get or afford the necessary treatment.
The sob stories are what we’ll see night after night on the DBM. We won’t see the case being made about how Ovomitcare is forcing them to make the choices of either continuing to pay exorbitant health care costs, lay off employees or close their business. The rational arguments will lose to the emotional human element. Democrats are expecting this and will have a steady parade of victims out there to tug on heart strings.
Adding this to THUG-O-CRAT hit list
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2464640/posts?page=5
Come on corporations. Get up and show your brass.
Let them.
If handled correct, it would expose more of the corruption than it would help their cause.
That’s beginning to happen. It could escalate. Corporations are seeing their lifes’ work go up in flames. With their backs to the wall, they might fight back more for a change.
Bring on the popcorn!
“Anyone ever heard of the first amendment?”
Since the evolving and “breathing” of our Constitution, that only covers the freedom of nude and lewd expression.
Stalin would have loved Waxman. If Stalin was around now, Waxman would be his personal buttboy.
If they go that route they need to go full bore and have a complete and detailed presentation with support documentation. Just like the communists demanded in the letter.
...and just as they are walking into the meeting release the entire presentation on their respective websites and send it via email and snail mailed DVD to every major media outlet on the planet as well as every major magazine HQ and every single decent sized newspaper. Four or five hundred copies sent out ought to do it.
Then publish the "we sent it to..." list as well.
The communists will screech, squirm, wail and lie but it will not do a bit of good. Even the DU crowd will figure out they have been screwed.
219 days…
They might even be scared to fly in jets or SUVs. They’ll probably drive in on hybrids and THEN I hope the corporations sock it to’em!
So, is there a general trend here along the lines of “are we really going to have an election in November...?”
Democrats are trying to scare these corporations out of giving more cash to the opposition. This is just their way of doing it. I doubt that the SC can do much for it unless the Waxmans in congress are trying to find a way to trump up criminal charges against some of these CEOs.
What can congress (or individual jackasses like Waxman) do with subpoenas, anyway?
If I were an exec. at one of those MANY companies ordered to show up, I would simply not go — NO ONE should show up.
These companies did nothing to oppose the legislation, they have a legal obligation to report these effects to their shareholders.
But hey let’s turn the whole country upside down to support the communist revolution.
I would suggest we, the taxpayers/citizens stand behind the big corporations — contact them ASAP to let them know we support their efforts to fight this insanity. It might help them to know everyone out here doesn’t view them as the big bad companies who are out to do harm to the little guy.
RE: “I wonder how many of the CEOs of these companies gave money to zero?”
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No doubt some of them DID — they must be kicking themselves now.
“Bring it on you morons!!!”
We all know who would come out on the losing end in this deal. Bring it ooooonnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!1
RE: “The Democrat Party continues to show us all they are nothing more than a criminal enterprise, if for no other reason than what they did to the black family. To claim otherwise merely shows self delusion.”
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I’m not sure it’s the entire Democrat party, but it sure IS this current thug-ridden marxist administration.
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