Free Republic

The debate between VP nominees Joe Biden and Paul Ryan reminded me of the debates I've had over the years with left-wingers on my radio show and privately. Left-wingers think nothing of lying and playing dirty because they believe in power and in the principle that anything goes to keep their power. Regarding the Biden-Ryan debate I read a post-debate tweet from a left-wing talk show host who claimed that Biden "creamed" Ryan. From a left prospective he is right. Biden did everything he could to dominate the debate and to stop Ryan from talking including constant rude interruptions and...

Cronyism: Did the Obama administration stiff a group of non-union workers and pay off a political ally in the 2009 auto bailout? Yes, it did, says the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. When the administration turned General Motors into Government Motors in 2009's M&A of the automaker, it made sure that retirees from Delphi Corp. who were members of the United Auto Workers didn't lose a dime from their pensions. The White House, though, was not as generous with the nonunion retirees from GM's parts supplier. Roughly 22,000 Delphi retirees who were salaried employees and not members...

President Obama called for a "new economic patriotism" during last night's presidential debate. Well, hold on to your wallets as this new buzz phrase seems to be a euphemism for "wealth redistribution." Just ask old General Motors bondholders or non-unionized Delphi retirees about how Obama's so-called "shared sacrifices" are more about cronyism than patriotism. President Obama is campaigning on a platform that constantly touts everyone "paying a fair share and having a fair shot." Unfortunately for those that do not belong to a politically-favored class, the Obama Administration gets to determine what is fair. This was evidenced during the GM...

President Barack Obama’s administration is sharing credit for the 2009 auto bailout with the George W. Bush administration, as pieces of the Delphi salaried retirees pension scandal start to come under fire from three different House committees. “Current and former Treasury officials have explained in congressional testimony in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 that the previous administration provided temporary loans to General Motors and Chrysler to avoid uncontrolled liquidations of these companies at a time when our economy and financial system were already severely stressed,” Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Alastair Fitzpayne wrote in a Sept. 24 letter to House...

DAYTON, Ohio — From the bed of a Ford pickup truck outside a now-dilapidated former Delphi auto parts plant here, Mary Miller called for transparency from President Barack Obama over the “theft of our pensions.” Miller, a self-described “divorced mother of four young adults,” and about 200 Delphi salaried retirees gathered at the shuttered auto plant in Dayton last Thursday morning to ask President Obama to right the wrongs they believe his administration inflicted upon them during the 2009 auto industry bailout. The Obama administration terminated the pensions, health care and life insurance of more than 20,000 Delphi retirees during...

Republican House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp demanded Wednesday that the U.S. Treasury Department and the Obama administration release records connected to an emerging scandal surrounding autoworker pensions terminated during the auto bailout. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) and the Treasury Department axed pensions in 2009 for 20,000 non-union salaried retirees who worked for Delphi. (Snip) Those emails demonstrate that Geithner and his Treasury Department were the driving force, and contradict sworn testimony in which several Obama administration figures have said that the decision to terminate the pensions came from the PBGC.

Matthew Boyle of the Daily Caller reports that internal emails show Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was “the driving force” behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 non-union retirees from the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company, as part of the government’s bailout plan for General Motors.  Union workers, on the other hand, “saw their pensions topped off and made whole.” This decision was supposed to be made by the independent Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which is meant to be free of political influence, so it can represent the interests of private-sector pensioners.Instead, the Daily Caller unearthed a string of emails that show...

My column today contrasts the phony Romney-killed-a-steelworker’s-wife fable from Obama’s sleazy SuperPAC with the actual stories of economic havoc that Obama’s union-pandering administration wrought on thousands of Delphi workers.**snip**Chutzpah overload in full effect: President Obama’s sleazy super-PAC, run by his former White House spokesman Bill Burton, just released an ad accusing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney of causing the cancer death of a steelworker’s wife.**snip**While Team Obama promotes fables to indict Romney, the incontrovertible stories of the current administration’s economic malpractice are finally getting out. In 2010, I first reported on how Obama’s UAW bailout threw tens of thousands of...

Chutzpah overload in full effect: President Obama's sleazy super-PAC, run by his former White House spokesman Bill Burton, just released an ad accusing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney of causing the cancer death of a steelworker's wife. It's not just a slanderous and false attack. It's a foolish attempt to camouflage the administration's massive jobs death toll, politicized pension plundering and Big Labor bailout cronyism. And it will backfire big time because the thousands and thousands of true victims of Obama's economic wreckage are speaking up and fighting back. Let's dispense with the "Romney = murderer" meme first. The warped...

A new video advertisement from conservative advocacy group Let Freedom Ring features the stories of several Delphi salaried retirees, who lost their pensions at the hand of the Secretary Tim Geithner’s Department of Treasury. “I would ask President Obama why I had no rights and he had all the rights to take my pension away and never ever look back and say not only did I take it from Mary Miller, but I took it from 20,000 other people and their families,” one Delphi salaried retiree, Mary Miller, says in the ad. “It’s made life pretty rough. I’ve really struggled...

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...

President Barack Obama’s former auto industry adviser and two former Treasury Department officials cracked at the last minute before a House oversight committee subcommittee hearing and agreed to stop stonewalling an investigation into alleged union favoritism during the administration’s General Motors bailout. Ron Bloom, Obama’s former auto czar, and former Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson have refused to give interviews to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) about their roles in topping up pensions for union workers while non-union workers lost nearly their entire pensions. The Treasury Department’s actions during the auto bailout...

One of the most egregious abuses of the Obama Administration's auto bailouts was the blatant favoritism evidenced in the treatment of Delphi (General Motors' parts supplier) retirees. After the Delphi bankruptcy, UAW retirees had their pensions "topped off" by General Motors, apparently with taxpayer money accessed through TARP. While the UAW retirees maintained their pension benefits, non-union, salaried retirees of Delphi lost theirs. There was no logical reason for one group to have their pensions saved while another group lost theirs, just the facts that the distributions were inequitable and the only difference between the groups was that one belonged...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Cheryl in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where the Indianapolis Colts' flags are at half-mast. CALLER: (chuckles) Hi, Rush. RUSH: Hi. CALLER: Thanks for taking my call. RUSH: You bet. CALLER: I wanted to talk about the crony capitalism from a personal standpoint for myself. My husband was an engineer with Delphi, which is part of GM. And when the bankruptcy was taken care of and the auto bailouts and the whole thing that Obama's so proud of, what most people don't know is what happened to the salaried retirees from Delphi in the whole deal. The union people...

...we are seeing citizens being invited to “participate” in various forms of meetings...to “help determine” public policy in one field or another. They are supposedly being included to get ”input” from the public ... in one of these meetings... ...you will find that there is already someone designated to lead or “facilitate” the meeting. ... Actually, he or she is there for exactly the opposite reason: to see that the conclusions reached during the meeting are in accord with a plan already decided upon by those who called the meeting. The process used to “facilitate” the meeting is called the...

The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues. The contract calls for the development of "Persona Management Software" which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.Click here to view the government contract (PDF)According to the contract, the software would "protect the identity of government agencies" by employing a number...

In the 1960s, I came across a small training manual distributed by the Communist Party that showed how a small group of people – as few as four – could dominate a much larger group and sway the outcome of any action taken by that group. It was called the Diamond Technique. The principle is based on the fact that people in groups tend to be effected by mass psychology. They derive comfort and security from being aligned with the majority, especially if controversy or conflict is involved. Even if they do not like what the majority is doing, if...

Lights, camera, Acropolis! Officials in cash-strapped Greece approved a cheaper pricing plan meant to lure film crews and photographers to its historic attractions — including the home of the Parthenon. The Greek culture ministry slashed the cost of a one-day film shoot at the Acropolis by more than half, from more than $5,000 a day to about $2,050. The rate for photographers was cut by roughly one-third, from $385 a day to $256. The reduced rates come with a plan to speed up approval of the permits.

The unprecedented intrusion of the executive branch of the US government into the American auto industry when the Obama Administration orchestrated the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcy processes is now leading to unprecedented responses. Groups that were clearly discriminated against and had their rights subordinated to politically powerful unions may actually have a winnable case against our own government as lawsuits are being brought against the US Treasury Dept. and others.The Delphi salaried retirees who saw their pension benefits disintegrate after the GM bankruptcy are now suing the US Treasury, the Auto Task Force, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and ex-Auto...

Is anybody who filled out the DoD DADT survey surprised at the announcement of its results? The questions made the outcome a foregone conclusion. My question is this: isn't the very fact that those who were most against repeal are the ones who do what militaries are made for - fight - a perfect reason to keep the ban in effect? Colonel, USAFR