Free Republic

Newark mayor Cory Booker may have been reduced to filming “hostage videos” in which he apologizes for throwing sharp spikes of reason and temperance beneath the madly spinning wheels of the Obama re-election bus, but the Booker Insurgency continues to grow. Harold Ford Jr., formerly a Democrat congressman from Tennessee, was welcomed to the ranks on Monday. Ford was no small-time back-bencher. He took a credible shot at wrestling House leadership away from Nancy Pelosi, and served as leader of the Democratic Leadership Council - a now-forgotten artifact of an earlier time, when there really were “moderates” in the Democrat...

President Barack Obama’s auto bailout czar Ron Bloom is under fire from the House Oversight Committee for a pro-union comment he reportedly made in 2009. David Shepardson, a reporter for The Detroit News, wrote in 2009 that Bloom told a dinner audience, “I did this all for the unions.” While testifying under oath at an Oversight subcommittee hearing in June, though, Bloom denied making those comments. Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, asked Bloom about the comment. Bloom replied that he didn’t say it. So, Burton asked him if he thought he was “misquoted.” Bloom said “that’s correct.” Burton then...

Former Obama car czar Steven Rattner has agreed to pay $6.2 million to settle federal charges over his role in a "pay-to-play" scandal, but says he won't be "bullied" into accepting a harsher penalty from New York authorities. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed two lawsuits Thursday accusing Rattner of paying illegal kickbacks to help his private equity firm land a $150 million investment from the state pension fund. Cuomo is seeking at least $26 million from Rattner, and a lifetime ban from the securities industry.

Remember Steven Rattner, President Obama's first auto industry czar? His tenure as the official liason between Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the Auto Industry Task Force that guided Obama's takeover General Motors and Chrysler was short-lived, owning to revelations of investigations by the SEC and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The investigations center around allegations first reported soon after Rattner's appointment that he paid bribes to win business for Quadrangle from the New York state pension system. Quadrangle has since paid $12 million in fines in a settlement with state and federal officials, and publicly condemned its founder's activities...

<p>Steven Rattner, the famed Wall Street deal maker and former Obama administration car czar, came under fire from his long-time business partners for what they called "unethical" efforts to win a $100 million investment for their private-equity firm, Quadrangle Group.</p>

Rattner defends rescue of automakers, says some money is gone But ex-official believes most of GM investment can be recouped By Peter Whoriskey Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 22, 2009 The U.S. government's stake in General Motors is currently worth about $25 billion, or about half the amount it poured into the ailing automaker, the former chief of the Obama administration's task force on the auto industry said Wednesday. But in his most extensive remarks since leaving the post in July, Steven Rattner defended the Obama administration's decision to rescue U.S. automakers. Rattner said there's "a good chance" the...

Shockingly poor financial management at General Motors and Chrysler weakened their case for a federal bailout, but officials feared letting them collapse, the former head of a government auto task force said Wednesday. In a first-person account posted on Fortune magazine's Web site and in a Brookings Institution speech, Steven Rattner said he was alarmed by the "stunningly poor management" at the Detroit companies and said GM had "perhaps the weakest finance operation any of us had ever seen in a major company." GM's board of directors was "utterly docile in the face of mounting evidence of a looming disaster"...

With the recent news of the supreme court decision of allowing the Chrysler bankruptcy to proceed, I am sad to say that the third and final branch of our government has fallen. I had hoped that Ruth Ginsberg would hear the case and America would get a favorable ruling on the Chrysler case. A favorable ruling would would have included giving the bond holders first crack at the money they were owed, and ruling that the TARP money could not be used for Car Company Bailouts and upholding the rule of law. Alas, no. Instead, the New Car Czar, Steven...

t looks like Gov. Bill Richardson’s (D-N.M.) troubles might be getting a bit worse. Richardson is currently entangled in a federal pay-to-play investigation in his home state. Today, The New Mexico Independent’s Heath Haussamen reports that Steven Rattner, who is currently overseeing the Obama administration’s auto industry bailout program, has also been a major contributor to Richardson’s gubernatorial campaigns in recent years — donating a total of $20,000 over two elections. The problem? Richardson heads the State Investment Council (SIC), which manages the state’s investments. In October 2005, the SIC voted to invest $20 million with Quadrangle Group LLC, according...

Steven Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration's auto task force, was one of the executives involved with payments under scrutiny in a probe of an alleged kickback scheme at New York state's pension fund, according to a person familiar with the matter. A Securities and Exchange Commission complaint says a "senior executive" of Mr. Rattner's investment firm met with a politically connected consultant about a finder's fee. Later, the complaint says, the firm received an investment from the state pension fund, then paid a $1.1 million fee. The "senior executive," not named in the complaint, is Mr. Rattner, according...