Category Archives: ethics

Progressives, Unions, and Taxpayers

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James Sherk and Todd Zywicki described, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, a rather shocking and blatant sweetheart deal between this administration’s Progressives and the United Auto Workers, at the expense of two car companies’ other unsecured creditors and us taxpayers.  I’ll just summarize the numbers; RTWT.

The UAW were unsecured creditors of GM and Chrysler via the UAW’s Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association: the two companies owed VEBA $20.6 billion and $8 billion, respectively, stemming from why VEBA was created—to transfer to the union responsibility for its pension fund.  Other unsecured creditors also were owed some $29 billion by these two companies.  Under bankruptcy law, these two sets of creditors would have received equal shares of the bankrupts’ assets in situations where the assets were insufficient to make everyone whole.  But under the Obama bailout, the UAW’s VEBA got 17.5% of the new GM and $9 billion in preferred stock and debt obligations, while the other creditors got 10% of the new GM and warrants to purchase 15% more in preferred stock.  At today’s stock prices, that’s over $12 billion more than the other creditors got.  With Chrysler, the imbalance was even greater: Chrysler’s non-union unsecured creditors were completely shut out—they got nada while the union got half the company and billions of dollars in a 9% promissory note.  So much for equal treatment.

It gets “better.”  Bankruptcy law allows bankrupts to improve their post-bankruptcy competitiveness by renegotiating union contracts to competitive rates.  The Obama bailout didn’t allow this.  New hires will come in, for now, at reduced wages, but the existing union employees retain their old highest-in-the-industry wages—higher by $9 an hour than their nearest competitor.

One outcome of this sweetheart deal is that, together with a little understood decision by GM to throw $1 billion at another company’s (Delphi) pension obligations, Sherk and Zywicki estimate the bailout cost was

increased…by $26.5 billion.

and

The Treasury expects the auto bailout to ultimately cost taxpayers $23 billion.  The funds diverted to the UAW account for the taxpayers’ entire net loss.

Hmm….

How is this Possible?

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In an apparent attempt to obviate the need to move forward with a Congressional contempt citation of the Attorney General of the United States, that AG, Eric Holder, last Thursday sent a letter to the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Congressman Darrell Issa (R, CA).  In this letter, Holder offers to provide to the Committee many of the “Fast and Furious” documents subpoenaed and heretofore withheld by Holder, and Holder offered personally to brief Issa in the subject.

This is a good start, but there’s more to this story.  Here’s an amazing paragraph from that letter [emphasis added].

The record in this matter reflects that until allegations about the inappropriate tactics used in Fast and Furious were made public, Department leadership was unaware of those tactics.  Indeed, as the documents we provided to the Committee relating to the drafting of the February 4 letter reflect, Department leaders were assured by the heads of Department components in the best position to know the true facts that the allegations being made were “categorically false.”  However, over a period of months in 2011, as documents to be provided to the Committee were collected and reviewed, and as witness testimony before the Committee was evaluated, Department leadership learned more and began to assess the facts of this matter independently.  The Department’s understanding of the facts underlying Fast and Furious became more developed, particularly as evidence came to light that was inconsistent with the initial denials provided to Department personnel.  Over time, Department leadership came to recognize that Fast and Furious was fundamentally flawed, as I noted in my October 7, 2011 letter to you and other members of Congress….

This fast and Furious operation was conducted under the auspices of the DoJ.  These data, concerning the misbehavior, were in the DoJ’s hands all along.  “Department leadership” (read: Holder) didn’t know these data?  How is he leading his Department if he can’t even get his own subordinates to talk to him?  How is he leading his Department if, alternatively, he chooses to be ignorant of the data in his subordinates’ hands until outside agencies force him to look at them?

What level of competence produces this quality of performance?

Finally, keep in mind that the House Committee didn’t begin its own investigation until well after Agent Terry’s murder.  Holder could have put this whole matter to rest—indeed he could have avoided all of  this hoo-raw, all of this expenditure of taxpayer money—if only he’d listened to the Clue Bird when it presented him with the murder of a government agent, presented him with a murder victim with weapons his own Department was turning over to drug cartels near the body.

The complete Holder letter can be seen here.

Democrats Just Don’t Understand

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President Obama said, at a campaign stop at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on the 12th of June,

They [voters] have pretty good instincts about what works and they’re not persuaded that an economy built on the notion that everybody here is on their own is somehow going to result in a stronger, more prosperous America.

It doesn’t get any clearer than this statement, which demonstrates an utter lack of understanding of what life is like without government intimately involved in it, without government ensuring that we’re not being too selfish to help each other out.  But with remarks like this, Democrats are only projecting their own selfishness onto the rest of us.

Americans as a whole donated over $300 billion to charity in 2009, for instance, the third year in a row we donated more than $300 billion in a single year.  In 2008, within these $300 billion, Gallup says that conservatives donated 3.5% to 4.5% of their incomes; liberals donated 1.25% to 1.5%.  Senator Joe Biden, who now considers it the patriotic thing to do to pay lots of taxes, donated 0.1% of his income in each of the years 2001-2004.  Last year, Vice President Biden bumped his giving to the lofty level of 1.5%.  It’s certainly true that Obama, and a fellow Progressive, President Bill Clinton, give significantly more, but these two are not typical Democrats, as those numbers above demonstrate.

Americans—conservative Americans, at any rate—do our duty, we help our fellows.  We don’t need government hands in our pockets to do that.  We need government hands out of our pockets so we can do that better.

Democrats assume all of America is like them.  Fortunately, we’re not.  Not by a long shot.

How is this Not a Firing Offense?

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The principal of Brooklyn’s Coney Island PS 90–the Edna Cohen School–Greta Hawkins, has cancelled her kindergarten’s scheduled performance of Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” at their moving-up ceremony.

Her excuses?

We don’t want to offend other cultures

and the lyrics are “too grown up” for five year olds.  The opening lines, the “too grown up” lines, are these:

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life,
And I had to start again,
With just my children and my wife,
I’d thank my lucky stars,
To be livin’ here today.

But  a Justin Bieber song was “age appropriate” for these same five year olds, and they were allowed to sing this song in the their ceremony.  This song opens with

Are we an item?
Girl, quit playing.

And the President Obama approves of this.  His Department of Education agrees with Hawkins.

The lyrics are not age-appropriate.

I’d like to hear his definition of “age-appropriate,” since he thinks patriotic lines are not, but Bieber’s lines are, for these children.

And those offended cultures?  The school has a significant immigrant student population, and so the neighborhood has a significant immigrant parent population.  Those parents, many of whom are immigrants from Pakistan, Mexico, and Ecuador, to name a few, “love” the song, which used to be performed annually by the kindergartners.  When last year’s fifth graders—who seem to be old enough to handle both patriotism and Bieber on the same day—sang “Proud to be an American” at their year-end ceremony, the parents of those fifth-graders gave it a standing ovation.

Yet, even though the school does have its students recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing a stanza or two of “God Bless America” each morning, kindergartners aren’t allowed to be patriotic at their year-end ceremony.

Because patriotism is an “age-appropriate” topic.  And American patriotism might offend other cultures.

Update:  Now Hawkins has decided to can the Bieber song, too.  She’s not reinstating “Proud to be an American,” though; patriotism remains offensive at her school.  Congressman Michael G. Grimm (R, NY), whose district includes Brooklyn and this school, had some thoughts on the matter.

I am outraged that NYC’s Department of Education is standing by the decision of PS 90’s principal to pull the song “Proud to be an American” from the upcoming kindergarten ceremony, for fear of offending other cultures.   The only thing offensive about any of this is the anti-American message being engrained in our youth.  We all should be proud to be American and we should never ever apologize for it!

And Lee Greenwald had this about Hawkins’ banning of his song:

I think [Hawkins is] confused between allegiance and worship.  I don’t think it’s a religious issue to salute the flag.  You always respect the flag.  That’s just simple for me.  A religion that says you can’t do that is out of place

Give Him a Speedy Trial and a Fast Impeachment

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Convicted serial bomber, drug trafficker, and perjuror, Brett Kimberlin, is continuing his assault on any and all who are rude enough to write about him in any way less than completely fawning of his wonderfulness.  In one such assault, done under the guise of his lawfare war, he had the rude blogger Aaron Walker arrested while in court responding to a prior Peace Order Kimberlin had managed to obtain.

But of interest here is not so much Kimberlin’s behavior, but the behavior of Maryland Judge C.J. Vaughey in that matter.  The Peace Order Kimberlin had obtained, and under which Walker was arrested in Vaughey’s court, centered on this:

Mr. Walker has tweeted on Twitter about me in alarming and annoying ways over hundreds of times in the past week and urged others to attack me.  He has generated hundreds of blog posts directly and indirectly based on false allegations that I framed him for an assault.

Mr. Walker has had many people threaten me directly with death, and told me to stop talking to the police, and not show up in court or I would die.

These are carefully, cynically, vague and unsubstantiated claims, yet Vaughey took them at face value, not even inquiring into evidence to support the claims.  Then we get this from Walker’s hearing before Vaughey [emphasis mine]:

VAUGHEY: –You’ve decided to battle, and he comes back.  And see, you’re—you—you’re the kind of guy, you don’t want to get into this to settle this, mano y mano.  You want to get all these friends who got nothing else to do with their time, in this judge’s opinion, because—my God, I’m a little bit older than you are, and I haven’t got enough time in the day to do all the things I want to do.  And I thought by retirement, I would have less to do.  I got more!  Because everybody knows I’m free!  So they all come to me.  But you, you are starting a—a conflagration, for lack of a better word, and you’re just letting the thing go recklessly no matter where it goes.  I mean, you get some—and I’m going to use word I (ph)—freak somewhere up Oklahoma, got nothing better to do with his time, so he does the nastiest things in the world he can do to this poor gentleman.  What right has that guy got to do it?

WALKER: He has no right to do that, Your Honor.

VAUGHEY: Well, he’s—you incited him.

WALKER: But, your honor, I did not incite him within the Brandenburg standard though.

VAUGHEY: Forget Bradenburg [sic].  Let’s go by Vaughey right now, and common sense out in the world.  But you know, where I grew up in Brooklyn, when that stuff was pulled, it was settled real quickly.

WALKER: I’m not sure what that means, your honor.

VAUGHEY: –Very quickly. And I’m not going to talk about those ways, but boy, it ended fast.  I even can tell you, when I grew up in my community, you wanted to date an Italian girl, you had to get the Italian boy’s permission.  But that was the old neighborhoods back in the city.  And it was really fair.  When someone did something up there to you, your sister, your girlfriend, you got some friends to take them for a ride in the back of the truck.

WALKER: Well, Your Honor, what–

VAUGHEY: –That ended it.  You guys have got this new mechanical stuff out here, the electronic stuff, that you can just ruin somebody without doing anything. But you started it.

As Popehat points out, the Brandenburg standard is from a Supreme Court ruling that held that speech may be banned on the theory that it is incitement only when it is intended to create, and is likely to create, a clear and present danger of imminent lawless action.

What do we have in this…judge’s…actions, then?

First we have his statement that the law is what he says it is, not what is actually written by our legislators, not what has been ruled by his superiors, the Supreme Court.

We also have this judge’s implicit recommendation that if someone offends Walker, then Walker should simply take that offender for a ride in a truck and “settle” the matter.  And by extension, he’s given that ex-con Kimberlin permission to do exactly that.

And he’s accused the victim of Kimberlin’s assault of having started the ex-con’s assault.

Vaughey is unfit to be a judge; he should be removed from the bench he’s sullying as soon as possible.

 

h/t to Grim’s Hall.