US Treasury Trove?

US Treasury Trove?

[media-credit id=7 align="alignleft" width="300"][/media-credit]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, the Daily Caller reports. Observers expect the documents to be a treasure trove of information on how the administration used the bailout to reward their big labor buddies at the expense of taxpayers and workers. The Caller continues: 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 caused 20,000 non-union workers from Delphi to lose most of their pensions. Delphi, a GM company, is one of the largest automotive parts manufacturers in the world. Its workers lost their pensions when the government bailed out GM. While those non-union Delphi workers lost nearly their entire pensions, United Auto Workers union members’ pensions were topped off and made whole. While Feldman, Bloom and Wilson have maintained they think no preferential treatment was given to the unions during the bailout, emails The Daily Caller obtained in June 2011 show senior officials corresponding with senior GM officials on how to make certain decisions regarding who was going to win and who was going to lose.
Barone: Obama acts like Big Labor shop steward in chief

Barone: Obama acts like Big Labor shop steward in chief

Trying to increase the number of workers who are forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment is perhaps the TOP priority for President Obama at the moment.  Michael Barone takes the president to task for his consistent refusal to say no to the union bosses.  Here is his rundown: [Obama] certainly can demonstrate that he cares about certain jobs -- the 7 percent of private-sector jobs and 36 percent of public-sector jobs held by union members. During his two years and nine months as president, he has worked time and again to increase the number of unionized jobs. Some pro-union moves have a certain ritual quality. Democratic presidents on taking office seek to strengthen federal employee unions. Fully one-third of the $820 billion stimulus package passed almost entirely with Democratic votes in 2009 was aid to state and local governments. This was intended to keep state and local public employee union members -- much more numerous than federal employees -- on the job and to keep taxpayer-funded union dues pouring into public employee union treasuries. In arranging the Chrysler bankruptcy, the Obama White House muscled aside the secured creditors who ordinarily have priority in bankruptcy proceedings in favor of United Auto Workers [union]. That's an episode that I labeled "gangster government." Former Obama economic adviser Lawrence Summers protested that his White House colleague Ron Bloom had made similar arrangements before. But in those cases Bloom was working for the unions, not for a supposedly neutral government.