Crony Capitalism -- your tax dollars at work

In November, Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill — chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting and Oversight and up for re-election in less than a year — asked HHS to review the contract.
Last week, the NYPost reported that SIGA execs dumped stock when they learned the contract would be far less than they anticipated last spring.
Today, GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina asked the HHS Inspector General to investigate:
“Yesterday afternoon I submitted my second letter to the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services regarding apparent gross impropriety on behalf of the Obama Administration.”
“The more I investigate this deal, the more shocked I become at the potential corruption and insider influence taking place at the highest levels of our government. I cannot help but see the similarities between this case and the Solyndra scandal, since both involve rewarding companies tied to Obama donors, billions in taxpayer dollars, and insider dealing.”
“The decisions made by HHS have caused a legitimate small business in North Carolina to be denied a level playing field to provide smallpox treatments in the event of a national emergency. I will be very interested to see how the Administration explains their actions in awarding a billion-dollar corporation such a substantial contract when it falsely claimed to be a small business.”....

Los Angeles is going to invest “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to renovate a million dollar “VIP” yacht used for, among other things, taking high school students on free tours of the harbor.

“The port is using $489,000 in federal taxpayer stimulus money that is supposed to go create jobs, plus another $200,000 coming from the port — totaling $689,000 for new engines

Van Susteren noted that “upgrading” the yacht comes at such a high cost because the new engines have to be hybrid engines – as opposed to the much cheaper diesel engines.

“It’s not helping to create any real jobs,” said Tom Schatz with Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW).

“This is part of the whole president’s ‘green energy’ program that goes all the way from Solyndra to things like this. You have to remember the stimulus money that was spent was not just to create jobs; it was also to enact the president’s agenda and to enact the Congress’ agenda at the time it was passed,” York said. “And green energy was a big part of that.”

Mr. York went on to cite an important memo written in December 2008 that claimed that the “imperative of the stimulus was to identify as many campaign promises or high-profile items…[and that] the stimulus package is a key tool for advancing clean energy goals and fulfilling a number of campaign commitments.”

Got that? Huge corporations say that banks are too skittish to finance their exports. So we need taxpayer-backed loans and guarantees.

What could go wrong?

The Export-Import Bank is not really a bank. It?s is government agency that finances American exports. As of 2006 Congress had authorized the agency to lend, guarantee, and insure up to $100 billion -- meaning at any given time the taxpayer could be liable for that amount.

The chief recipients of these loans are Boeing (on whose board Obama?s new chief of staff Bill Daley held a seat) and GE (whose CEO Jeffery Immelt was just tapped as chairman of Obama's new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness).

The President might be correct in some sense that he has put an end to taxpayer bailouts, but he still has no problem with putting taxpayers on the hook for private companies to profit. It's not quite the same as bailing out a company, but if a deal goes bad, taxpayers still have to bail out the bad loan.

A government agency dedicated to backing up bank loans, in an effort to boost one "crucial" sector of the U.S. economy? Why not? Especially because it has a great record, to date, of very few defaults. We promise, the taxpayers' money is not at risk.

One of the things that the Ex-Im currently does is provide foreign airlines loans at rates as low as 4% (vs. domestic carriers which pay market rates as high as 10.4%). But remember, as great as these loan guarantees are, they are only available to foreign airlines, not U.S. airlines.

We cannot continue to risk American tax dollars to finance our own competition.

General Motors reported year end earnings figures today. The company made about $9 billion dollars in 2011. How much of its "fair share" is GM paying in taxes? Zero. In fact, from GM's financial report, they actually received a "benefit" of $110 million for the year. The UAW benefited as well, as they are set to receive $7,000 per worker in profit sharing bonuses.

Normally, the company would not have received the tax credit but the bankruptcy process was anything but normal. Creditors were put in the back of the line to protect UAW interests and tax code was changed so that GM could profit for years without paying its fair share in taxes. President Obama now campaigns on the perceived success at GM and any help he can give to the company will result in additional votes come November. As taxpayers lose out, GM profits and shares the wealth with the politically favored UAW.

For their part, the UAW has agreed to strongly support the President come election time. And the hypocrisy of GM's tax deal is obvious as Obama makes claims that corporations need to pay their fair share. Crony corporations like GM and General Electric (which also is known to avoid taxes) are conveniently left out of the criticisms. Also on the favored list are wealthy purchasers of Chevy Volts who receive federal tax credits of $7500 to buy the cars.

Non-union taxpayers are picking up the tab for those favored classes that help with President Obama's election campaign. And that's just not "fair."

With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

In another setback for President Obama's clean energy loan programs, the recipient of more than a half-billion dollars in federal loans is laying off workers at their Delaware and California operations.

Oct. 20, 2011
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/car...0VAp_XB6Db

2/6/2012
http://www.politico.com/politico4...13652.html

Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners include former Vice President Al Gore,

Obama is the most corrupt president since Jackson. Not only is he giving money to his friends to build cars in Finland but Americans can’t even afford the cars! Obama’s buddies get the money, Finland gets the jobs, China gets the interest, the elite get fancy cars, American taxpayers get the shaft.

Chaz Stevens isn't shy about stirring up trouble. His most recent target has been the wild financial mismanagement of the City of Lauderdale Lakes, which in recent days has been revealed to have used all kinds of crazy, stupid accounting techniques to balance a budget that was, in reality, about as balanced as Lindsay Lohan.

Stevens has been requesting (and analyzing) public documents from the city for months -- in his own spastic way, he's called the city out on his MAOS blog numerous times for busted budget numbers, sloppy spreadsheets, and failing to fulfill records requests. He then released a draft of a report from the Broward inspector general that outlines findings that make the Lauderdale Lakes financial situation look even worse than Stevens' posts did.

And now the city manager has had his lawyer (and father) send a cease-and-desist letter to the blogger.

It concludes with "PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY," which looks less like a legal notice and more like what would happen if old people learned how to use internet comment sections.
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He also said he was hoping the case would go to court to get testimony about the subjects he's been writing about. His official response to the letter?

"Here's my response. Can I get a quote?" he said. "'Bite me.'"

http://budget.senate.gov/republic...7AC359ACD4

Didn't we just do this a year ago? I guess so.

"GAO also issued an accompanying assessment of progress in eliminating duplications identified last year. This report shows that only 8 percent of the items in last year's report have been successfully addressed."