What elitist entitlement looks like

Sharlet is the author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Scary, scary stuff for any of us that don't like the idea of our government being run by creepy, extremist, right wing Christain fundamentalists.

Sharlet also wrote a piece for Rolling Stone on Sam Brownback which is well worth the read back in 2006 titled God's Senator: Who would Jesus vote for? Meet Sam Brownback.

Maddow: As part of the research for the book, Jeff lived among the family and saw many of its actions first hand. [...] What is C-Street? I know it's a house on C Street in Washington. How is it part of the family?

Sharlet: Well, the C-Street house is actually a former convent and now it's registered as a church and it's run by The Family and used by them to provide housing for six to eight congressmen at any given time, and to provide spiritual counseling for these congressmen.

Which all sounds fine so far, but what makes it a little bit different than other Christian conservative organizations, two things, you said that it's secretive. Indeed the leader of the group describes, he says, the more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it will have. And the other things is the nature of the influence they want to have.

I got to sit in on one of these spiritual counseling sessions between the leader of the family and Congressman Todd Tiahrt when I visited the C-Street House, I actually met Sen. Ensign there. As the leader of The Family was counseling Congressman Tiahrt, he had this very standard issue, bill of issues related to the Christian right. He said you've got to have a bigger vision of what we're talking about here. He called it Jesus plus nothing.

He said it's sort of a totalitarian idea of Christianity and he gave as examples men who he believed understood the way power should be wielded. He actually gave as examples, Hitler, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden and Lenin.

Maddow: Wow. When I read your book, The Family, when it first came out in hardback, my notes on um, I write notes in the flyleaf about what I was thinking about. And my notes about it, I went back and looked, were that it was essentially to promote, it saw its role as promoting American power, world wide, unfettered capitalism with no unions, no programs to help poor people, all with this idea that godly powerful rich men should get as many resources as possible personally, and they should just privately help everyone else. That is the impression that I was left with. Was I close?

Sharlet: That's dead on the money. The family began, it's the oldest Christian conservative organization in Washington and it goes back seventy years. And the founder believed that god gave him a new revelation saying that Christianity had gotten it wrong for two thousand years and that what most people think of as Christianity, as being about, you know, helping the weak and the poor and the meek and the down and out, he believes god came to him one night in April in 1935 and said what Christianity should really be about is building more power for the already powerful. And that these powerful men who were chosen by god can then if they want to dispense blessings to the rest of us, through a kind of trickle-down fundamentalism.

Maddow: Well do you see a connection between that large sort of power theology and the fact that neither John Ensign or Mark Sanford for that matter, who's also affiliated with the group, aren't quitting despite these scandals. Is there something about this type of theology that tells these guys, hey don't worry about the affair, you know, big picture, you're good, stay where you are, it's important for you to stay in power?

Sharlet: Yeah, no, I think actually Gov. Sanford made it very clear when he cited King David as an example of the reason why he wasn't going to be resigning office and that struck a bell with me because I, the King David story, the core teaching of The Family, when I first heard it, I was living with The Family.

One of the leaders of The Family was explaining why King David was important and it's not because he was a good man. It's because he was a bad man. You know, he seduced another man's wife, he actually had the husband murdered and he once explained why this was a model and he said it to one of the men in the group. He said, suppose I heard you raped three little girls. What would I think of you? And this guy, being a human being says, you would think I was a monster. Well, the leader of The Family says no, not at all because you're chosen. You're chosen by god for leadership, and so the normal rules don't apply.

Maddow: When Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina talked about his relationship to this group, he's also lived at the C-Street House, he described the group to the AP years ago, six years ago by saying "We do have a bible study...somebody'll share a verse or a thought, but mostly it's more of an accountability group to talk about things that are going on in our lives, and how we're dealing with them". And you've written that members of The Family give each other veto power over their lives, which, with these two scandals, I mean looking at the John Ensign scandal, how does a group like that not veto putting the mistress' kids on the Republican party payroll? How does that not get outed by this group?

Sharlet: Well, because the responsibility of the other men in your accountability group, and I would say by the way, you don't have accountability behind closed doors, that's the opposite of accountability, what these other men are doing is they're saying, alright, we're going to look out for you. Sort of self interest by proxy and what they're calling accountability is a man might bring to the group for instance that he is having an affair with another woman, or the fact that he is perhaps corrupt in some way and so on, and these guys are going to deal with it internally.

Maddow: Wow.

Sharlet: Very much behind closed doors, and we as a group actually once said, what we do is, to use this pretentious Latin phrase, beyond the din of the vox populi. What it means is beyond the voice of the people.

Maddow: Jeff Sharlet is an editor at Harper's Magazine. He's also the author of the book The Family, and if you think this has incredible implications for domestic politics and hypocrisy and affairs, wait till you read about third world dictators and how these guys empower them.


The Rachel Maddow Show: Christian Conservatism's Shadowy Secret Society | Video Cafe

Truthdig - Cartoons - Winners

Truthdig - Cartoons - Winners

Rushpublican Hypocrites

They love to spend money on killing but rage at spending to heal. What a bunch of filthy pigs.

You really think Faux News is Fair and Balanced? What a fool.

If FOX Whore News doesn't like you...

...they label you a Democrat.

They get away with this because they know

the other press nor the Dems...

have the balls to call them on it.

Don't ask, don't tell

BartCop's most recent rants - Political Humor and Commentary

BartCop's most recent rants - Political Humor and Commentary

The CIA's Truth Problem

The United States has been trying to run a secret intelligence service in an open democracy for sixty years. It depends on trust between politicians and spies, two professions known to wrestle with truth. Trust has been broken time and again.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent charge that the CIA lied to her about the torture of suspected terrorists under President George W. Bush has started a whirlwind of spin. The big lie--President Bush said the United States didn't torture, though we did--has been lost in the maelstrom. So has a harsh truth: yes, the CIA has stonewalled and deceived Congress in the past, but Congress is stone deaf and derelict in overseeing the CIA.

Pelosi's old Congressional colleague Leon Panetta, who runs the CIA, wants to set things right. "There's been a lot of poison in the well," Panetta said on May 18, and "it hurts this country" when "Congress and the CIA don't feel like they're partners." He said he would commune with his Congressional overseers, hash things out in private, talk with them "in a way in which we can be honest with one another."

Good luck, Leon. Others have gone before you.

Like it or not, the United States needs trustworthy intelligence. But spying is a dirty and dangerous business. The CIA depends on officers who know how to lie, cheat and steal--"to use deception, to use manipulation, to use, frankly, dishonesty," in the words of former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith. But when things go wrong overseas--as they often do--the CIA is called to account in Washington from time to time. That's where things really go wrong.

The CIA is "an organization that thrives on deception," says John Hamre, former deputy secretary of defense. "How do you manage an organization like that?" Congress hasn't had the will or the wherewithal to do it.

Congress created the CIA in 1947, and for a generation most of its members did as Senator John Stennis advised: "Make up your mind that you are going to have an intelligence agency and protect it as such, and shut your eyes some, and take what is coming." Then a newly anointed president, Gerald Ford, let slip that the CIA had run lethal plots against foreign leaders, which would tarnish every president since Harry Truman.

Ford looked back in some anguish on this; he had been a Congressman when called to serve on the Warren Commission, which looked into the assassination of President Kennedy. Late in life he reflected on the CIA's keeping secrets from the commission--notably its plots against Fidel Castro. It was "unconscionable" that the CIA was "not giving us the full story," Ford said.

But when he was in the White House, Ford feared that the truth about the past would destroy the CIA and damage the United States. That same kind of fear is drowning out calls for a truth commission on the conduct of the "war on terror."

"The question is how to plan to meet the investigation of the CIA," Ford mused at a White House meeting in February 1975. His chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, called for "a damage-limiting operation" to save the secrets from spilling in Congress. The man Ford chose to run the CIA--George H.W. Bush--tried his best. But no one protected former CIA director Richard Helms. He drew a two-year suspended sentence in 1977 on a federal charge of deceiving Congress about his orders from President Nixon to overthrow the government of Chile.

Helms had an obligation to testify truthfully, but he thought he had a higher oath to keep secrets. America's political history turned on which oath mattered more. For the past thirty years, Congress has fought for the right to oversee the CIA. It has failed to fulfill its responsibilities.

Before President Reagan took office, in 1981, Congress created intelligence oversight committees in the Senate and the House. Reagan's CIA chief, William Casey, foiled them for six years. "Casey was guilty of contempt of Congress from the day he was sworn in," said Robert Gates, Casey's number-two man, now defense secretary. Casey obfuscated gleefully before the intelligence committees; his senior officers testified evasively. Among the consequences was the Iran/Contra affair, which blew up in late 1986. The spectacle of the United States caught shipping weapons to Iran, skimming the profits and slipping the money to anticommunists in Central America came close to wrecking Reagan's presidency.

From 1986 to '94, the CIA sent ninety-five highly classified reports on Moscow's military strength to the White House. Senior CIA officials knew some of the data were manipulated by Moscow and designed to deceive the United States. They decided it didn't matter. The discovery of this deception in 1995 was "incredible" and "shocking," said Fred Hitz, then the CIA's inspector general. "What came out of this whole episode was a feeling that the agency couldn't be trusted." The CIA had broken "the sacred trust," said Hitz, "and without that, no espionage agency can do its job."

Starting in 1995, the CIA used the Peruvian air force to shoot down airplanes suspected of carrying cocaine. In April 2001, the operation attacked a plane carrying a family of Michigan missionaries over the Amazon. Veronica Bowers, 35, and her daughter, Charity, seven months old, were killed. CIA inspector general John Helgerson reported that CIA officers had violated presidential orders controlling the operation and hid their misdeeds from Congress, the Justice Department and the National Security Council.

Seven years after the shoot-down, Peter Hoekstra--the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, now running for governor of Michigan--published a few damning paragraphs from the report. He called it evidence that the CIA "operates outside the law and covers up what it does and lies to Congress." That's what Pelosi said about torture.

Now, on orders from President Obama to dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda, the CIA is killing suspected terrorists with remote-controlled missiles fired from drone aircraft above Pakistan and Afghanistan. The CIA decides if it has hit the right targets and whether civilian deaths are acceptable. Do we want to live in a world where the CIA's clandestine service has the authority to decide who lives and who dies? The idea that the CIA may be killing civilians, sparking an ever wider war, is too hot for Congress to handle.

Oversight is a word with two meanings--to oversee and to oversleep. So is mislead. It means to lie, and it means a lack of leadership. Congress has a responsibility to oversee the CIA that remains largely unfulfilled. It has to ask the right questions, demand full answers and report the facts annually to the American people.

Will the CIA tell Congress the truth? Would Congress listen if it did? If trust remains broken, intelligence will fail again. And when intelligence fails, soldiers and civilians die.

The CIA's Truth Problem

Can you Say Hypocrite?

Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 10:11:12 AM PDT

Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (R-CA-52) had an interesting comment on the debate over an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would rescind a Bush-era policy classifying the names of attendees at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas). The amendment, offered by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA-03), Joe Sestak (D-PA-07), Sanford Bishop (D-GA-02) and John Lewis (D-GA-05), would require public disclosure of the names of the Institute's attendees.

In opposing the amendment, Rep. Hunter said that by releasing the names of attendees publicly -- as was routinely the case prior to 2006 -- "you are literally encouraging their murder."

What an interesting thing to say, in light of continuing right-wing insistence that no such thing is true with regard to the public posting of much more specific identifying and actual targeting information about certain women's health providers, don't you think?

And as it happens, Rep. Hunter's pronouncement also comes at a time when right-wing superkook Michael Savage has announced his intention to post similar information regarding the staff of Media Matters.

But keep in mind that because there are no right-wing terrorists (and angels, I'm assured, are tearing up just at the mention of the words in close proximity to one another), Rep. Hunter's worry about attacks which have never taken place or even been threatened against foreign military operatives is very real and deserving of serious concern, while the attacks which are openly threatened and in fact carried out time and again against doctors or anyone otherwise deemed "too liberal" (not to mention the new hobby of stalking and ambush of people writes things wingnuts don't like) are not only frivolous and silly concerns, but are downright anti-American to discuss.

Congress Matters :: "You are literally encouraging their murder."

Republicans are Such Stinking Hypocrites.

"You are literally encouraging their murder."

by David Waldman

Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 10:11:12 AM PDT

Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (R-CA-52) had an interesting comment on the debate over an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would rescind a Bush-era policy classifying the names of attendees at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas). The amendment, offered by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA-03), Joe Sestak (D-PA-07), Sanford Bishop (D-GA-02) and John Lewis (D-GA-05), would require public disclosure of the names of the Institute's attendees.

In opposing the amendment, Rep. Hunter said that by releasing the names of attendees publicly -- as was routinely the case prior to 2006 -- "you are literally encouraging their murder."

What an interesting thing to say, in light of continuing right-wing insistence that no such thing is true with regard to the public posting of much more specific identifying and actual targeting information about certain women's health providers, don't you think?

And as it happens, Rep. Hunter's pronouncement also comes at a time when right-wing superkook Michael Savage has announced his intention to post similar information regarding the staff of Media Matters.

But keep in mind that because there are no right-wing terrorists (and angels, I'm assured, are tearing up just at the mention of the words in close proximity to one another), Rep. Hunter's worry about attacks which have never taken place or even been threatened against foreign military operatives is very real and deserving of serious concern, while the attacks which are openly threatened and in fact carried out time and again against doctors or anyone otherwise deemed "too liberal" (not to mention the new hobby of stalking and ambush of people writes things wingnuts don't like) are not only frivolous and silly concerns, but are downright anti-American to discuss.

Congress Matters :: "You are literally encouraging their murder."

A republican bedwetter

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

Pure racist horseshit, delivered without foundation or a shred of reason or logic.
What he means in plain English is, "Niggers truly scare me."

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

Why don't you try to learn something about him because he's not coming to your door to explain himself.
Funny, you had no problem with Bush - is it because he's white?

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education
and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

Dude, your ignorance is impossible to contain or quantify.
How is it Obama's fault that you can't explain why you're clueless?
Hint: Best-selling authors make good money.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up
in America and culturally you are not an American.

Bush grew up exploding frogs with rectally-inserted firecrackers
and you didn't mind him wrecking the economy and lying us into a war.
Admit it - go ahead, "I'm a clueless racist fuck."

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare so easily - are you sure you're not a senate Democrat?

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

At least he didn't sign up in the elite, rich boy's champagne squad and then go AWOL.
You can play the scared victim until the cows come home but your biggest problem
is your failure to compare Obama to other presidents.
"You scare me this way and you scare me that way."
Boo Hoo - Poor you. Grow the fuck up.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

Actually the opposite is true.
Obama takes shit from people like me because he does NOT assign blame where it belongs.
He's too polite for my tastes, but for an asshole like you, he scores a zero on every test.
Bush was handed peace and prosperity and he handed Obama war, recession and doom. .

If you were an honest man (Should I bother to finish this sentence?) you'd pick your shots
but instead, you use the Limbaugh-shotgun approach and shoot anything and everything that moves.

What's next? "You scare me because you're so tall?"

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists
who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

Pure racist horseshit.
Those "radical extremists" that scare you so much are American voters.
It hurts when 75% of America disagrees with you, doesn't it?.
If democracy scares you, there are lots of other countries you can flee to.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

Bush was a pirate and a thug and a rapist and a torturer the whole world needed to hear Obama apologize for his crimes..
If you like Bush so much, run Jeb in 2012 and see how many states you win.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country
where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

Again - horseshit.
Bush's idea of no-rules, no-oversight, runaway capitalism bankrupted America.
The government stepped in to save us - remember?
If you want American banks closed and the Big Three shut down, just say so.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

Only a rich, Republican prick would enjoy the health care fuck-up we currently have.
When Clinton tried to fix it, right-wing reactionaries like yourself screamed,
"You can't fix that - it's one seventh of our economy."
Now it's one fifth - and you still don't want it fixed?

You're an old fart - you'll be dead soon, but what about the rest of us?
We can't survive one of every three dollars going to health care..
What are you - fucking stupid or something?

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

Yeah, only an idiot wants cheaper, cleaner energy that's renewable.
Meanwhile Prince William Sound still stinks from the Exxon Valdez
and we have over 120,000 troops risking their lives for cheaper gasoline.
Why use wind power when there are still-empty graves at Arlington?

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg
which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

ha ha
You mean the goose that needed to borrow multi-trillions of dollars to survive?
As a braindead retiree, who do you think guarantees your pension?
Hint: It's not some mythical golden goose - it's the federal government that you hate so much.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You mean the banks and corporations that came to washington begging for a bailout?
What would your bitch be if Obama bailed them out with no conditions attached?

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you
on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

Again, the opposite is true.
Obama's party stabs him in the back on a regular basis.

...and blow me on the "wild and irresponsible spending proposals."
Obama wouldn't have to spend that money if Bush hadn't broken the entire world.
The last president to balance the budget was Democrat, remember?

...and blow me on the "your own party shrinks from challenging you."
We got in this mess because the GOP went with every failed idea your Monkey had.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

ha ha
We get this horseshit from a Bush lover?
And I'll send you a dollar if you can name an intelligent Republican.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

Pure racist horseshit.designed for fellow handjobs hooked on the vulgar Pigboy's lies.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

"The media" as in FOX News or the New York Whore Times?
Or the Washington Whore Post or the Moonie Times?
Did Obama lie us into a war with the help of the Democrat-loving media?
Have you been living in the United Sates the last 18 years?

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys,
O'Reillys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

If any of that crew has a decent idea why don't they run for office? The reason is they can make
millions of dollars a year by spewing hateful bile that ignorant shits like you eat with a Texas-sized spoon.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Pure racist horseshit.
All you know is "Niggers scare me" and that's all we hear from you.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.
Lou Pritchett

Then move the fuck away - go to another country because the voters decided that they'd had enough
of the crap you and the crooked Bush bastards illegally shoved down our throats.

Note: Lou Pritchett is a former VP of Procter & Gamble before his retirement in 1989.
Pritchett confirmed that is the author of the idiotic "open letter.".

Currently: He's a racist scumbag who can't stand the thought that "one of them"
was chosen by the voters to correct the massive Bush-era disasters.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jason Jones: Behind the Veil - Minarets of Menace
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

Faux news is full of shit. But then you knew that if you have even a single brain cell in your head.

Which one is the real pig?

How Republicans live their lives in the dark

I'm stopped at a red light when a decrepit old Chevrolet pickup with its windows rolled down pulls into the adjacent lane.

Its radio is bleating Rush Limbaugh, and the rear bumper bears a sticker that reads, "My wife, yes. My dog, maybe. My gun, NEVER!"

The driver looks disheveled and haggard, making it very easy to surmise that here's the perfect example of an American totally screwed over by capitalism run greedily amok, decisively abetted by conservative ideology.

He's probably unemployed, has no medical insurance, no pension prospects, and is likely facing having sheriff's deputies put his family's belongings out on the sidewalk, following a heartbreaking eviction.

But he's got that radio tuned to right-wing propaganda, and he's so completely brainwashed that he thinks his greatest worry is gays getting married!

He's undoubtedly convinced that the "Democrat Socialist Party" is ruining his life -- not to mention his beloved country -- and that liberals are the reason his wallet has thinned to nothing but pictures of his gaunt spouse and sickly, skinny kids.

Meanwhile, Limbaugh and other well-compensated voices of radio or television reaction, live in luxury, exceeded in ill-gotten wealth only by the corporate Fat Cats who hire them to keep
the masses from angrily identifying their true enemy.

That allows the Silk Suits to laugh all the way to the bank, and then lean back with Mint Juleps in their poolside gazebos, while poor bastards like my guy in that truck fart out the remains of their
last unhealthy meal.

Or maybe a little cheap beer.

But here's the real kicker:

A father from our area, pretty much like that Chevy dude, sent his son off to war a couple years back.

"There aren't any jobs here, anyway. Plus, you'll learn a useful trade."

He did so with teary-eyed pride, emphatically believing both this nation's foreign policy myths and George Bush's lies.

It was beyond his awareness to comprehend that the U.S. aggressing a sovereign country for fraudulent reasons, in blatant violation of international law, made us no different than Nazis attacking Poland in 1939, or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor.

Despite letters from his boy that contained strange passages that a more critical soul would have seen as indicators of things on the battlefield being much different than what Republicans gloriously portrayed, Dad never let his patriotism waver.

Publicized photos of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse didn't faze him, because right-wing media "explained" it all to his manipulated satisfaction.

Then, one tragic day, his precious child got blown to bloody shards by a rocket-propelled grenade. Shortly thereafter, what was left of him came home in a box, and was lowered beneath cemetery sod as a bugler played taps.

The greatest tragedy, however, is that Dad will probably go to his own grave, decades from now, still convinced that his "Hometown Hero" served a noble cause, never mind those many thousands of foreign innocents who were themselves violently killed because the Americans needlessly, wrongfully invaded.

Or maybe, at some clarifying moment in otherwise foggy old age, he'll have an epiphany, understanding that his entire life was spent fleshing out a massive Fox News falsehood.

That medal from the President, presented posthumously, will suddenly lose it's luster.

It'll perhaps get hurled against the wall, leading nursing home residents to wonder what that bang and the accompanying, agonized scream were all about.

That's what it sadly boils down to for rank-and-file conservatives.

They'll either die entirely unreconstructed and unenlightened, clinging to absurdity until the very end.

Or they'll eventually see the light, as the armor of their fallacies finally turns to fully-powdered rust.

There's nothing worse than realizing -- too late -- that one's entire existence was spent living, breathing, sweating, and bleeding to advance somebody else's abysmally selfish, decidedly wicked agenda.
It just doesn't get any worse than this | The Smirking Chimp

Greg Palast » Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM

Greg Palast » Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM
Screw the autoworkers.
They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today.  But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank.  While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by  Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6  billion.

The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

I smell a rat.

Stevie the Rat, to be precise.  Steven Rattner, Barack  Obama's 'Car Czar' - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit:  fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left.  That's the law.  What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

But not this time.  Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

Here's the scheme:  Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance.  Cash in the insurance fund would be replaced by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock - or 25%.  Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

Preventive Detention for Pensions

So what's wrong with seizing workers' pension fund money in a bankruptcy?  The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it's illegal. 

 

In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.  ERISA says you can't seize workers' pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts.  And that's because they are the same thing:  workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits. 

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no.  Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries."  Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits."

            "The primary responsibility of fiduciaries  is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries  and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits."

Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it's not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank's a little short.  A plan's assets are for the plan's members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.

Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker's spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another "Guantanamo" moment for the Obama Administration - channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.

Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock.  Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must

            "...act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses."

By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock.

This is dangerous business:  The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.

 

House of Rubin

Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don't even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren't asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?

As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys?  You remember Morgan and Citi.  These are the corporate Welfare Queens who've already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve.  Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary.  Rubin was Obama's point-man in winning banks' endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).

With GM's last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan's Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank's "finest year ever."

Which leaves us to ask the question:  is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?

And it's been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler.  "Owning" is a loose term.  Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler - indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away.  Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.

("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell.  Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars.  This is Obama's working class hero.

If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers' funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat's plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.

It doesn't make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.

******

Economist and journalist  Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.  He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981.