GM Paying $400 Million in Bonuses While Owing Taxpayers Billions

When I came across this story on WHDH's website I hoped it was another case of the media getting hoaxed like the Sarah Palin disses Christina Aguilera nonsense. Unfortunately that doesn't appear to be the case. The lowlights:

Less than two years after entering bankruptcy, General Motors will extend millions of dollars in bonuses to most of its 48,000 hourly workers as a reward for the company's rapid turnaround after it was rescued by the government.

The payments, disclosed Monday in company documents, are similar to bonuses announced last week for white-collar employees. The bonuses to 76,000 American workers will probably total more than $400 million -- an amount that suggests executives have increasing confidence in the automaker's comeback.

Most of GM's hourly workers will get a record payment of more than $4,000 -- more than double the previous record in 1999, at the height of the boom in sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks. Nearly all 28,000 white-collar workers such as engineers and managers will get 4 to 16 percent of their base pay. A few -- less than 1 percent -- will get 50 percent or more.

First Wall St, now Detroit, the TARP bailouts to bonuses saga continues. Showing that the rules only apply to the little people that can't make six figure campaign contributions. How is the American taxpayers involuntary investment in GM and Chrysler going anyhow?

"Since the taxpayers helped these companies out of bankruptcy, the taxpayers should be repaid before bonuses go out," said Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. "It sends a message that those in charge take shareholders, in this case the taxpayers, for a sucker."

The government has been repaid $23 billion but needs $26.4 billion more to recoup its whole investment. The government still owns 500 million shares of GM common stock, which would have to sell for roughly $53 per share to get all the money back.

GM closed at $36 today, our payback is a long time away, if ever. The UAW is getting a sweet bonus and we're getting the shaft. Our Congressional delegation was justifiably outraged and mugged for the cameras when Wall St. announced their bonuses but they seem eerily silent now.

UMass Student Arrested After Making Death Threat

With the mega-colossal snowstorm and the protests in Egypt dominating the news, this story has fallen under the radar.

From the Daily Collegian:

A University of Massachusetts student is awaiting extradition to Southeast Florida for allegedly making threatening emails to a Florida state representative.

Manuel Pintado, 47, of Northampton was being held at the Hampshire County House of Corrections in Northampton after police there took him into custody at the request of Martin County, Florida law enforcement.

Pintado was arrested last night for allegedly sending Rep. William D. Snyder, a Republican representing Florida’s House district 82, a message attacking him for his involvement in a bill which would allow police to ask anyone for proof of citizenship, according to a release from the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the Feb. 1 statement, the text of the email read “To the Honorable William D. Snyder; You better just stop that ridiculous law if you value you rand your familie’s lives ashole.”

I wonder which websites, blogs this self-described "political activist" read? I'm sure the media will route out the source that inspired Mr. Pintado's eliminationist rhetoric. Because we know after Tucson that someone other than the actual perpetrator of the crime is to blame. The authorities in Florida should bring Sheriff Clarence Dupnik in as media consultant, because MSNBC is going to be all over this story right?

Same Old Obama

Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas gets it. Why doesn't the media? With his Super shout out for Obama's efforts to keep the country "stimulated", will understands that our president's policies represent more of the same. Because his earlier argument that spending is stimulus didn't sell with the public, we have "investments" to "win the future"(lifted from Newt). This is simply more big spending by Big Government that benefits Big Business(and his fundraising) at the expense of America's working and middle classes.

Appointing Jeff Immelt of GE as jobs czar has been hailed by the media as proof of the president's centrist bona fides. But Immelt personifies "crony" in the crony capitalism that is Obamanomics. "In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner." Those aren't the words of a believer in the free market or a champion of small business. Immelt supports cap and trade while pocketing a $400 million taxpayer subsidized loan to sell windmills. This administration is going all in on windmills and electric cars, but our 389 windfarms are producing electricity at less than 20% of their capacity. They aren't the path to prosperity, in fact Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes that Cape Wind will result in over $4 billion in extra costs for consumers. Meanwhile, American drivers are paying over $3 for gas with analysts seeing it soon reaching $5 a gallon. To help promote our adoption of green technologies, Energy Secretary Chu wants us to be paying $7 or more.

The skyrocketing costs of education are threatening to put a degree out of reach for all but the wealthiest Americans. One hundred colleges now charge at least $50,000 a year, only five did so as recently as 2008. It may surprise students and their parents to learn that university administrative costs have increased 61%, essentially swallowing the massive increases in financial aid. All those extra bureacrats have been good to the president though, the University of CA was his number one contributor and Harvard was number three. Instead of pushing to reform the system, the president proposes to continue throwing more money at it, gauranteeing that costs will continue to increase along with his campaign warchest. The same dynamic applies to K-12 spending. The Mercatus Center found that we spend an average of $91,700 per pupil between grades 1-9, yet our students score lower than countries that spend much less. Again, the president just wants to throw good money after bad without making necessary reforms for fear of upsetting the teachers' unions and their PAC's that will contribute millions to his campaign.

We also have the 700+ waivers for Obamacare, 40% of them going to unions that contributed $25 million to the president. Are you seeing a pattern yet?

President Obama isn't, and will never be the pragmatic centrist of the media's fantasies. If this ploy to repackage the same failed policies that have done nothing but run up record deficits, $1.5 trillion this year, doesn't convince the American public to see the light, he'll try again, because he's never wrong. The next time there'll be $1 billion of Wall St., Environmentalist and Organized Labor dough to spend communicating to the bitter clingers of Middle America in borrowed Republican language that he's courageously standing(T-Paw), without apologizing(Mitt) for freezing his 24% increase in discretionary spending in place, cutting a pitiful $775 million when 40 cents of every dollar spent is borrowed(almost $5 billion a day) and rocketing our national debt to $20 trillion and beyond. All for our benefit of course.