Once, We Would Have Called It a Scandal (auto bailouts)

Human Events ^ | June 10, 2009 | Newt Gingrich

[reaganaut1]

There was a time when we would have called it a scandal.

In 1921, oil tycoon Harry Sinclair gave several prize head of cattle and around $269,000 to President Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall.

In return, Sinclair got the exclusive rights to drill in an oil field in Wyoming. Sinclair’s no-bid contract became the Teapot Dome scandal, the most notorious example of political corruption in America prior to Watergate.

Between 2000 and 2008, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union gave $23,675,562 to the Democratic Party and its candidates.

In 2008 alone, the UAW gave $4,161,567 to the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama.

In return, the UAW received 55 percent of Chrysler and 17.5 percent of GM, plus billions of dollars.

But nobody’s calling this a scandal. It’s time we start.

2000-2008 UAW Giving: $23.7 million to Democrats. $193,540 to Republicans

The almost $24,000,000 the UAW has given to Democrats since 2000 compares with the $193,540 the union has given to Republicans.

In the 2008 presidential election, President Obama was by far the biggest recipient of UAW contributions, raking in $27,340 compared to the $10,600 given to Hillary Clinton, the No. 2 recipient of UAW money.

And so it was no surprise to the cynical Washington political class when the payback began with the Chrysler bankruptcy.

In a rigged proceeding in which the federal government disregarded bankruptcy law in favor of the political outcome it desired, the Chrysler bankruptcy laid the predicate for the much larger General Motors bankruptcy to come. Against law and precedent, the unions were moved to the front of the line when it came to who would benefit from the bankruptcy.

[TurtleUp]

But nobody’s calling this a scandal. It’s time we start.

The mainstream media are not calling it a scandal [a widely publicized incident that involves allegations of wrongdoing, disgrace, or moral outrage]. In their eyes, it's not a scandal because they have no desire to widely publicize the truth about their messiah.

On an unrelated(?) note, newspapers and network news broadcasts continue to decline in readers, viewers, and profits. I doubt that today's journalists will see any connection between covering for the UAW/obama sleaze and their own economic issues.

[Young Werther]

But we did add a new colloquialism, id est “fall guy”!

[LachlanMinnesota]

Once we would have called it democracy in action.

Now we cannot call it what it is - corrupt payola for fascists.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Bribery has been legalized in the United States if you call it a “campaign contribution”. If I had my way, we would amend the Constitution with term limits and make it unconstitutional for any politician who takes money from any special interest to introduce legislation favoring those groups, lobby for legislation favoring those groups, attempt to influence the vote of other legislators on behalf of those groups, or working in any way in their official capacity for those groups.

[SMARTY]

‘Auto Bailouts’ is just another one of Obama’s suction pumps hooked up to the U.S. Treasury...to siphon out (by the metric ton) revenue. All this to buy himself a re election and to secure his ‘place in history’.

He HAS to do this because simply based on his own sparse merits as a ‘politician’/’leader’/’statesman’, it could never be accomplished.

Buying attention, the appearance of achievement, the appearance of efficiency, the appearance of reform….etc., he thinks he will actually become the practical and historical equivalent of bona fide and demonstrably successful leaders who succeeded by virtue of their experience, education, understanding and strength of character (that’s spelled, C H A R A C T E R). I am thinking of Truman, Churchill, Reagan, Lincoln, etc.

As a stand alone political persona he amounts to “0” … so propped up by wholesale affirmation of a criminally biased MSM and all the political support that OUR money can buy… he calls himself ‘President of the United States of America’ and swaggers around aping the Liberal wet dream of ‘leadership’.