UAW Concessions III

There is a commercial where Evander Holyfield (former Heavyweight boxing champion) is running through offices yelling at a sportswriter that wrote some insulting remarks, “Come get your whipping!” on my way to go hear about the latest round of concessions (third time in five years) I felt like the heavyweight champ was telling me to “come get my whoopin’!” I have the feeling that the vote will ratify the new concessions. Most of the people I know were expecting many of the new cuts.

The list of concessions was particularly brutal to retirees (again). Retirees will lose ALL vision and dental coverage. They will now have increased prescription co-pays (2nd time in 3 years that this will happen to them.) the VEBA fund which is to start to fund all retiree health care starting in 2010 took the brunt of the concessions having a massive portion of the funding of the trust carved away and a portion of the funding that will be paid will be paid out in GM stock (as good as gold!)

I won’t get into the specifics of all of the concessions that the active took that list is too long. The Detroit Free Press has released the entire summary that I got at the meeting and vote that will took place at the Lansing Center today. If you care to read it here is the link.

As I sat in my third meeting to review our concessions in 5 years I looked at a friend sitting with me and said “I hate these meetings!”, we both laughed so hard that dozens of people were giving us dirty looks. In a room full of layed off workers, retirees and active workers the mood was as good as can be expected. I guess when your options are “take these concessions or let a bankruptcy judge decide what you get” you have limited options.

Disappointing

I spoke with a person from Organizing for America the other day at the Michigan Policy Summit regarding the Obama administrations direction with trade policy. I wasn’t very reserved. The conversation was in a very large room with people all around us but we were talking one on one and I let my feelings be known. I told her that a continuation of the Bush administrations trade policy was unacceptable. Without getting too detailed as to the specifics of the conversation we parted with her fully understanding how this layed off auto worker was not happy with the early signals from a president I campaigned heavily for.

One of the underlying issues with the failed trade policies of the Bush administration was its disastrous effects in the auto industry. GM recently dropped another bombshell by announcing that it plans to move a huge section of production overseas; nice timing! Get a huge government loan and then announce plans to take the U.S. taxpayers money and hire moving vans; typically oblivious upper management move. Autoworkers are used to these decisions, were no longer surprised when things like this happen. The backlash has caused Fritz Henderson to say that they may reconsider that decision. Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI, 09) spelled it out as simply as possible for Fritz:

"The priority has to be to keep domestic American jobs. The reason the taxpayers have made substantial investments in these companies ... is to keep American workers working in American plants."

I guess that wasn’t obvious for Fritz!

And then we move to the resurgence of the Panama Free Trade Agreement. Again…nice timing! The country is at scary levels of unemployment, autoworkers are getting axed left and right, business big and small has seen sales drop like a rock so what is congress going to do about it? Lets sign another NAFTA! I will repeat myself: UNACCEPTABLE!! It is time again to flood the congress and the white house with e-mails.

Citizens Trade Campaign has a letter for your elected officials asking them to come out against the Panama version of NAFTA, here is a link to the letter.

The UAW is urging people to contact the white house and urge the administration to push for GM to save AMERICAN jobs. Here is the link to e-mail the white house. You can also call the white house at (202) 456-1414.

There is also a rally on June 1st called “Reinvest in America: Keep the Dream Alive!” there is a march as well. This takes place in Lansing, MI and more information is available here.

Michigan Policy Summit Roundup

I had a great time at the Michigan Policy Summit. I was able to meet some bloggers and hang out with some I already knew. There were lots of people I knew and it was good to get to see everybody all in one place. The speakers were very good and I urge you to read what some of the other bloggers wrote about the various speakers and their take:

Jim Ramelis is a machine! He pumped out six or seven different posts over at Blogging for Michigan (BFM).

Allison Rocky had two posts over at BFM; the first about Grace Boggs award and the other about Dean Baker.

Perfectstorm was busy with an open thread at MichLib and a breaking news post about John Conyers and another post over at Rainbow Mittens.

Terry Bankert had an ongoing post that had a lot of photos and video at BFM.

I apologize to those I missed; PLEASE add other coverage in the comments section.

Criminals Swift Boating Health Care Reform

The art of misinformation continues as right wing interests, the folks who brought us the swift boat veteran’s ads, are funding and help smear a new target; health care reform. Fittingly the swift boat people have picked Rick Scott to be the face of “Conservatives for Patients Rights”, their misinformation campaign; here is a little information about Rick Scott:

From a Forbes article –

…the nation's largest hospital chain, known until recently as Columbia/HCA
Healthcare pleaded guilty to a variety of fraud charges. It admitted to
bilking various government programs and agreed to pay a total of $840 million in
fines and penalties. The fraud settlement is the largest in U.S. history…

The guilty plea follows a seven-year federal investigation that
resulted in charges being filed in five different federal courts in Florida,
Texas, Georgia and Tennessee, where HCA is headquartered. The fraud revealed by
that investigation ran deep within HCA's way of doing business.

And of course who was behind all of these criminal activities? The article continues:

The investigation and the plea is an obvious blow to a company that became a
Wall Street darling by promising to bring first-class business practices to the
hospital sector, still dominated by not-for-profits. Under former Chief
Executive Richard Scott, it bought hospitals by the bucketful and promised to
squeeze blood from each one. Scott was forced to resign in the wake of the
initial fraud charges…

The article details the long history of systemic fraud and blatantly overcharging and cutting illegal deals with other criminal agencies:

The company admitted to systematically overcharging the government by claiming
marketing costs as reimbursable, by striking illegal deals with home care
agencies, and by filing false data about how hospital space was being used. The
company increased Medicare billings by exaggerating the seriousness of the
illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in company
hospitals as a kickback for the doctors referring patients to HCA. In addition,
it gave doctors "loans" that were never expected to be paid back, free rent,
free office furniture, and free drugs from hospital pharmacies.

The opposition to health care reform has chosen a criminal to sell its poison kool-aid to America, how fitting. Sadly he has been getting air time on the cable news outlets without a word of his criminal background. He has done several interviews where he actually lists his time with HCA hospital as a positive thing:

I believe there needs to be a strong advocate for patients’ rights, someone who
has worked in the health-care industry. I hope my experiences focusing on
reducing costs and improving outcomes.

This interview was a series of softball questions with no pressing follow ups done by the National Review. I have seen this guy on CNN, without his background mentioned at all, he was interviewed by Politico and none of them are pressing him about his past, SAD!!

So if you see the ads from Rick Scott and his group on CNN and Faux news remember who is behind this and what their background is, fraud, stealing from the government and a laundry list of criminal activity. How typically right wing!

The SEIU has a letter asking CNN and FOX news to stop running the ads because they have lies in them; here is the link to send the letter.

The group Health Care for America Now has several great pieces about Rick Scott including his ties to the Iranian government, check it out.

Karma, it’s a beautiful thing!

If you wait long enough karma has a way of sorting things out. Tuesday a federal bankruptcy judge gave the small group of holdouts that drove Chrysler into bankruptcy two major setbacks and paved the way for the Chrysler/Fiat merger to go through.

The judge approved the bidding procedures that the Obama administration and the company had requested. The extra drops of blood the holdout creditors were hoping to get by forcing Chrysler into bankruptcy seem to be slipping away. From the NY Times:

The decision by the federal bankruptcy judge, Arthur J. Gonzalez, is a setback for a group of Chrysler creditors who have argued that liquidation of the company or some other transaction could yield greater value. These lenders, primarily investment firms, have said that the plan for the Fiat transaction ran afoul of bankruptcy law and would chill efforts by others to produce competing, potentially higher bids.

The judge earlier in the day had ruled for the disclosure of the identities of the Chrysler creditors which had claimed that revealing the names might lead to retaliation. In other words “we know that we are awful, pathetic people and our behavior effects the livelihoods of millions of people but hey were trying to make a couple of extra bucks here! You can’t really expect us to do this type of thing in public!?”

While owning less than 5% of the $6.9 Billion Chrysler debt these “vultures”, as John Dingell called them, held out for more money and it may end up biting them in the ass! And just in case you were wondering, here is the list of creditors as listed on Bloomberg:

The Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders are as follows, according to the filing:

Schultze Master Fund Ltd. of Purchase, New York;

Arrow Distressed Securities Fund at the same Purchase address;

Schultze Apex Master Fund, at the same address;

Uniondale, New York-based Stairway Capital Management II L.P;

Group G Partners LP, based in New York;

GGCP Sequoia L.P., at the same New York address;

Oppenheimer Senior Floating Rate Fund, in New York;

Oppenheimer Master Loan Fund LLC, at the same New York address;

Foxhill Opportunity Master Fund LP, based in Princeton, New Jersey.

Sacco and Vanzetti

On this day in 1920 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested for the robbery and murder of a payroll guard and paymaster. At the height of the post-Bolshevik Revolution Red Scare and debates over immigration quotas the two Italian Anarchists were taken into custody for what would be one of the most famous trials in American history.

Many believe that the two men were railroaded and the trial was a mockery. Sacco and Vanzetti ended up becoming larger than life after their execution and there is still a large debate about whether the judgment was a fair one or was it backlash against immigrants and Anarchists.
There is a lot of really good reading on the subject:

Democracy Now had a great piece on the story.

The Atlantic has this page that features three stories published in its pages from 1927, 1928, and 1977. (The first article is written by a future Supreme Court justice)

The New York Times had an Op-Ed a few years back that was insightful.

I couldn’t help but think of Sacco and Vanzetti and the justice systems failures with immigrants over the years when a recent verdict came down ruling that the beating death of an immigrant was not a hate crime. Both of the trials leave a feeling that somehow justice wasn’t quite served.

Who Killed Chrysler?

The recent actions of a few shamelessly greedy executives at a handful of hedge funds have driven one of the big three into bankruptcy. Oppenheimer Funds, Perella Weinberg Partners' Xerion Capital Fund, and Stairway Cap Management are the greedy bastards that would not budge hoping to leech a few extra drops of blood from the corpse of Chrysler. The Michigan House of Representatives reacted, in my opinion, in a just, clear and appropriate manner. They passed a resolution to divest of all investments with these companies and then leaders from both parties at the federal and state level unloaded on the hedge funds:

“They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none. Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting. I don't stand with them,"

- President Barack Obama

“Bankruptcy is only required today because of the greed of a few hedge funds that held a fraction of Chrysler's debt,"

- Rep. Candice Miller, (R-Harrison Township)

“We basically have a hold out of three hedge funds as the predominant reason that this bankruptcy happened, and I'm not too happy about that.”

- Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.)

"Unfortunately, some of the creditors stood in the doorway, I think it was unenlightened self-interest. I think they've stood in the way of progress and I don't think they came out any better.”

- Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.)

“The president's statement today was very, very powerful and I hope that the folks who are the holdouts here realize that they're not going to be able to throw a monkey wrench into the gears.”

- Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.)

“Unconscionably, too many in our country consider our auto workers and retirees are disposable people – statistics not souls.”

- Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)

Of course I applaud all of the Michigan politicians who stood with Chrysler. And as usual I am more than willing to name the 34 Michigan State Representatives who voted against the resolution to divest from these socially vampiric hedge funds. Here is a list of the Nay votes:

Agema, Elsenheimer, Kurtz, Pavlov,
Amash, Genetski, Lori, Pearce,
Ball, Green, Lund, Proos,
Booher, Haveman, Marleau, Rogers,
Calley, Hildenbrand, McMillin, Wayne Schmidt,
Caul, Horn, Meekhof, Paul Scott,
Crawford, Rick Jones, Moss, Stamas,
Daley, Knollenberg, Opsommer, Walsh,
Denby, Kowall

If anyone can point out a Democrat on this list please do so in the comments section.

Obviously these hedge fund executives are just the latest in the long series of executives to push Chrysler into the hole that It currently finds itself, but I only hope to see the Obama administrations strong words help sway the bankruptcy courts decisions. With any luck the judge will side with management and workers alike and all of the other players in this scenario that made sacrifices to try to stave off bankruptcy and leave these pitifully greedy hedge funds to fight over the scraps like the rodents they are.