Mitt Romney: Liar At Large

Is Mitt Romney Trying To Steal Obama's Auto Rescue Plan - Then Claim It As His Own?   By cc   On Mon Apr 30, 2012

  Perhaps Mitt Romney thinks that eating sliced up bananas on a sandwich is equal to eating banana bread?  Or, perhaps Mitt Romney is intentionally deceitful with his game of semantics during his Etch-A-Sketch Moments?

     Mitt's Political Adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom is 100% wrong when he falsely said, "Obama took Romney's advise on Auto Bailout" as Mitt Romney's "Advice" was to not give the Auto Industry a Federal Loan while Obama's did. And, Romney's "Advice" would have enabled a Foreign Corporation to take-over American Auto Companies and Obama's did not.  So why is Mitt Romney so confused about his own 2008 Auto Bankruptcy "Advice?" 

Is Mitt trying to "Steal" Obama's Auto Rescue Plan and now claim it as his own?

     To be clear: Other than simply having the word, "Bankruptcy" included in the Auto Rescue Plan, Mitt Romney's Definition of Bankruptcy Plan was not, I repeat, not anything even remotely like Obama's Auto Rescue Plan that the Auto Industry entered into which saved American jobs during the Great Recession.

2008 President-elect Obama Auto Rescue Plan:

- Federal Loan To Auto in order to operate while restructuring
- Federal Loan to Auto during Restructuring so no Foreign Corporation Could take over American Auto Companies.
- Restructure management,
- Retool engineering to manufacture fuel efficient cars
- To avoid Court-Bankruptcy procedures without Federal Loans During the Great Recession.
- If need-be, and since Auto would have Federal Loan, Broker pre-bankruptcy deals for both companies with the major stakeholders.

Mitt Romney's 2008 Bankruptcy Plan:

- NO Federal Loan to Auto Industry so Auto could continue operating during restructuring
- NO Federal Bailout Money to Auto Industry so Auto could continue operating during restructuring
- Let Foreign Auto Corporations buy up American Auto Companies, if need-be

Notice, two key differences between Obama's Plan and Romney's "advice":
First Key Difference: Obama's Plan always including making sure the Auto Industry had money in order to continue operations during Restructuring, while Mitt Romney's Plan did not.  And that, my friend, is a huge difference as Obama's Plan guarantee Americans would remain employed and Mitt Romney's did not.

Second Key Difference: Mitt Romney's Plan included a Foreign Corporation taking over and buying out American Auto Companies and Obama's Plan did not.  And again, that my friend, is also a huge difference as Obama's Plan guarantee Americans would remain employed and Mitt Romney's did not.

November 20, 2008 Mitt Romney told Neal Cavuto of Fox that Foreign Corporations may buy American Auto Companies

CAVUTO: On a day, Governor, we had this huge sell-off, do you think, partly on fears that Washington's out of control?

MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR: Well, I think it's mostly on fears that the economy is out of control. And — and there's real reason for that.

"CAVUTO: The history of companies that file for bankruptcy in a recession is not very good. Usually, most of them fail outright. Those that fail, or go into bankruptcy, and the cuts by the slowdown, can come out of it. Continental comes to mind, as an example ... Your dad ran American Motors, and we ultimately know that, company went into the arms of Chrysler, that later went into the arms of Daimler-Benz, and then on its own again. My point is that markets have, if not a cold, but a very efficient means in handling this sort of thing. Do they not?

ROMNEY: Oh, they sure do, and that's precisely why I am saying, no to a bailout, yes to work-out.

CAVUTO: OK.

ROMNEY: Work with the industry. There may be a merger in the future, perhaps. There may be a merger with a foreign company.

~ Romney Interview with Neal Cavuto

    It is no secret that Mitt Romney's Business Model has always included shipping American Jobs overseas and letting Foreign Corporations take over American Companies -- so Mitt's 2008 comment to Cavuto should come as no surprise.  But last week, did Mitt Romney and his campaign try to steal Obama's Auto Rescue Plan - then claim it as his own?

    Dates are important here in order to make my point that, suddenly, in General Election 2012, Mitt Romney is trying to "steal" President Obama's actual Auto Rescue Plan and claim it as his own. 

     Therefore, remember, before November 18, 2008 President-elect Obama's Auto Rescue Plan always included:

    Giving a Federal Loan to Auto so they may continue operations during Restructuring and Retooling so that Americans could continue to stay employed.  And, Obama's Plan, via the Federal Loan, always guaranteed American Auto Companies would not be taken over by a Foreign Corporation - which also guaranteed Americans would stay employed during the Great Recession.

    Conversely, and 180 degrees opposite from Obama's Plan, on November 18, 2008 and after Mitt Romney's plan only, only comprised of:

No Federal Loan to Auto Industry even if it meant they had to stop all operations during Restructure and thousands of Americans losing their jobs.  And, Mitt Romney's plan including the notion that a Foreign Corporation could buy American Auto Companies which would put Americas at risk of losing their jobs during the Great Recession.

Timeline of President-Elect Obama's Auto Rescue Plan:
November 10, 2008

"Obama Asks Bush to Provide Help for Automakers" By JACKIE CALMES

     Mr. Obama has signaled to the automakers and the unions that his support for
short-term aid now, and long-term assistance once he takes office, is contingent on their willingness to agree to transform their industry to make cleaner, more energy-efficient vehicles.

     Mr. Obama said he would instruct his economic team, once he chooses it, to devise a long-range plan for helping the auto industry recover in a way that is part of an energy and environmental policy to reduce reliance on foreign oil and address climate change.

Mr. Obama has called on the Bush administration to accelerate $25 billion in federal loans provided by a recent law specifically to help automakers retool.

~ New York Times

Keywords: "Retool," "long range plan," "transform their industry" which are all part of Managed Bankruptcy.

November 11, 2008

CANDY CROWLEY: Sources on the Obama transition team say the president-elect urged President Bush to take quick action to help the auto industry. Obama thinks the aid could be coupled with ... someone with the authority to push for industry reforms he has talked about recently.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENT-ELECT: I have made it a high priority for my transition team to work on additional policy options to help the auto industry adjust, weather the financial crisis, and succeed in producing fuel-efficient cars.
~ CNN Transcript

November 12, 2008

If Congress falls short on the auto industry loans during the lame-duck session next week, the Obama administration has promised there will be strings attached to a bailout for Detroit.

~Politico By Patrick O'Connor & Ryan Grim

CNN Reported:

President-elect Obama is weighing in quietly. I mean, we do know that he was urging President Bush about the auto industry, that he talked to him about a car czar, sort of overlooking improvements in how the auto industry does business and what it produces. He's also talked to the leadership on Capitol Hill about what he'd like to see in some of these packages.

November 16, 2008

OBAMA: "my hope is that over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all the stakeholders coming together with a plan ... So that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere. And that's, I think, what you haven't yet seen."

~ CBS 60 Minute Interview

   In that same 60 Minute Interview, Mr Kroft asked Obama about Bankruptcy for Auto.

KROFT: Are there a lot of people that think that the country would probably be better off and General Motors might be better off if it was allowed to go into bankruptcy?

OBAMA: Well, you know, under normal circumstances that might be the case in the sense that you'd go to a restructuring like the airlines had to do in some cases. And then they come out and they're still a viable operation. And they're operating even during the course of bankruptcy. In this situation, you could see the spigot completely shut off so that it would not potentially permit GM to get back on its feet. And I think that what we have to do is to recognize."
~ CBS 60 Minute Interview

November 17, 2008

    When asked if a bankruptcy declaration by any of the auto companies would be acceptable to the White House, [Dana Perino] responded that would be "the companies' decision."

     President-elect Barack Obama supports direct aid for the Big Three, but he has said taxpayers should be protected too. The hangup is whether to insist that loans or loan guarantees be conditioned upon an assessment of "financial viability" over the next 10 years as under the Energy Department loan guarantee program or not, as under TARP.

November 18, 2008
Mitt Romney Writes: "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"

"Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" By Mitt Romney

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

     [D]on’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.  A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs."

     Notice, Romney is adamant in 2008 when he pens do not give Auto Industry one penny during Bankruptcy even if it meant Americans lose their jobs during the Great Recession.

Fast-Forward to 2012 GOP Primary Election

February 13, 2008 - Another Mitt Romney Op-Ed

"Taxpayers Should Get GM Shares' Proceeds" - By: MITT ROMNEY

     This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. The President tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.

Before the companies were allowed to enter and exit bankruptcy, the U.S. government swept in with an $85 billion sweetheart deal disguised as a rescue plan. By the spring of 2009, instead of the free market doing what it does best, we got a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style.

Such a state of affairs is intolerable, and as president I would not tolerate it.

~ Excerpts from another Mitt Romney Op-Ed Dated 2/13/2012

February 14, 2012:

From Detroit News:
"Romney wrote that the government’s rescue of the American auto companies amounted to “crony capitalism on a grand scale” and argued that G.M. should have gone through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy without taxpayer assistance."

    Remember, in 2008, Mitt Romeny said "Yes" on $700 Billion [TARP] for white collar bankers.  But, in 2008 and still in 2012, Mitt Romney would "not tolerate" Loaning Auto Industry two percent of that ($17 Billion) for blue collar American workers to stay on assembly line during Restructuring.

     In fact, on March 20, 2012, Mitt Romney credited Bush/Cheney's TARP funding to Bankers as saving the US Economy:

    At a town hall in Arbutus, Maryland.
ROMNEY: "I keep hearing the president say he's responsible for keeping the country out of a Great Depression.  No, no, no, that was President George W. Bush and [then-Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson."

     Even now, Mitt Romney thinks Bush/Cheney giving Bankers $700 Billion Taxpayer Dollars (TARP) saved America but loaning the Auto Industry funds so they may operate during Restructuring is "not to be tolerated."

     Mitt Romney is lying with the aid of his Etch-A-Sketch Lens, and falsely claiming that Obama used Mitt Romney's Bankruptcy "Advice" and that it was Mitt's Bankruptcy Plan that saved the Auto industry.

     Even worse than Mitt Romney lying is that Romney seems almost pathological with his lies as it appears that Mitt Romney is trying to "Steal" President Obama's Auto Rescue Plan and claim it as his own.

     ... because as we can see, facts clearly show President Obama's Auto Rescue Plan is not even remotely close to anything Mitt Romney "Advised" Congress to do in 2008 or 2012.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Barack Obama,Auto Bailout,Eric Fehrnstrom,Etch-A-Sketch,Romney's Auto Bailout Lie,Current Events

Get Sick. Can't Pay? Go to Jail!

By  Steven D  Sun Apr 29, 2012         Original

Indeed, you can go to jail even if you don't owe any money if the collection company for your medical provider thinks you do:

A breast cancer survivor who was sent to prison over a mistaken $280 medical bill has highlighted the return of debtor's prisons in the U.S.

Illinois resident Lisa Lindsay had received the medical bill in error and was told she did not have to pay up.

However, the bill was turned over to a collection agency and state troopers arrived at her home and took her away in handcuffs.

So, cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay eventually paid the bill she didn't owe + $600 for legal and court fees just to be sure this never happened to her again, or at least for this non-existent debt.  Better safe than sorry, right? 

At this point you might be saying to yourself, WTF?  I thought the US eliminated debtors' prisons in the early 19th century.  Silly rabbit. There's more than one way to trick the justice system to skin people in debt using the power of the state to put them in jail as a way to coerce payments from people like Lisa.

The case of Lindsay as well as others suggests that more people than ever before in the U.S are being thrown in 'debtor's prisons' for not being able to pay back loans. [...]

Debt collectors have become so aggressive claim some that poor people who are behind on payments of as little as $25 a month are being sent to jail.[...]

How is this done?  Well the collection company files a small claims lawsuit.  If you fail to appear, or file a responsive pleading, or make some other common legal mistake, or simply have the collection agency claim they served you by mail (allowed in many cases where the claims are not large) when they really didn't because you've moved, where in the hospital at the time, or they just flat out lied in their affidavit of service, the court can hold you in contempt of court.  And that's when the sheriff deputies or state troopers may show up at your door to place those handcuffs on you, sick, disabled or whatever.

Acting within the law, debtors aren't arrested  for nonpayment, rather for failing to arrive to court hearings thereby falling foul of contempt of court laws.

This results in a police arrest warrant being issued for 'failure to appear', the debtor is tracked down, packed off to jail and can only get out by paying the set bail bond which of course matches the amount owed.

Of course not every state allows such practices, but many do.  And while it has been employed against many people who have fallen behind on paying their bills in this economy, the arrest of people who can't pay their medical bills because they lost health insurance or their jobs, or simply they have student debt. they cannot repay because they can't find a job, is particularly egregious.

And people wonder why privatization of prisons is increasing.  Well, when you can toss people in jail for almost anything, including the inability to pay their debts, prisons become an even bigger profit center.  Last year alone, thousands of individuals were jailed as a result of unscrupulous practices by collection companies like the one that sent Lisa Lindsay to jail for a $280 debt she didn't even owe:

NPR reports that it’s becoming increasingly common for people to serve jail time as a result of their debt. Because of “sloppy, incomplete or even false documentation,” many borrowers facing jail time don’t even know they’re being sued by creditors ...

Sean Matthews, a homeless New Orleans construction worker, was incarcerated for five months for $498 of legal debt, while his jail time cost the city six times that much. Some debtors are even forced to pay for their jail time themselves, adding to their financial troubles.

Stories of surprise arrests for unpaid debt have been reported in states including Indiana, Tennessee and Washington. In Kansas City, one man ended up in jail after missing only a furniture payment. The Federal Trade Commission received more than 140,000 complaints related to debt collection in 2010, and they’ve taken 10 debt collection agencies to court for their practices in the past three years.

Since the start of 2010, judges have signed off on more than 5,000 arrest warrants since in nine counties alone. Beverly Yang, a legal aid attorney, says many debtor’s — and judges — don’t know debtor’s rights, which results in the accused being intimidated into a pay agreement. She’s seen judges interrogate debtors about why they can’t pay more and whether they are trying hard enough to find a job.

From the NPR report:

Take, for example, what happened to Robin Sanders in Illinois.

She was driving home when an officer pulled her over for having a loud muffler. But instead of sending her off with a warning, the officer arrested Sanders, and she was taken right to jail.

"That's when I found out [that] I had a warrant for failure to appear in Macoupin County. And I didn't know what it was about."

Sanders owed $730 on a medical bill. She says she didn't even know a collection agency had filed a lawsuit against her.

"They say they send out these court notices, and nobody gets them," Sanders says.

We are talking about collection companies, after all.  The scum of the earth.  They buy the debts for pennies on the dollar.  Then they file lawsuits.  They don't care if they have to lie or present false paperwork to the courts, because in most cases they are never going to be found out.  They file their affidavits and the justice system believes them, because they do not have the time or personnel to verify the accuracy of those affidavits, and the people they target do not have the money to fight the illegal practices by hiring a lawyer.  And it is difficult to prove a negative, i.e., that you didn't receive notice of the court date as we all know:

Washington state's House of Representatives passed [in 2011] by a 98-0 vote a bill that would require companies to provide proof a borrower has been notified about lawsuits against them before a judge could issue an arrest warrant. All 42 Republicans voted for the legislation, which is expected to pass the state's Senate and be signed into law by the governor. A trade group representing debt collectors supports the bill and says the changes are needed because some companies are abusing Washington's existing law by improperly arresting borrowers.

Look for more of these abuses in the future, particularly in states where the legislature is controlled by Republicans and the governor is a Scott Walker (ALEC Model 2.0) clone.

Technorati Tags: Health Care,Debtor's Prison,Disabilities,99%,Collection Agencies,Current Events,Student Loans