The Last Kingdom's Aethelwold: Trump Of The Dark Ages

The Last Kingdom is historical fiction from the BBC that takes place during the reign of Alfred the Great (871-899), during which time Wessex is the last holdout in Britain against the Viking invaders. Netflix has been running Season 3 and last night I watched Episode 8. At one point, Alfred's malcontent cousin-- and claimant to the throne-- Aethelwold, tells his crony Sigebriht to just keep repeating a lie-- about a plot against the king and crown price-- over and over until everyone in Wintancaester (Winchester) accepts it as truth.

The brief scene, including the phraseology Aethelwold uses, immediately reminded me of the series of drawings (above) that Nancy Ohanian did a couple of months ago tying Joseph Goebbels and Fox News together as purveyors of this type of "Big Lie" propaganda, which also happens to be the essence of Trump's communication strategy. In fact, that Last Kingdom scene is like a Dark Ages version of Trump's twitter feed.

The Associated Press ran a fact check on just one tweet he put out yesterday: Entire Trump tweet on immigrant aid is wrong. "Wrong" is such a polite way to describe what it is. "Trump," wrote Calvin Woodward, "is spreading a false claim from supporters that people who are in the United States illegally receive more in federal assistance than the average American gets in Social Security benefits. Everything about the tweet he passed on to his 56 million listed Twitter followers Tuesday is wrong. In a tweet of his own, Trump sketched an overly simplistic portrait of the auto industry in suggesting that General Motors plants slated for closure would be chugging along if foreign cars were heavily taxed in the U.S. market." Trump's retweet was removed once the Associated Press called out the lies.

TRUMP’s retweet: “Illegals can get up to $3,874 a month under Federal Assistance program. Our social security checks are on average $1200 a month. RT (retweet) if you agree: If you weren’t born in the United States, you should receive $0 assistance.”

THE FACTS: Wrong country, wrong numbers, wrong description of legal status of the recipients. Besides that, immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally do not qualify for most federal benefits, even when they’re paying taxes, and those with legal status make up a small portion of those who use public benefits.

The $3,874 refers to a payment made in Canada, not the U.S., to a legally admitted family of refugees. It was largely a one-time resettlement payment under Canada’s refugee program, not monthly assistance in perpetuity, the fact-checking site Snopes found a year ago in debunking a Facebook post that misrepresented Canada’s policy. A document cited in the Facebook post, showing aid for food, transportation and other basics needs, applied to a family of five.

Apart from confusing Canada with the United States, the tweet distributed by the president misstated how much Americans get from Social Security on average-- $1,419 a month for retired workers, not $1,200.

Overall, low-income immigrants who are not yet U.S. citizens use Medicaid, food aid, cash assistance and Supplemental Security Income aid at a lower rate than comparable U.S.-born adults, according to an Associated Press analysis of census data. Noncitizen immigrants make up only 6.5 percent of all those participating in Medicaid, for example.

Despite that, the administration wants to redefine the rules for immigrants to further restrict who can receive benefits and for how long.

A retweet is not necessarily an endorsement of the opinion it contains, but Trump does not populate his Twitter feed with views that are contrary to his own.

GM

TRUMP: “The reason that the small truck business in the U.S. is such a go to favorite is that, for many years, Tariffs of 25% have been put on small trucks coming into our country. It is called the ‘chicken tax.’ If we did that with cars coming in, many more cars would be built here ... and G.M. would not be closing their plants in Ohio, Michigan & Maryland. Get smart Congress. Also, the countries that send us cars have taken advantage of the U.S. for decades. The President has great power on this issue-- Because of the G.M. event, it is being studied now!”

THE FACTS: It’s a stretch to conclude that the plants General Motors plans to close would be spared if foreign-made cars were subject to hefty duties. Tariffs could indeed be an incentive to build cars in the U.S., but the overarching problem for GM is that people aren’t buying cars like they used to. More want SUVs or trucks now.

The 25 percent tariff on pickup trucks imported into the U.S. was put in place years ago to protect the Detroit Three’s major profit centers from imported pickups. It does not apply to trucks imported from Canada or Mexico at present. So GM, for instance, builds pickups in Mexico and exports them to the U.S. without such a tariff. Fiat Chrysler also builds heavy-duty Ram pickups in Mexico, although it plans to move that production to the U.S. next year.

Japanese automakers, mainly Toyota and Nissan, use U.S. plants to build nearly all of the pickups that they sell in the country. Honda switched production from Canada to Alabama. Toyota does sell a small number of Mexican-built Tacoma pickups in the U.S., but most are built in Texas.

So there are grounds to believe car duties could make a difference, but it’s not that straightforward.

Six years ago cars were 49 percent of new-vehicle sales in the U.S., while trucks and SUVs were 51 percent. Through October of this year, it’s 68 percent trucks and 32 percent cars. All the factories GM wants to close make cars that aren’t selling well. The Commerce Department has been studying whether it can use national security reasons to justify putting tariffs on imported cars but has yet to make a decision.

Most automakers, including those based in Detroit, import vehicles from abroad that would be affected by any tariffs. And U.S. car exports would probably be subject to new or higher tariffs overseas.

Rick Santorum-- Crazy Enough, Craven Enough, to Hasten The Destruction Of A Finite Planet?

John Amato called yesterday, fuming about Santorum's hat tip-- more like a big wet smooch-- to right-wing religious zealots who believe the BuyBull dictates that we should use up the earth... literally. John hates it when politicians try starting religious wars to advance their partisan prospects-- and that's exactly what Santorum has been up to (which has a lot to do with why his lead in Michigan is rapidly evaporating).

Santorum, wrapping himself in the vestments of "religion," has been babbling incoherently-- unless you're one of the zealots who understands the code-- about how Obama is offering a “phony theology … not based on the Bible” when it comes to the environmental movement. John's a Catholic as well and this isn't something that makes him comfortable-- nor does it make any normal Americans comfortable. But it's exactly what the nuts and freaks want to hear.

Romney has said before that he believes the earth is getting warmer though he’s cast doubts on how much man’s role in that may be. Santorum has also tried to characterize Romney as a supporter of cap and trade policies to lower greenhouse gas emissions, though Romney, as governor, declined to participate in a regional cap and trade system because of the economic costs involved.

By invoking religion, Santorum is playing to his strength with evangelicals and self-described very conservative voters, two blocs which could play a role in deciding who wins Michigan on Feb. 28 and Ohio on March 6.

Santorum says Obama is pushing a radical environmental agenda that unwisely limits energy production and turns its back on science.

Santorum told voters in eastern Ohio on Monday that science is on the side of those who want to aggressively produce more oil and natural gas in America. He said the notion of global warming is not climate science but "political science."

Santorum said Obama and his allies want to frighten people about new oil-exploration technologies so they can get your dollars and turn it over to politicians to win elections "so they can control your lives."

Hoping a "drill-baby-drill, hypofracturing, pro-pollution agenda is going to please the fundamentalist extremists who claim "god" gave us the earth to exploit, Santorum is playing with fire and hoping there are more morons who vote than people with brains. In his brilliant book, Agenda For A New Economy, David Korten emphasizes the unbreakable bond between the biosphere and the well-being-- the continued existence-- of mankind.

Astronauts hurtling through space understand that their well-being depends on secure and adequate stocks of oxygen, fuel, food, water, and other essentials. Minimizing flows and recycling everything is essential to their long-term well-being. Because nothing can be replaced, nothing can be wasted. Consuming faster than stocks regenerate is actively suicidal.

The frontier is no more. Now we must live by Earth's rules or die.

...We humans have been living an illusion that our world is an open frontier of endless resources free for the taking and have organized our economies accordingly. Assuming ourselves separate from nature, we have too often attacked or sought to destroy or subdue her as though she were our enemy.

We are awakening to the reality that we inhabit a wondrous but finite living planet and that our lives are inseparably linked with all of Earth's species. We must learn to live by the biosphere's rules and restructure our economic systems accordingly, which presents an epic test of our human capacity for creative innovation, collective choice, and self-organization.

As we consider the transformation ahead, we must recognize that our individual choices are constrained by collective societal choices beyond our individual control... In most U.S. cities, and certainly in most suburban or rural locations, the layout of our built spaces combines with the lack of public transportation to create a powerful incentive for households to buy and maintain at least one car. This happens to be a lack of choice that works well for the Wall Street corporations that make and sell automobiles. The story of how General Motors successfully killed the streetcar as a once widely available public transportation option is well documented.



Contrary to capitalism's claim that unregulated markets maximize consumer choice, Wall Street corporations go to great lengths to limit our choices to those most profitable for themselves. One of the more telling examples is Wall Street's drive to create an unregulated, borderless economy in which goods and money move freely at the discretion of global corporations that operate beyond the reach of accountability to any government.

This worldview is blasphemous to Rick Santorum, who wasn't in the Senate when NAFTA was voted on but was an enthusiastic backer of CAFTA and every other trade policy that has stripped middle class jobs out of America and sent them to low-wage hellholes that have no meaningful environmental protections. That's the world the GOP envisions for America... for as long as it can cling to existence. He's running around the country lying his ass off about this stuff.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we need someone who understands, who comes from the coal fields, who comes from the steel mills, who understands what average working people in America need to be able to provide for themselves and their families," Santorum said to a crowd of about 500 people in the Democratic-leaning eastern edge of the state.

Santorum's claim to have come "from the coal fields" is a stretch - by two generations. He has never worked in a coal mine. His parents' professions were psychologist and nurse, and Santorum is a lawyer who has spent all of his adult life in politics.

But he frequently invokes his grandfather, who worked in the auto factories of Detroit and then the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania after he immigrated to the United States from Italy.

In his remarks Monday, Santorum went beyond his usual discussion of the importance of increasing domestic energy production to deliver a blistering attack on environmental activists. He said global warming claims are based on "phony studies," and that climate change science is little more than "political science."

His views are not "anti-science" as Democrats claim, Santorum said. "When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment," he said to applause, and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining.

What's Good For General Motors Is Good For The USA... Still?

Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Even before GM started running the above ad about having paid back their TARP loans, a knock-down, drag-out fight was raging between the forces that want America to fail-- primarily Republicans-- and those who would like to, at minimum, clean up the mess that eight years of Republican rule left in its wake. The first salvo was an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal by Ed Whitacre, CEO of General Motors, claiming that GM had paid back all the money it had borrowed plus interest.

Today, General Motors is announcing that it has made a payment of $5.8 billion to the U.S. Treasury and Export Development Canada. We're paying back-- in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule-- loans made to help fund the new GM.

Our ability to pay back these loans less than a year after emerging from bankruptcy is a sign that our plan for building a new GM is working. It is also an important step toward eventually reducing the amount of equity the governments of the U.S., Canada and Ontario hold in our company. Combined, these governments hold a majority of GM's equity, and we want citizens to know how their governments' money is being put to work.

Following the initial crisis and the bankruptcy of the old GM last year, a new GM has emerged as a leaner, stronger company. We have eight new members on our 13-member board of directors. Twelve of the top 13 senior leaders are new to GM (from places outside the industry such as Microsoft and AT&T) or in new jobs at the company. You can feel a renewed energy and commitment at GM. Our new vehicles are generating sales, and these sales are allowing us to make investments and create jobs.

Good news like this, unchallenged, would undermine the entire Republican Party midterm election scheme to confuse voters into thinking Obama and the Democrats, raher than Bush and the Republicans and their years and years of wrong-headed economic policies, are at the root of their discontent. Chuck Grassley, technically still among the living, was fast to start braying that Whitacre was just shuffling TARP money from one account to another. The Republican Party's propaganda unit, its echo chamber led by Fox and the Heritage Foundation, started thundering away that the sky was falling. "Real progress," whined the reactionaries, "will be made when the government turns GM back to the private sector." They also whined that government policy has been favoring workers and retired people over bondholders and shareholders.

The President (whose address from Saturday you can watch below) claims that signs of recovery at GM and Chrysler are part of an overall recovery that his policies are bringing to the devastated economy.

"Many believed this was a fool's errand. Many feared we would be throwing good money after bad: that taxpayers would lose most of their investment and that these companies would soon fail regardless," Obama said. "But one year later, the outlook is very different. In fact, the industry is recovering at a pace few thought possible."

In addition to GM's decision to pay back $5.8 billion in government loans -- albeit with cash from a government-funded account-- and Chrysler's posting of an operating profit for the first quarter, Obama touted the ending of an aid program for suppliers and the repayment of aid by Chrysler Financial as signs of improvement.

"It won't be too long before the stock the Treasury is holding in GM can be sold, helping to reimburse the American people for their investment," Obama said, adding, "As I've said many times, I did not run for president to get into the auto business or the banking business. As essential as it was that we got in, I'm glad to see that we're getting out."

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Congress that the estimated losses from the auto industry bailout had shrunk to $28 billion, of the roughly $85 billion spent. Last year, Treasury estimated it could lose $30 billion on the industry aid.

As for the ads... anyone know if Fox is running them?

What's Good For General Motors, Is Good For...?

A lot of bad business decisions have led to this seemingly inevitable next step in the General Motors story. General Motors declared bankruptcy this morning-- kind of. It's a modified version of bankruptcy. In effect, the government will take over-- though not operationally-- GM for a few years while it gets back on its feet-- and gobbles down another $30 billion in taxpayer bailouts (bringing the grand total to $50 billion), while closing between 12 and 20 factories and firing over 20,000 union workers. The U.S. government will own 60% of the stock in the restructured company and the Canadian government will own 12%. The other option would be liquidation, a sure fire catastrophe for the economy.

Forty percent of the company’s 6,000 dealers will close, the workers’ union will be forced to finance half of its $20 billion health care fund with stock of uncertain value in the restructured G.M., and bondholders, including many retirees, will be forced to take stock worth 10 cents for every dollar they lent the company.

The company’s last steps toward bankruptcy took place over the weekend as a majority of G.M. bondholders agreed not to challenge the filing in court and to exchange their debt for stock at about 10 cents of equity for every dollar owed by the company.

...[T]he White House on Sunday briefed reporters on a new set of principles for how the government should behave as a majority shareholder. It argued that the government’s role should be limited primarily to the beginning of the process-- selecting a board of directors and hiring experienced managers -- but that it should then recede, becoming a passive investor, one seeking to sell its stake quickly.

At the same time, Mr. Obama has laid out goals for all the Detroit automakers that will presumably affect their major strategic decisions. He has urged them, for example, to build smaller cars with significantly better fuel efficiency. But under the new principles, the White House would be discouraged from getting involved in G.M’s decisions about when and where to build such a car, or how long to keep producing it if it sells poorly.

Although this bankruptcy will impact Americans in every state, the 4 expected to be hit hardest are Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin, where there are a lot of pissed off workers-- and congressmen-- wanting to know why GM is taking taxpayer money-- lots of it-- and building cars in Mexico and South Korea. Late last night the White House released a "Restructuring Initiative" fact sheet which emphasizes the "shared sacrifice," that addresses past failures, and is meant to "dramatically improve its overall cost structure, and allow the company to move toward profitability even if the auto market recovers slowly. As a result of this restructuring, GM will lower its breakeven point to a 10 million annual car sales environment. Before the restructuring, GM’s breakeven point was about 16 million annual car sales." The UAW was forced to make huge concessions on compensation and retiree health care, and pensions, even more unfair than what the violently anti-worker Bush Regime demanded of the unions! And bond holders were pretty badly screwed as well.

The newly organized GM will purchase substantially all of the assets of the old GM needed to implement its business plan out of a chapter 11 in exchange for the U.S. Government relinquishing the majority of its loans to GM. 
 
·         This new GM will establish an independent trust (VEBA) that will provide health care benefits for GM’s retirees.  The VEBA will be funded by a note of $2.5 billion payable in three installments ending in 2017 and $6.5 billion in 9% perpetual preferred stock.  The VEBA will also receive 17.5% of the equity of New GM and warrants to purchase an additional 2.5% of the company.  The VEBA will have the right to select one independent director and will have no right to vote its shares or other governance rights.
 
·         The GM qualified pension plans for both hourly and salaried employees will be transferred to the New GM as part of the purchase process.
 
·         The U.S. Treasury is prepared to provide approximately $30.1 billion of debtor in possession financing to support GM through an expedited chapter 11 proceeding and transition the new GM through its restructuring plan. The U.S. Treasury does not anticipate providing any additional assistance to GM beyond this commitment. In exchange for funds already committed by the U.S. Treasury and the new injection of $30.1 billion, the U.S. government will receive approximately $8.8 billion in debt and preferred stock in the new GM and approximately 60% of the equity of the new GM.  The U.S. Treasury will also have the right to appoint the initial directors other than those that will be selected by the VEBA and the Canadian government.
 
·         The Governments of Canada and Ontario will participate alongside the U.S. Treasury by lending $9.5 billion to GM and New GM. The Canadian and Ontario governments will receive approximately $1.7 billion in debt and preferred stock, and approximately 12% of the equity of the new GM.  Based on its substantial financial contribution, the Canadian government will also have the right to select one initial director.
 
·         The new GM will pursue a commitment to build a new small car in an idled UAW factory, which when in place will increase the share of U.S. production for U.S. sale from its current level of about 66% to over 70%...

·         GM will continue to honor consumer warranties. This past week, the U.S. Treasury made available the Warranty Support Program to GM and $361 million was funded to a special vehicle available to provide a backstop on the orderly payment of warranties for cars sold during this restructuring period.

During this process, GM will continue operating in the ordinary course. From an operating perspective, the day after the filing will not be materially different from the day before the filing. The following parties will be treated as described below:

·         Employees: Employees will get paid in the ordinary course, including salary, wages and ordinary benefits. Assuming the sale moves forward as expected, Pension Plan and VEBA funding will be transferred to New GM.
 
·         Suppliers: GM will seek authority at its “first day” hearing to continue to pay suppliers in the ordinary course. In addition, the U.S. Treasury’s Supplier Support Program will continue to operate, and GM suppliers benefiting from the program will continue to receive that support. 
 
·         Dealers: GM will seek authority at its “first day” hearing to honor its customer warranties in the ordinary course.  Moreover, GM will seek to continue to honor its dealer incentives for those dealers who are expected to continue to be part of GM’s distribution network going forward.  There are some dealers that GM has identified that will not continue with GM.  It is expected that the terminated dealers will be offered an agreement to orderly wind down their operations over the next 18 months

Michael Moore wrote an open letter to... Obama and everyone else about GM this morning. You can read the whole thing at the link. Here are a few of his conclusions and suggestions though:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war-- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true-- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce-- and most of those who have been laid off-- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories-- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front-- and the back-- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President-- and the UAW-- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Is GM Headed For Bankruptcy Afterall?

Yesterday's big winner was a somewhat surprsed Rick Wagoner whose punishment for failure was a $20 million severance package. (I guess no one read yesterday's NY Times story by Mary Williams Walsh about how positively passe contracts with big payouts are nowadays.) Makes me feel just great that my taxes went to pay for that! Most of the Board of Directors is also going, but the new CEO is Fritz Henderson, Wagoner's #2. His first public statement was that maybe bankruptcy is the best alternative for GM. But what's GM? The product line? The workers? The shareholders? The bondholders? Management? The American automotive industry and GM's contextual place in American society?

Henderson told reporters that the company would still prefer to restructure outside of court, but the level of support Washington is offering would help the company quickly restructure through bankruptcy.

Henderson says GM  needs to work faster and go deeper to get more concessions from bondholders and the United Auto Workers union. President Obama has demanded that GM come up with a better restructuring plan in 60 days in order to qualify for more government aid.

As usual Republicans are confused and all over the map on this, without ideas or leadership. Every Republican has a different critique of Obama's plans, presumably because Limbaugh slept in late today and hasn't given them their marching orders yet.

GM's Rick Wagoner Falls On His Sword-- What About The Banksters?

This morning, President Obama is going to reveal the details of the government's next step in bailing out the auto industry. Yesterday Rahm Emanuel leaked the news that as part of the deal General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, is resigning and that the plans for restructuring from GM and Chrysler don't make the grade. Excellent idea on the firing and important oversight on the restructuring! I can't understand why Obama hasn't done the same thing with the far more venal and far more criminal banksters. Wagoner has been CEO since 2000 and the catastrophic decision to make GM into an SUV company and ignore fuel efficient vehicles was his. He deserves his fate.

When Paulson forced Robert Willumstad out as CEO of AIG as part of the deal to bail them out, they forced Republican hack Edward Liddy on the Board of Directors. It isn't clear yet how Wagoner's successor will be determined but it isn't likely Obama would make the same kind of power play that Bush did with Liddy. GM President Fred Henderson will probably take over on an interim basis.

G.M. and Chrysler have almost exhausted the $17.4 billion in federal aid the two companies have received since December. G.M. has asked for up to an additional $16.6 billion, and Chrysler has requested another $5 billion.

According to people close to the talks, the task force will treat G.M. and Chrysler differently with respect to their restructuring plans and aid requests.

...Mr. Obama, in comments in a televised interview on Sunday, said neither G.M. not Chrysler had yet to meet the conditions of their existing loans.

“That’s going to mean a set of sacrifices from all parties involved-- management, labor, shareholders, creditors, suppliers, dealers. Everybody’s going to have to come to the table and say it’s important for us to take serious restructuring steps now in order to preserve a brighter future down the road,” Mr. Obama said in a taped interview on the CBS news program Face the Nation.

While President Obama did not specify a need to replace Mr. Wagoner at G.M., the president has repeatedly cited mistakes made by management as a contributing factor to the industry’s troubles.

Wagoner makes most of his political donations through the General Motors PAC, although he wrote personal checks to members of both parties, mostly Michigan elected officials. Nationally he tended to give to conservative Republicans like Bush, Gingrich and Ashcroft. The General Motors PAC gave overwhelmingly to Republicans until this year. In 2006 the PAC gave 74% of it's $626,330 in donations to Republicans and it's heaviest non-Michigan contributions went to very conservative Republicans: Joe Barton (R-TX), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Denny Hastert (R-IL), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Bill Thomas (R-CA), George Allen (R-VA), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Gordon Smith (R-OR), and Jim Talent (R-MO). In 2004 the PAC's donations were even more oriented towards right-wing Republicans (76%) and until 2008 the donations have always overwhelmingly favored rightists.

In 2008, with Democrats firmly in control of Washington, despite GM's efforts, the PAC started donating about equally to the two parties. Last year the top non-Michigan recipients were John Boehner (R-OH), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Mary Landrieu (semi-D- LA). And although they were about even on Democrats and Republicans, many of the Democrats they contributed to are Blue Dogs and other corrupt corporate-oriented Democrats like Joe Baca (Blue Dog-CA), John Barrow ((Blue Dog-GA), Melissa Bean (Blue Dog-IL), Marion Berry (Blue Dog--AR), Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Leonard Boswell (Blue Dog-IA), Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Don Cazayoux (Blue Dog-LA), Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Bart Gordon (Blue Dog-TN), Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN), Nick Lampson (Blue Dog-TX), Tim Mahoney (Blue Dog-FL), Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Charlie Melancon (Blue Dog-LA), Dennis Moore (Blue Dog-KS), Earl Pomeroy (Blue Dog-ND), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), John Salazar (Blue Dog-CO), David Scott (Blue Dog-GA), John Tanner (Blue Dog-TN), Charlie Wilson (Blue Dog-OH)... almost every single Blue Dog and just a small handful of non-Blue Dog Democrats, mostly powerful high-profile members like Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Charlie Rangel, Rahm Emanuel and Chris Van Hollen.

A careful examination of the GM PAC's contribution patterns, while Wagoner headed the comnpany shows they are very effective-- FAR, FAR more than labor unions-- at picking out members and candidates who are ideologically predisposed to fight for their special interests, with large sums always going to up-and-coming right-wingers like Eric Cantor (R-VA), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), as well as taking care of any rightist who looks like he's facing electoral trouble-- so donations to losers and near-losers like Phil English (R-PA), Randy Kuhl (R-NY), David Dreier (R-CA), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Sam Graves (R-MO) and Lee Terry (R-NE).


UPDATE: Obama Looking Seriously At Using Bankruptcy Filings To Straighten Out GM & Chrysler

Watch the videos first and then read the interpretation in today's Wall Street Journal. The one thing not to do is go anywhere near Fox News today.

Part I:



Part II: