Since Mitt Romney is supposedly responsible for the death from cancer of a woman who died in 2006, seven years after the presumptive GOP nominee left Bain Capital, it seems more than fair to talk about what has resulted from the Obama administration's blatant favoritism towards UAW members while shafting former Delphi salaried workers.
Tonight, the Associated Press's Adwatch entry by Stephen Braun actually calls out the Obama super-PAC Priorities USA, specifically saying that the assertion by Joe Soptic, the woman's widower, "that Romney bears some blame in his wife's death is not backed up factually in the ad." Fair enough, but, especially because it was in the news today, let's look at the Delphi situation.
Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller reported the following today (HT Hot Air; bolds are mine throughout this post):
Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company.
The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions.
The internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts about the sequence of events surrounding the termination of those non-union pensions, and that administration figures violated federal law.
... Former Treasury official Matthew Feldman and former White House auto czar Ron Bloom, both key members of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry during the GM bailout, have testified under oath that the PBGC (the theoretically independent Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation), not the administration, led the effort to terminate the non-union Delphi workers’ pension plan.
... The emails TheDC has obtained show that the Treasury Department, not the independent PBGC, was running the show.
Since Tim Geithner works for President Obama, it's worth asking if the Obama administration deserves the blame for what Henry Payne at National Review's Planet Gore blog documented last year in the Delphi situation:
The gutting of white-collar worker pensions at Delphi, GM’s biggest parts supplier, is a teachable moment about UAW power and Obama administration callousness.
... While all Delphi pensions were transferred to the Federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC) and slashed by 25-60 percent, UAW contracts were “topped off” by the administration. Though the money technically came from GM, it was ultimately government financed. As a result, some 20,000 salaried workers saw their nest eggs crack while blue-collars were made whole by U.S. taxpayers.
“It was a decision to be discriminatory. It was a commercial decision to pacify the UAW,” says Den Black, a retired engineer and president of Delphi Salaried Retirees Association.
... Salaried workers knew none of this at the time, as the White House carved up people’s lives behind closed doors. Indeed, a former Delphi worker, Ken Hollis, says it would have been better if Delphi had gone bankrupt since “the PBGC has placed liens on Delphi’s European assets.” But salaried workers had no idea. The only seats at the table were for Big Labor.
... no one came to the salaries workers’ aid. Why? Simple Democratic politics. For all its talk of being the Party of the Working Man, in fact Democrats are the Party of Special Interests Who Grease Our Palms.
Delphi’s white collars — not the fat cats of media caricature but middle-class engineers and service workers — simply did not give enough money to the party to matter.
... (many of) Delphi’s hurting workers ... have seen their retirement plans go up in smoke. Some have even committed suicide.
By the Obama super-PAC's definition, there is no doubt -- absolutely none, using their standards -- that Barack Obama, Tim Geithher, and the administration henchmen who orchestrated the effort to stick it to Delphi's salaried workers bear responsibility for the suicides which occurred.
If they don't like this assignment of responsibility, the Obama campaign should disavow the super-PAC's ad and apologize to Mitt Romney for the smear. If they won't, then the responsibility stays squarely with Barack Obama and his administration -- once again, to be perfectly clear, using the standards they have set (which, as noted earlier because of his non-presence, even the AP agrees Romney didn't even meet).
A Google News search on "Delphi salaried workers" (not in quotes) done at 11:45 p.m. on Tuesday shows no establishment press coverage of what the Daily Caller has reported. A search on "Delphi pensions" (not in quotes) at the AP's national site also comes up empty.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
