Twofer Tuesday: Twilight Zone style for Nancy Pelosi who tells Charlie Rose ‘a VAT tax is on the table’
Golden Earring courtesy of lin1968
It’s official, Nancy Pelosi is in the Twilight Zone. She told PBS last night a VAT tax is on the table (The Hill):
Pelosi, appearing on PBS’s “The Charlie Rose Show” asserted that “it’s fair to look at” the VAT as part of an overhaul of the nation’s tax code. “I would say, Put everything on the table and subject it to the scrutiny that it deserves,” Pelosi told Rose when asked if the VAT has any appeal to her.
The VAT is a tax on manufacturers at each stage of production on the amount of value an additional producer adds to a product.Pelosi argued that the VAT would level the playing field between U.S. and foreign manufacturers, the latter of which do not have pension and healthcare costs included in the price of their goods because their governments provide those services, financed by similar taxes.
“They get a tax off of that and they use that money to pay the healthcare for their own workers,” Pelosi said, using the example of auto manufacturers. “So their cars coming into our country don’t have a healthcare component cost.
Gee, wonder why Nancy is raising AUTO MANUFACTURERS, the PENSION LIABILITIES and a VAT TAX now? Could it be b/c GM has ALREADY BURNED THROUGH THE 50B in taxpayer dollars and the UAW cannot meet their pension obligations? Could be rabbit could be…
“Somewhere along the way, a value-added tax plays into this. Of course, we want to take down the healthcare cost, that’s one part of it,” the Speaker added. “But in the scheme of things, I think it’s fair look at a value- added tax as well.”
Pelosi said that any new taxes would come after the Congress finishes the healthcare debate consuming most lawmakers’ time, and that it may come as part of a larger overhaul to the tax code.
Everyone got that? As soon as they are done ramming healthcare through they will lay a VAT tax on our axxes. Everyone is registered to vote for 2010 right?
Twilight Zone mashup courtesy of FatherMcKenize:
“The segments of intro divide the different seasons. All episodes are in order in which they first aired (instead of production order), I believe, except Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge which is purposely put last, just because I thought it was more climactic at the end (I’m used to seeing it at the end of the Zicree guide also!)”
WSJ: Govt will provide massive additional financial aid to GM
We have already given GM 19 billion….
Vodpod videos no longer available.
You Belong to Me: The Chrysler Files: Senior non-Tarp Lenders fight back, file motion citing Radford ruling…
Video Update with extended clip of the interview with Thomas Lauria in MI this weekend courtesy of MM who has it covered in detail at her place:
Clip courtesy of PaulFVillareal2:
(5.1.09) — This audio comes courtesy of The Frank Beckmann show on WJR 760 AM Detroit. Visit WJR here:
http://www.wjr.net/And visit Beckmann’s personal page on the WJR site here:
http://www.wjr.net/Sectional.asp?id=6552
HA!!!!! HA!!!! Thank GAWD they are fighting back!!!!! Absolutely frakkin A right! The attorneys for the bondholders MUST WIN or American contract law is dead IMO and with it, the influx of capital to America that has always made us strong, would YOU lend your money to ANY American business if Team TOTUS can arbitrarily rule by FIAT going forward?, ha ha pardon the pun had to do it
Good song for this one is YOU BELONG TO ME, not to UAW or Uncle Sam to the Senior Bondholders!
Via HA, here is the pdf of the motion filed by Case & White (Thomas Lauria) on behalf of the Senior non TARP lenders of Chrysler who will FIGHT and NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THAT DARK NIGHT! A nice summary here under 17., of the easy peasy ruling this should be and the precedent:
17. Finally, that the Treasury Department would take these unconstitutional actions to help the United States address difficult economic times is not an answer. Indeed, the same justification was expressly rejected in Radford, where Justice Brandeis noted that a statute which violated secured creditors’ rights, but which was passed for sound public purposes relating to the Great Depression, could not be saved because “the Fifth Amendment commands that, however great the nation’s need, private property shall not be thus taken even for a wholly public use without just compensation.” Id. at 602.
WH Bashes Chrysler Debtholders who refuse to take a bath as Bankruptcy Looms….
talk about laying it on thick, now they are hanging the bondholders out to dry at the WH:
WH Admin Official stmt:CNBC: On “holdout: lenders ie folks who would rather go to bankruptcy court and try to get some of their money back:
“Their failure to act in either their own economic interests or the national interest does not diminish the accomplishments made by Chrysler, Fiat and its stakeholders nor will it impede the new opportunity Chrysler now has to restructure and emerge stronger going forward…”
Wow, this Admin really can’t stand not getting its way Imagine the statement we will get when the GM bondholders refuse to take a bath while the UAW and Government walks away with control of the ‘new’ company…that bold line reminds me of how they bash us for going to Tea Parties and say we dont understand they gave us a tax cut, BWAAAAHAAA, we get it folks we really do and we do know our own economic interests and so do these hedge funds..and Team Obama aint it….
Fiat has been waiting for bankruptcy so it can buy up the Chrysler assets cheap..This is what Ch 11 is for..maybe Team Obama doesn;t realize that
Maybe the CAR CZAR RATtner should have actually made an effort for the bondholders…
Anyway IMO further evidence of immaturity and a lack of understanding of the American economic system and our bankruptcy courts.
Why the hexx would the hedge funds who gave Chrysler all this money walk away with nothing? Talke it to bankruptcy, that was the deal when they gave the money to them, that’s how it works when you play with the big boys..
See I think problem is Team Obama has NO leverage on the hedge funds at all. They dont control them like the banks they bullied into eating debt yesterday…heh…
And BTW thes ehedge funds are the very same people Team Obama needs to participate in PPIP, good luck with that the way they continuously bash them….
Video Update: GM CFO Ray Young says co won’t make June 1st $1Billion debt repayment…
Update 2: CNBC’s Phil LeBeau
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Update: Bloomberg:
General Motors Corp., trying to avoid a U.S.-backed bankruptcy on June 1, may close plants and scrap models as much as four years sooner than planned to lower its break-even point, people familiar with the effort said….
…The new plan may require GM to complete many of the reductions in models and dealers planned by 2014 as soon as next year, allowing earlier plant and job reductions, people briefed on the talks said. GM said March 31 that by 2014 it would trim dealers to 4,100 from 6,122, nameplates to 36 from 43, and U.S. assembly capacity to 2 million vehicles from 2.8 million.
The bond offer may include some framework of GM’s plan to cut $20.4 billion in obligations to a United Auto Workers union- run retiree-medical fund by more than half, two of the people said. The bond offer may disclose what portion, if any, of U.S. loans would be converted to equity, one person said.
–the flintstones car at the new york international auto show–
Breaking from WSJ on CNBC Chyron…
This is in addition to GM CEO Fritz Henderson commenting bankruptcy more likely…
they are really putting the hammer down on the bondholders..were I they, I would NOT cut a deal, I would wait for my bankruptcy judge, but the pundits say a MI bankruptcy judge will be under HUGE political pressure to wipe the bondholders out anyway…
say hello to Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman’s Little Friend..a Flintstone mobile, perhaps all we will be allowed to purchase until they reinvent the wheel..
A vehicle that meets Waxman/Pelosi emission standards
We will then get sued by people behind us as our feet produce a cloud of dust they can claim MIGHT somehow damage them as a pollutant…
Good Grief….
Moderate in the Middle 