WinkyDog

By John Paul (jpaul@wsbt.com)
The President of the United Auto Workers rejects the notion the Union was responsible for the bailout rejection from the Senate. The receptionist from the UAW Local 5 said officials declined to comment, adding that the union did not want to get in the middle of the national issue. They did stress that they were concerned about employees and jobs.

Posted December 12th, 2008 at 10.25am in Entrepreneurship.
With the Senate’s rejection of a bailout for Detroit’s ailing automakers, there now comes word that President Bush is actively considering using funds allocated by Congress for the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP) to prop up the automakers for the time being. Such action would be wrong legally, wrong economically, and counterproductive to turning around these troubled businesses. And by opening the door to such open-ended use of taxpayer money for virtually unlimited uses, a unilateral decision to employ TARP funds would jeopardize George W. Bush’s legacy as a friend of the taxpayer.
Until now, the Bush administration has resisted repurposing TARP funds for industrial policy, though this morning comes word that the Treasury may have reversed course. TARP, administration officials have said, was intended to shore up the stability of the financial markets and stave off economic collapse, not to inject capital into failing non-financial businesses. Moreover, only $15 billion remains of the initial $350 billion in TARP funds disbursed by Congress.
More problematic, Treasury lacks the statutory authority to direct TARP dollars to the automakers. While the statute, passed by Congress in October, grants the secretary extremely broad discretion to decide how to employ the funds, it clearly limits the recipients to “financial institutions.” And the definition of that term is quite clear:
FINANCIAL INSTITUTION- The term ‘financial institution’ means any institution, including, but not limited to, any bank, savings association, credit union, security broker or dealer, or insurance company, established and regulated under the laws of the United States or any State, territory, or possession of the United States, the District of Columbia, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, American Samoa, or the United States Virgin Islands, and having significant operations in the United States, but excluding any central bank of, or institution owned by, a foreign government.
This doesn’t leave much room for interpretation.
In this case, due to the enumeration of included institutions in the statute, the term “any institution” is necessarily defined, in part, by the list that follow it: “bank, savings association, credit union, security broker or dealer, or insurance company.” An automaker is unlike any of these things, being a manufacturer of goods, not a financial intermediary.

Brad Shannon - The Olympian

Gov. Chris Gregoire said Thursday that she disagrees with the solstice message placed in the state Capitol by an atheist group, but she cannot order that it be removed because of free-speech guarantees that also allow a Nativity scene and Christmas tree near the Rotunda.

“This is not about my personal religion. This is about the First Amendment and respecting views that I don’t necessarily agree with,” Gregoire said, citing the opinion of the Attorney General’s Office, which settled a lawsuit in 2007 over letting the Nativity scene be displayed near the Rotunda.

Gregoire’s office has come under criticism for two days from callers — mostly from other states — reacting to a commentary on a nationally aired TV show on Fox News blasting her as a weak and confused leader for allowing the Nativity scene and atheists’ placard in close proximity to each other. The Nativity bears a message about “the birth of Jesus Christ, which is celebrated by Christians around the world.”

The atheists’ display was granted a permit by the state Department of General Administration and installed Monday by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. Lois Walker, a Shelton woman who belonged to the group until her recent death, had requested it early in the fall.

The display talks about the natural world, says there are no gods or devils and calls religion a “myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Read the complete story at theolympian.com

a WinkyDog cartoon by:kelly phillips

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — November is a terrible time to be a turkey, but one lucky bird received an unconditional pardon on Thursday.

Gov. Sarah Palin granted the pardon at Triple D Farms in Wasilla.

“We choose a big tom turkey here,” Palin said. “It’s a big one. The pretty one with the red.”

Palin chose one fowl from the flock and gave it the name Thanksgiving.

Palin said she has a lot to be thankful for this season and is looking forward to spending the holiday with her family.

“I’ll be in charge of the turkey!” she said. “My sisters and my mom, they’re all bringing everything else, but I’m always in charge of the turkey, so I’m where I need to be today to prepare for that,” Palin said.

The Alaska Zoo has volunteered to take in the pardoned turkey.

by Lori Tipton

 

 

WinkyDog asks: Doesn’t D.C. have an “Anti-Panhandlers” law on the books?

The CEOs of the Big Three automakers reportedly flew private luxury jets to Washington to plead for a $25 billion taxpayer bailout to save their debt-ridden industry — ringing up tens of thousands in charges even as they cried poverty.

Recipients of eight-figure bonuses in 2007, the corporate cowboys used their executive perks — which for GM’s Rick Wagoner include the run of a $36 million Gulfstream IV jet — to arrive in style as they went begging before Congress.

Wagoner, whose flight reportedly cost $20,000 round-trip — about 70 times more than a commercial airline ticket — told Congress he expected about $10-$12 billion from the requested bailout.

“This is a slap in the face of taxpayers,” Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, told ABC News. “To come to Washington on a corporate jet, and asking for a handout is outrageous.”

Joined by Robert Nardelli of Chrysler and Alan Mulally of Ford, Wagoner told the Senate that a collapse in Detroit could cost 3 million jobs in just a year and put the hurt on communities across the country.

But the prospective bailout is getting held up in the Senate, where lawmakers don’t appear keen to save the ailing industry. “Just giving them $25 billion doesn’t change anything,” Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., told FOX News. “It just puts off for six months or so the day of reckoning.”

 

Children sent Out of class to recite The Pledge so Others won’t feel uncomfortable

 

Vt. town debates over Pledge of Allegiance

WOODBURY, Vt. – No one is sure when daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance fell by the wayside at Woodbury Elementary School.

But efforts to restore them have erupted into a bitter dispute in this town of about 800 residents, with school officials blocking the exercise from classrooms over concerns that it holds children who don’t participate up to scorn.

U.S. schoolchildren have long been able to opt out of reciting the pledge for religious reasons. But unlike other pledge controversies, this one centers on how and where schoolchildren say it, not whether they should.

“The whole thing is tearing our community apart,” said Heather Lanphear, 39, the mother of a first-grader and an opponent of reciting the pledge in the classroom.

The brouhaha in the Vermont school began in September, when parent Ted Tedesco began circulating petitions calling for the return of pledge recitation as a daily practice in the 19th-century schoolhouse, which has 55 children in kindergarten through sixth grade.

School officials agreed to resume it as a daily exercise, but not in the classroom.

“We don’t want to isolate children every day in their own classroom or make them feel they’re different,” said Principal Michaela Martin.

Thanks to: Daily Herald and Lee Enterprises