8


THE WEIRS TIMES, Thursday, September 30, 2010


The Delphi Disaster:


An Economic Horror Story Obama Won’t Tell


The White


by Michelle Malkin Syndicated Columnist


House be- lieves it can win back de- pressed and economically stressed vot- ers by turn- ing President Obama into the storytell- e r - in- chi e f again. But vic-


tims of Obama’s Chicago politics don’t want to hear any more of his own well-worn tales of struggle and sacrifice. They’ve got their own tragedies to tell -- heart- wrenching dramas of personal and financial suffering at the very hands of Obama. Consider the real-life horror


story of 20,000 white-collar work- ers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago. As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer “rescue” funds and avoid contested court termination pro- ceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members’ costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts. In addition, the nonunion pension- ers lost all of their health and life insurance benefits. The abused workers -- most


from hard-hit northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states -- had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees at Delphi/GM. Some workers have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish. John Berent of Marblehead,


Ohio, lost one-third of his pen- sion: “I worked as a salaried


employee for GM (30 years) and Delphi (10 years). After 40 years of dedicated service, I was forced to retire. Then Delphi terminated my health care, life insurance, vi- sion, dental, then terminated the pension plan. Everything I worked 40 years for was wiped out.” Kelly Fabrizio of Franksville,


Wis., saw her pension reduced by 55 percent after working 30 years at Delphi/GM: “I am truly scared for my future. Every day I wake up, shake my head and say out loud -- This Is Not How It Was Supposed To Be.” Roger Hoke of Columbus, Mich.,


and his wife were both longtime Delphi workers. His pension shrunk by more than 40 percent: “After 33 years with GM and another 10 with Delphi, what did I do wrong to deserve such a fate?” Paul Dobosz of the Delphi Sala-


ried Retiree Association recounts how they got screwed: “The Auto Task Force knew that the only thing standing in the way of GM getting what they wanted out of Delphi was the already frozen pen- sion obligations.” They hatched a plan to dump those pensions on the federally run Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, while at the same time “devising a clever way to make the UAW pensions whole using GM and TARP money to accomplish it. The scheme was documented in sworn deposi- tions (that) revealed ... that some groups of workers were more ‘politically sensitive’ and would be afforded special treatment (i.e. subsidy using TARP money) while others less politically worthy would be left out.” In other words: Obama’s team of auto-crats -- stocked with Big See MALKIN on 16


AND NOW FOR THE NEWS... ries


First in a se- KABUL, AF -


by Oliver North Syndicated Columnist


GHANISTAN -- Last week, our “War Stories” team was on the U.S.- Mexico border document ing the tidal wave of violence and illegal activity on America’s


“southern front.” This week, we’re back in Afghanistan to detail what’s happening in the shadows of the Hindu Kush. The outcomes of both these fights are of vital importance to the Ameri- can people. But it’s hard to get the facts on the fights from the way these stories are being cov- ered by the so-called mainstream media. The potentates of the press ap-


parently have decided that the “war on drugs” has been lost and that “amnesty” for illegal aliens is a substitute for secure borders. In their exuberance to convince the public of these positions, ma- jor U.S. print and broadcast out- lets provide breathless reports of wholesale bloodshed in Mexico, but they overlook slow but steady


improvements in border security and successes in dismantling drug cartels. In short, “surren- der” is being presented as the only option. This same sentiment is evident in the coverage of the campaign here in Afghanistan. On Sept. 18, the Afghan people


went to the polls to elect a new national parliament. It was simi- lar to the kind of legislative elec- tion we will hold in less than six weeks -- with the same portent for political change. Yet most U.S. media coverage of Afghanistan’s experiment in representative government focused on insurgent attacks aimed at disrupting the vote. Newspaper and television reports claimed “low voter inter- est” and highlighted “Taliban attacks aimed at reducing turn- out.” But, as we learned once we arrived here, those stories were simply wrong. There were insurgent attacks --


but one-third fewer than during last year’s presidential elections. According to international ob- servers, fewer than 1 percent of polling stations had any violence at all. And those same monitors reported voter turnout -- an es- timated 3.6 million, or about 40 See NORTH on 13


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48