Bailed-out Chrysler hires Obama fundraiser as a top lobbyist

[Originally posted at Beltway Confidential]

The Detroit Free-Press’s Alan Hyde reports that failed automaker Chrysler, currently owned by the very Democrat-friendly United Auto Workers and subsidized heavily by the taxpayer, has hired a new top lobbyist — longtime Democratic consultant/staffer/fundraiser Jody Trapasso.

Trapasso is a longtime Democratic insider, with a pedigree rooted in the Terry McAuliffe corners of the Bill-and-Hillary Clinton world, but also with stints in the more lefty neighborhoods of the Party, including Howard Dean and Barack Obama. He’s worked on five Democratic presidential campaigns

The Free Press gives us this biographical snippet:

Trapasso comes from the law firm of Crowell & Moring, and had served as senior advisor to former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean in the run-up to the 2008 election. Trapasso held several posts in the Clinton administration, including assistant counsel to the president.

Automotive World adds:

Trapasso served as senior advisor to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee providing strategic counsel on donor fundraising programmes and on the 2008 presidential election. He also has held various senior-level positions within the federal government, including assistant counsel to the President for the Office of Presidential Personnel at the White House during the Clinton Administration.

Trapasso is a regular — though not heavy — Democratic donor. As a registered lobbyist, of course, he didn’t contribute to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. But his wife Susan, who is a homemaker, not a lobbyist, gave the maximum to Obama — her only political contribution on record.

I’ve written quite a bit about GM’s lobbyists, and given the partial government ownership of Chrysler, it’s worth repeating what’s going on here:

You pay your taxes. The Obama administration gives some of your money to Chrysler. Chrysler hires a Democratic fundraiser with that money.

Goldman Sachs wants regulation, not laissez-faire

When all is said and done in Wall Street regulation, Goldman will be the winner. I explain in my column:

So, just as drug companies and insurers used Republicans to kill the public option before using Democrats to mandate insurance and subsidize drugs, big banks are using Republicans to kill a bank tax while using Democrats to erect barriers to entry, to institutionalize bailouts, and to restore confidence in Wall Street.

Liberal bloggers uncomfortable with Left's closeness to Wall Street

[Originally posted at Beltway Confidential]

Have I touched a nerve with liberal blogger Matt Yglesias at the Center for American Progress?

The fact is that Yglesias's agenda -- support for Barack Obama's health-care mandates, subsidies, and regulation plus support for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, to name two items -- is also the agenda of the lobbyists for many big business. On financial regulation, I am willing to wager that whatever bill Obama signs will have the explicit (though not necessarily public) approval of Goldman Sachs.

Yglesias has conventional wisdom on his side -- most writers assume that progressives are the foes of Big Business, and that Big Business is the foe of government regulation. That makes it odd -- though flattering -- that he's repeatedly come after the theme of my books and columns: that Big Business lobbies for and profits from Big Government at the expense of consumers, competitors, and taxpayers.

Back in February, for instance, Yglesias pounced on a Washington Post story headlined "Wall Street shifting political contributions to Republicans." The campaign finance numbers underlying this news story, however, proved exactly my point, as I drew out in a blog post

They show that the Securities and Investment Industry, Wall Street, gave 63% of its money to Democrats, improving on the Democrats' majorities from the 2006 and 2008 cycle when Wall Street gave Dems 52% and 57% of campaign cash. In fact, the numbers for the 2010 cycle so far are the most one-sided numbers we've seen from Wall Street as far back as records go.

As gravy ... the top three Wall Street recipients are all Democrats, and 8 of the top 10 are Democrats.

Today, Yglesias's evidence contra my thesis is this Charlie Gasparino story, which Yglesias sums up thus:

Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn want finance executives to know that concern for their interests burns deep in the hearts of Senate Republicans.

And Yglesias concludes:

Of course if the Banksters have read Tim Carney’s book they’ll know that McConnell and Cornyn are only pretending to be looking out for their interests, and really Barack Obama is their best friend.

For the record, in my book I never called Barack Obama Wall Street's "best friend." I did call him "Barack O'Bailout." I also pointed out:

• Obama was, perhaps alone outside of the Bush administration, in position to block the bailout, but instead he assured its passage.
• Obama renominated with glowing praise the bailout's chief champion, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. He also promoted the No. 1 behind-the-scenes bailout baron, Tim Geithner.
• In March, Obama created a new bailout program called the Public-Private Investment Partnership, which used the Fed and the FDIC to bail out both banks and investors.
• Obama raised about a million dollars from Goldman Sachs employees and executives in 2008, the most any politician has raised from a single company since McCain-Feingold. That was more than Goldman employees, execs, and PACs gave to every single Republican running for President, Senate, and House, combined.
• Obama added a fourth installment to the AIG bailout Geithner and Bernanke had authored.
• Obama's campaign advisor and fundraiser Warren Buffett invested $5 billion in Goldman just before the bailout, and had earned $4 billion on that in just nine months. (Remember when Obama said "We need a President who sees government not as a tool to enrich well-connected friends and high-priced lobbyists."?)
• Obama's West Wing includes Goldman alumni or former consultants Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, and Tom Donilon. Treasury Chief of Staff Mark Patterson is a former Goldman lobbyist.
• Obama raised $14.8 million from Wall Street -- more than any candidate in history.

So Yglesias can try to weigh his evidence -- which here is based on a small excerpt of the way Charlie Gasparino describes a meeting -- against my evidence, which demonstrates a pattern Obama consistently favors bailouts and gets campaign funding from Wall Street (I've got plenty more evidence that didn't make the book). But snarkily caricaturing my argument in an effort to snidely dismiss it suggests weakness of argument -- and maybe some insecurity, too.

Free-market populism: Ron Paul says Obama's not 'socialist,' he's 'corporatist'

[Originally posted at Beltway Confidential]

Down at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, a parade of potential 2012 GOP nominees, plus some other rising stars have addressed what Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel calls "the Republican wing of the tea party movement."

Rep. Ron Paul used the occasion to educate the crowd about the true nature of Obama's economic agenda. The Wall Street Journal reports:

“In the technical sense, in the economic definition, he is not a socialist,” the Texas Republican said to a smattering of applause at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.

“He’s a corporatist,” Paul quickly added, meaning the president takes “care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.”

Ron Paul is right. Obama has signed: a health-care bill that mandates we buy private insurance and has the endorsement of the drug industry; a tobacco regulation bill that earned the applause of the largest cigarette company in the country; a credit-card regulation bill that the banks like; a stimulus bill approved by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and nearly every lobby in the country; a Cash-for-Clunkers bill that subsidized automakers, car-dealers, and more. Also, Obama has a huge corporate lobby on his side for cap-and-trade legislation. Plus, Obama backed the Wall Street bailout, has stuck close to its main authors Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, and even expanded the bailout.

I could go on, but the point is not simply that Ron Paul is right about Obama being a corporatist, the relevant point is that a few Republicans are starting to sound the populist note of calling out Obama's closeness with Big Business.

In December, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) wrote an op-ed headlined "Down with Big Business."

Last week, in the Republican response to President Obama's weekly address, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) attacked Obama's financial regulation primarily because it would "guarantee permanent bailouts for Wall Street."

Ron Paul is also uniquely positioned to tap into the free-market populism notion. He's both the most free-market congressman, and the Chamber of Commerce's least-favorite Republican according to recent voting scorecards.

Government Motors Adds Another Lobbyist

[Originally posted at Beltway Confidential]

When bailed-out automaker General Motors went bankrupt, the company laid off most of its K Street lobbyists. When it came out of bankruptcy, although the majority owner was still the taxpayer, Government Motors lobbied back up, hiring top-shelf revolving-door veterans.

This week, GM discloses that it has hired -- on your dime -- another lobbyist, Lee Godown at Public Strategies, Inc. Godown reports he will lobby on "issues relating to restructuring; funding for technology, science and energy initiatives; taxation relating to employee benefits, alternative minimum tax and alternative simplified credit; and border trade, competitiveness and market access."

Godown was chief of staff to Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., from 2000 until he cashed out in 2007.

Insurer bailout, Bernanke pit Left against Obamanomics

My column today makes sense of the current political landscape:

President Obama is trying to rally his team behind a health care bill lambasted as "an insurance company bailout," and a Federal Reserve nominee who has engineered a slew of bailouts for Wall Street's biggest banks. While Obama's explosion of government spending and regulations has stoked conservative fury for months, the naked corporatism on display this month has finally sparked an insurrection on the Left.

Obama brings purrs from Wall Street's fat cats

Obama seems to like talking tough to corporate America, but sometimes the fat cats like cuddling up with Obama anyway. My column today explores the Wall Street-White House relationship:

But if you skip the rhetoric and focus instead on verifiable facts -- campaign contributions, administration appointees, White House visitor logs, Obama's bailouts and even his proposed regulations -- you see instead that Obama may be closer to Wall Street than any modern president.

Obama raised $14.8 million from Wall Street in the 2008 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics -- more than any politician ever, and more than George W. Bush raised in both of his elections combined. From the fattest cat, Goldman Sachs, Obama raised $997,095, more than four times McCain's Goldman haul and more than any candidate has raised from any single company since the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations.

On Russia Today

Here's a clip of me yesterday on Russia Today, discussing Obamanomics and bailouts.

Chrysler, GM lobby a shareholder — the feds

My K Street column follows up on the lobbying done with your tax dollars.

Chrysler, meanwhile, still has hired guns on retainer. Venable LLP and Timmons & Co. both filed lobbying registrations in recent days listing Chrysler as the client. Timmons has represented Chrysler since at least 1999, and Chrysler originally retained Venable in April 2008.

A Chrysler lobbyist at Timmons told me his firm needed to file a new registration effective June 11 because the Chrysler that emerged from bankruptcy that day was a new corporate entity. Venable, similarly, terminated its representation of the old Chrysler — legally “Chrysler LLC” -- June 10 and registered as a lobbyist for “Chrysler Group LLC.”

Asked about its lobbying, a Chrysler spokeswoman replied in an e-mail:

“There continues to be significant demand for education and information regarding Chrysler from legislators and government officials. These include responding to government requests for plant visits, explaining significant company decisions and preparing for various congressional hearings. All of this is lobbying under the law.”

Read the whole thing here.

Government Motors will still lobby government

Obama's unprecedented nationalization of GM introduces some uncomfortable ethical quandaries. My K Street column today in the Washington Examiner explores one of those:

General Motors will continue its multimillion-dollar lobbying operation in Washington, even after the federal government takes ownership of it. The automaker may even maintain its high-dollar lobbying contracts with some of the wealthiest and most influential K Street firms.

“We believe we have an obligation to remain engaged at the federal and state levels,” General Motors stated in an e-mail after President Barack Obama announced his plan for the federal takeover of the carmaker, “and to have our voice heard in the policymaking process.”

As a result, some of the jobs that the White House will save with this unprecedented nationalization could be on K Street in downtown D.C., rather than in Detroit.

Read the whole thing here.

Secretary Loophole

When historians look at the dramatic shift in the government-business relationship occurring now, they may well place, at the center of it all, the ingenuity of Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary and recently the chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

I wrote the cover story for the current American Spectator, titled "Secretary Loophole":

From his time at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to his turbulent four months so far at Treasury, Geithner has made a career out of seeking—and usually finding—ways to do what most people thought the rules wouldn’t allow.

....

It could be that Geithner’s value for Obama— in these unprecedented times and given Obama’s unprecedented ambition—is precisely his ability to find his way around the rules.

It's now online here.

The Big Business of Big Labor

Handing Chrysler over to the UAW will be pitched as handing the automaker over to its workers. My Washington Examiner column today digs through the UAW's finances to argue that the UAW is, itself, a big business.

Peer deeper into the UAW’s finances, and it starts to look even more like a big business. The organization sits on nearly $1.2 billion in investments. This is money the UAW took from the paychecks of workers, money that now functions as an endowment out of which the union pays its staff and subsidizes its golf resort.

Black Lake Golf Club, which the UAW brags is "one of the finest anywhere in the nation," is owned by the union. Situated at the very top of Michigan, a drive of more than four hours from Detroit, it’s not exactly accessible to the union rank and file.

The resort is subsidized by workers’ paychecks, too—the union currently has $29.6 million in loans outstanding to the resort. That’s not their only posh real estate. The UAW’s Washington headquarters, home base for the union’s $1.6 million-a-year lobbying operation, is a beautiful $2.98 million townhouse in the DuPont circle neighborhood.

You can read the whole column here.

Obama’s auto policy: All in the Democratic family

Years from now, I would not be surprised if "Chrysler" is used as shorthand for the corruption that saddled the Obama presidency. My Examiner column today takes an opening salvo at the arrangement.

President Barack Obama’s auto industry policy promises to heighten the influence of lobbyists and to open the door to ethical transgressions and even outright corruption. By naming as car czar a financier who is also a Democratic fundraiser steeped in cozy business-government relationships, and by replacing the traditional bankruptcy procedures with the will of politicians, Obama has injected Detroit with all the elements of crony capitalism.

You can read the whole column here.

Liddy's Goldman Sachs Holdings Gets Some Attention

A week ago, I broke the news in my Examiner column that AIG's CEO Ed Liddy owns more than $3 million in Goldman Sachs stock. Yesterday, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) responded to this story with a press release, calling on Liddy to step down.

Since Cummings' press release, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and others have all followed up, citing Cummings and the Examiner. The N.Y. Post and another NYC daily have also followed up on my column and Cummings' release, but they don't cite the original scoop.

Specter versus Toomey is Wall Street versus Main Street

Sen. Arlen Specter is the top GOP recipient of Wall Street cash. Former Rep. Pat Toomey has twice started up his own business. The GOP primary battle between them could shape the future of the party. My column this week explains:

Next year’s Senate Republican primary in Pennsylvania—Sen. Arlen Specter versus former Rep. Pat Toomey—could be a battle for the soul of the GOP. But it’s not a liberal-versus-conservative battle as much as a Goldman Sachs-versus-Mom n Pop fight.

Campaign finance records show that Specter is Wall Street’s favorite Republican, and voting records show why. While Specter attacks Toomey as a banker, and tries to paint his donors as Wall Street fat cats, Toomey is actually a small businessman—having run a community bank that didn’t take bailout cash, and before that starting a neighborhood bar in Allentown, Pa.

Read the whole thing here.

Rep. Cummings, Citing my Examiner Piece, Calls on AIG's Liddy to Resign

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., has renewed his call for AIG CEO Edward Liddy to resign. In a press release today, Cummings specifically refers to my column that revealed that Liddy still owned $3 million in Goldman Sachs stock.

I am extremely concerned by recent media reports that AIG CEO Edward Liddy owns more than $3 million of stock in Goldman Sachs, which topped the list of companies that received billions of dollars in counterparty payments from AIG. Regardless of whether or not Mr. Liddy is acting in the best interest of AIG or of his stock in Goldman, even the appearance of conflict of interest is a reason for alarm.

AIG head’s $3M in Goldman stock raises apparent conflict of interest

My Examiner column today is the first to report a fact that highlights the conflict-of-interest problems raised by the new government-business partnership:

Edward Liddy, CEO of government-run AIG, still owns more than $3 million of stock in Goldman Sachs, which has pocketed $13 billion or more of the $170 billion federal officials have spent bailing out the ailing Wall Street insurance giant.

Liddy is managing a company that receives taxpayer dollars to pay other financial firms, with Goldman Sachs the top recipient. While there is no reason to believe Liddy is influencing AIG actions to unfairly benefit Goldman, the situation represents a potential conflict of interest that would never be allowed in a government agency, but is permitted in the strange public-private chimeras, like AIG, spawned in this age of bailouts.

Read the whole thing here.

The corporate myth of free trade

"Free trade" the a top exporters' lobbyist recently told me, "is a theoretical construct. What we’re talking about is practical business transactions.”

My Examiner column argues that "free trade," especially in this age of bailouts, often means "whatever is best for business."

Last November, weeks after bailing out Wall Street and while pushing a $34 billion bailout for U.S. automakers, President George W. Bush, signed an agreement with other world leaders proclaiming, “we underscore the critical importance of rejecting protectionism and not turning inward in times of financial uncertainty.”

Read the whole thing here.

AIG mess clips the wings of high-flying Obama team

As part of our package on Obama's fall from grace, here's my piece on how the AIG mess has clipped the wings of our better angels.

The bonuses provide an early glimpse of an administration that is not offering the kind of change people were waiting for. The technocratic competence symbolized by the Ivy League degrees has proved a farce in practice. The honest and transparent government represented by ambitious-sounding executive orders has proved to be more smoke than substance.

Worst of all, this episode has dashed hopes that Obama would, in his words, “govern for all the people, not just the interests of the wealthy and well-connected.”

Read the whole thing here.

Capitol Gains: Living Large in the Taxpayer-Funded Recession Oasis of Washington, DC

My first piece in the New York Post discusses our recession shield in DC and the visible effects of it.

As money is to New York City, the old analogy goes, so power is to Washington, DC. But these days, the District seems to be faring better on both fronts.

Sure, we're feeling the recession down here, too. We have net job losses, and we see our stores and restaurants going out of business. But compared to New York - well, let's just say that our Big City envy has melted away.

Starting with the Bear Stearns bailout last March, the balance of power has shifted, accelerating through the summer with AIG's collapse and government rescue, peaking with the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, and not really slowing down since. The giants of finance, the heart of New York's economy, have come to the brink of extinction. And the only reason Wall Street still exists is because of Washington.

Read the whole thing here.