Under Whose Authority?
Um, no one’s actually. This administration is picking up where Hank Paulson left off — they do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want (link via Zero Hedge):
Judge Gonzalez approved the sale of Chrysler’s assets to Fiat before Fiat could change its mind. GM is now in bankruptcy court. Many of their dealers will have to shut down, and no one has yet started counting the number of jobs that will be lost in the upstream, i.e. parts and material suppliers to the auto companies and subcontractors. All for 3-month work by the Auto Task Force, one of whose staff members was prominently featured in New York Times yesterday (31-year old ex-campaign aide).
I am still asking the same question to myself: Who authorized this Auto Task Force?
I searched for any Congressional bill authorizing the Task Force. I searched for an executive order authorizing the Task Force. A Congressional bill authorizing the President to form the Task Force. Any law, or binding instruction for the auto companies that they follow the direction given by the Auto Task Force. I haven’t found any.
The Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act of 2008 (HR7321), which would have given the “car czar” extensive power, was killed in the Senate in December 2008.
So I have to conclude that the “authority” was assumed by the President and the Task Force by default, because no one else claimed it. They took it, and the Congress basically rolled over and became a bank to dispense money as requested.
Pravda was right: “American capitalism gone with a whimper”.
Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>