"The Mormon Plan for America

[abner]

------This really worth a look- there is some great info here . If there are any Mormons on the forum Please join in I would really enjoy your view. We know about Obummer so lets get to know the New Comer shall we? -

Here is something else you should watch - if you Prize your family-Please DIGEST this real slow- This one is hard to take but True. As far as my studies go -these 2 pieces hit the nail on the head.Like i said we know what Obammer can do and what he Promised and what we got so take it from there Please -I Thankyou--- http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/10/18/video-breaking-romneys-bain-capital-drug-front-for-bush-cartel/

[PowerGeneration]

I dont know what to say about this?

[abner]

I dont know what to say about this?

watch it all and then decide- I know i was of that same opinion at first then i sat down with a coffee and thot -Hey this is my country and i need to know what is going on,The info is new so that is what grabbed my attention. I do wish we had a 3 party system because alot of garbage would be out of the way . Things would go smoother i think.This type of elections is no better than to stand outside and Flip a Coin . Whoever says Tails wins and i sometimes think whoever says Heads wins also. So here we are back here again. This time i think the one who Tails will win and lose and the same for HEADS. We dont know who is who anymore -so watch and then see what you want.I want the best we can get. Thanks-

[yota691]

Like i said we know what Obammer can do and what he Promised and what we got so take it from there Please -I Thankyou---

So what did he Promised, did he actually live up to it!! Did he cut the Debt in half as he stated, (or as Mr. O stated i will be a one term president), did he get unemployment down to 5% as he promised!! Did he go line by line on bill passed to cut wasteful spending, did he remove Lobbyist!!

[PowerGeneration]

Well Abner Its hard to comment on this video I just watched it and all I know is your gonna get some negs!

I dont bash religeon but even I would'nt stoop this low to prevent as you say mitt the twitt from winning

by scarring people in believing some of the stuff that this man said.

Whats bad is I am wearing the same glasses as this man so I guess I need a new pair of glasses so I dont see what this man is

seeing.Mitt is our anti-christ? common man no one is that bad YET! As for Joseph smith its his word against the masses

that he was named a prophet plus he looked into a hat and wrote the book of mormons.

Mitt is going to kill us all to save our soles?Wow man pass it this way must be some good stuff!

According to this man he will push the button while he is safe to kill off us gentiles and save the world?

WOW what a novel (fiction of course) to me.That video made me want to throw up and wear the biggest huggies

ever made to catch it all.I dont care much for mitt but dam after seeing this video makes me want to vote for him to prove

that the mormon way of thinking is way in the past! I am sorry if I have offened anyone who is a mormon its just my thinking is all and all I can say is mitt took a oath to swear by the book of mormon and if he was told by his leader to kill us all

he would be obligated to kill us and just push a button and pooof were are all gone but the powers that be?

If you like mitt romney dont watch this video you wont make it past the first 15 minutes before you hit that neg button.

He is all for Libertarians which I do like but if this man is what libertarians are about I will change my party fast!

Sorry abner but this video is in nice words hard to believe or stomach for me.

And abner why dont you write a summary so many dont have to see what I just saw it took a hour and a half I cant get back!

In the good book which is my king james version it never mentions joseph smith anywhere in it.

Bad video not nice and shame on you! just my honest opinion! I am sorry.I am just a sheeple

[TPSprayduster]

The same stuff they wrote about President Obama when he was candidate Obama. Some said he is a muslim some still believe that and he is a communist some still believe. He was going to build a mosque in the white house they probably have Prayer rooms from Muslim who work in the white house. I did not watch the video because it is the same political suggestions some feel it is a contribution to the piles of dung both sides are slinging. So i guess he wants to make it legal to have 4 wives or some other Mormon beliefs. JFK was roman catholic and some said the Pope would run the US. IMO stick to the facts at hand, don't let some one mislead you especially if is from You Tube. If I wanted to waste my time and create some Anti Obama clip i could but i have to work and provide for my family. When you have idol time on your hands you can always create something goofy or crazy.

[Bandit795]

So what did he Promised, did he actually live up to it!! Did he cut the Debt in half as he stated, (or as Mr. O stated i will be a one term president), did he get unemployment down to 5% as he promised!! Did he go line by line on bill passed to cut wasteful spending, did he remove Lobbyist!!

Uhm... He said in other words, we already know Obama sucks so lets look at his challenger (who also sucks).

[abner]

Well Abner Its hard to comment on this video I just watched it and all I know is your gonna get some negs!

I dont bash religeon but even I would'nt stoop this low to prevent as you say mitt the twitt from winning

by scarring people in believing some of the stuff that this man said.

Whats bad is I am wearing the same glasses as this man so I guess I need a new pair of glasses so I dont see what this man is

seeing.Mitt is our anti-christ? common man no one is that bad YET! As for Joseph smith its his word against the masses

that he was named a prophet plus he looked into a hat and wrote the book of mormons.

Mitt is going to kill us all to save our soles?Wow man pass it this way must be some good stuff!

According to this man he will push the button while he is safe to kill off us gentiles and save the world?

WOW what a novel (fiction of course) to me.That video made me want to throw up and wear the biggest huggies

ever made to catch it all.I dont care much for mitt but dam after seeing this video makes me want to vote for him to prove

that the mormon way of thinking is way in the past! I am sorry if I have offened anyone who is a mormon its just my thinking is all and all I can say is mitt took a oath to swear by the book of mormon and if he was told by his leader to kill us all

he would be obligated to kill us and just push a button and pooof were are all gone but the powers that be?

If you like mitt romney dont watch this video you wont make it past the first 15 minutes before you hit that neg button.

He is all for Libertarians which I do like but if this man is what libertarians are about I will change my party fast!

Sorry abner but this video is in nice words hard to believe or stomach for me.

And abner why dont you write a summary so many dont have to see what I just saw it took a hour and a half I cant get back!

In the good book which is my king james version it never mentions joseph smith anywhere in it.

Bad video not nice and shame on you! just my honest opinion! I am sorry.I am just a sheeple

Ya i know- not nice - All i said just watch it-YES my book of choice is also the KING JAMES version and i also have Commentaries- I serve JESUS as my LORD andd Saviour. Now that -that is out of the way - i guess what im getting at is we really do-not have any great choices here- It comes down to the lesser of 2 evils. i guess. As for what has Obbee -Con-Obee done? NOTHIN. ---When you lock away your paperwork the 1st day there is something wrong . This NOT what this great country was built on. But hey what do i know. I dont get it either except the fact that in the days ahead we better be on the lookout for the potholes in the road because son we aint got alot left. Has Obbe-CON-Obbee kept his promises -No i dont think so. The country is going down. I would like to see an RV before it hits the floor. When his wife and kids can a miilionaers plane flight and vacation at the taxpayers dollar and tell the American people that this country is no good Then i have a problem on this also.The only working program is his. As for Mitt the glove watch what he will catch. Yup he is known as a vulture in the buy and sell division of the company of Buy and Sell Off. So when i see that China has paper on us and We cant get out from under im betting its worthwhile that my grandkids should invest in Rosetta Stones instant Chinese program.Am i worried about the negs on this programm? Nope -why ? because this is a forum and we like or dislike what we agree or diagree on and if no-one likes what they hear then they shouldnt be playing the game here. Thats my take-Also i try to backup what i say and i think i hold my own. Respect is the word here -I know no-one has said anything but what im trying to do is get dialog-(no that isnt a wood stove phrase) bad joke -k? but what is being done to a great country is going to be done to a counrty north of here and maybe else where -i dont know but when we as a people let the rope go we do lose the ship. So sink or swim-ME i prefer to stay high and dry. (thats not a drink either) So take it all for what it is worth but WHAT IF ALL THIS COMES ABOUT --Then what? Look I dont like what is happening and i guess i took a road that people dont like and the scenery is bad but it is there. We do have to choose. I pray that GOD has Mercy on us-Like i said before I do serve Risen Saviour- It is not a religion it is a relationship i have with a man called JESUS.and he isnt a fake. I think you all know this. Im just being a Watchman on The Wall. We do have a few here and we never like what they sayBUT when trouble comes we dont like it at the door do we? Nope i didnt think so -i would rather know what could be coming and prepare than have no idea whats ahead and be taken by surprise and find out its to late------i WISH ALL IN GOOD HEALTH AND PRAY THAT WE FIND THE RIGHT ROAD. ... if we dont its going to be a loooong ride- ---jmho-

[jchawaii]

Mitt the Crook - God is going to get him.

Romney and Cronies hit it big on the bailout of Detroit.

 

This investigation was supported by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and by the Puffin Foundation. Elements of it appear in Palast’s new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). Research assistance by Zach D. Roberts, Ari Paul, Nader Atassi and Eric Wuestewald.

 

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.

One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—
$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by 
Paul Singer. According to The Wall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to the Journal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Singer, whom Fortune magazine calls a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has carved out a specialty investing in distressed firms and distressed nations, which he does by buying up their debt for pennies on the dollar and then demanding payment in full. This so-called “vulture investor” received $58 million on Peruvian debt that he snapped up for $11.4 million, and $90 million on Congolese debt that he bought for a mere $20 million. In the process, he’s built one of the largest private equity firms in the nation, and over decades he’s racked up an unusually high average return on investments of 14 percent.

Other GOP presidential hopefuls chased Singer’s endorsement, but Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook, investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust (it could be far more, but the Romneys have declined to disclose exactly how much). Along the way, Singer gained a reputation, according to Fortune, “for strong-arming his way to profit.” That is certainly what happened at Delphi.

* * *

Delphi, once the Delco unit of General Motors, was spun off into a separate company in 1999. Alone, Delphi foundered, declaring bankruptcy in 2005, after which vulture hedge funds, led by Silver Point Capital, began to buy up the company’s old debt. Later, as the nation’s financial crisis accelerated, Singer’s Elliott bought Delphi debt, as did John Paulson & Co. John Paulson, like Singer, is a $1 million donor to Romney. Also investing was Third Point, run by Daniel Loeb, who was once an Obama supporter but who this summer hosted a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser for Romney and personally donated about $500,000 to the GOP.

As Delphi was in bankruptcy, making few payments, the bonds were junk, considered toxic by the banks holding them. The hedge funds were able to pick up the securities for a song; most of Elliott’s purchases cost just 20 cents on the dollar of their face value.

By the end of June 2009, with the bailout negotiations in full swing, the hedge funds, under Singer’s lead, used their bonds to buy up a controlling interest in Delphi’s stock. According to SEC filings, they paid, on average, an equivalent of only 67 cents per share.

Just two years later, in November 2011, the Singer syndicate took Delphi public at $22 a share, turning an eye-popping profit of more than 3,000 percent. Singer’s fund investors scored a gain of $904 million, all courtesy of the US taxpayer. But that’s not all. In the year since Delphi began trading publicly, its stock has soared 45 percent. Loeb’s gains so far for Third Point: $390 million. The gains for Silver Point, headed by two Goldman Sachs alums: $894 million. John Paulson’s fund, which has already sold half its holdings, has a $2.6 billion gain. And Singer’s funds and partners, combining what they’ve sold and what they hold, have $1.29 billion in profits, about forty-four times their original investment.

Yet without taking billions in taxpayer bailout funds—and slashing worker pensions—the hedge funds’ investment in Delphi would not have been worth a single dollar, according to calculations by GM and the US Treasury.

Altogether, in direct and indirect payouts, the government padded these investors’ profits handsomely. The Treasury allowed GM to give Delphi at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep Delphi in business. GM also forgave $2.5 billion in debt owed to it by Delphi, and $2 billion due from Singer and company upon Delphi’s exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The money GM forgave was effectively owed to the Treasury, which had by then become the majority owner of GM as a result of the bailout. Then there was the big one: the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over paying all of Delphi’s retiree pensions. The cost to the taxpayer: $5.6 billion. The bottom line: the hedge funds’ paydays were made possible by a generous donation of $12.9 billion from US taxpayers.

* * *

One of President Obama’s first acts in office, in February 2009, was to form the Auto Task Force with the goal of saving GM, Chrysler, their suppliers and, most important, auto industry jobs. Crucial to the plan was saving Delphi, which then employed more than 25,000 union workers.

Obama hired Steven Rattner, himself a millionaire hedge fund manager, to head the task force that would negotiate with the troubled firms and their creditors to avoid the collapse of the entire industry. In Rattner’s memoir of the affair, Overhaul, he describes a closed-door meeting held in March 2009 to resolve Delphi’s fate. He writes that Delphi, now in the possession of its hedge fund creditors, told the Treasury and GM to hand over $350 million immediately, “because if you don’t, we’ll shut you down.” His explanation was corroborated by Delphi’s chief financial officer, John Sheehan, who said in a sworn deposition in July 2009 that the hedge fund debt holders backed up their threat with “an analysis of the cost to GM if Delphi were unwilling or unable to provide supply to GM,” forcing a “shutdown.” It would take “years and tens of billions” for GM to replace Delphi’s parts. At that bleak moment, GM had neither. The automaker had left the inventory of its steering column and other key components in Delphi’s hands. If Delphi laid siege to GM’s parts supply, the bailout would fail and GM would have to be liquidated or sold off—as would another Delphi dependent, Chrysler.

Rattner could not believe that Delphi’s management—now effectively under the hedge funders’ control—would “want to be perceived as holding GM hostage at such a precarious economic moment.” One Wall Street Journal analyst suggested that Singer was treating Delphi “like a third world country.” Rattner likened the subsidies demanded by Delphi’s debt holders to “extortion demands by the Barbary pirates.”

Romney has slammed the bailout as a payoff to the auto workers union. But that certainly wasn’t true for the bailout of Delphi. Once the hedge funders, including Singer—a deep-pocketed right-wing donor and activist who serves as chair of the conservative, anti-union Manhattan Institute—took control of the firm, they rid Delphi of every single one of its 25,200 unionized workers.

Of the twenty-nine Delphi plants operating in the United States when the hedge funders began buying up control, only four remain, with not a single union production worker. Romney’s “job creators” did create jobs—in China, where Delphi now produces the parts used by GM and other major automakers here and abroad. Delphi is now incorporated overseas, leaving the company with 5,000 employees in the United States (versus almost 100,000 abroad).

Third Point’s Daniel Loeb, whose net worth of $1.3 billion owes much to his share in the Delphi windfall, told his fund’s backers this past July that Delphi remains an excellent investment because it has “virtually no North American unionized labor” and, thanks to US taxpayers, “significantly smaller pension liabilities than almost all of its peers.”

* * *

Another outcome may have been possible. In June 2009, the Treasury and GM announced a bailout deal they’d crafted over months with the cooperation of the United Auto Workers. GM would take back control of Delphi via a joint venture with Platinum Equity, a buyout firm led by billionaire Tom Gores, a self-described “Michigan man” who grew up in the shadow of Delphi’s Flint plant.

The final Platinum plan, according to Delphi’s official statement posted on Marketwire in June 2009, lists plants in fourteen locations slated for closing, which would have left several of Delphi’s plants still in business, still unionized—and still in the United States. Crucially, the deal would have returned key Delphi operations, including the production of steering columns, directly to GM.

The hedge funders stunned Delphi by refusing to accept the Platinum plan. Harshly criticizing it as a “sweetheart deal,” they demanded 45 cents on the dollar for the debt bonds they had bought on the cheap—more than double what the Treasury-brokered Platinum deal would pay.

Then the Singer-led debt holders swooped in. After the Platinum deal was announced, Elliott Management quietly tripled its holdings of Delphi bonds, purchased at just one-fifth of their face value. By joining forces with Silver Point, Paulson and Loeb, Singer now controlled Delphi’s fate.

Gores, Delphi and UAW officials declined to respond to queries about the deal on the record, but the sworn deposition by Delphi CFO Sheehan (confidential then, but later posted on Scribd.com) lets us in on the tense negotiations culminating in a twenty-hour showdown between Delphi, GM, the UAW, the Auto Task Force and the US pension agency, on the one hand, and Singer’s hedge fund group, on the other. Delphi said it would dump the Platinum deal if the hedge funds would agree to terms that would take care of all stakeholders, including the following stipulation: “Agree on plan structure to maximize job preservation.”

The hedge funders said no, since they had a billion-dollar ace up their sleeve. According to Sheehan, Singer and company’s controlling interest allowed them to force the bankruptcy judge to hold an auction for all of Delphi’s stock. The debt holders outbid the Michigan Man’s team, offering $3.5 billion. But it wasn’t $3.5 billion in cash: under the rules of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, debtors-in-possession may bid the face value of their bonds rather than their current market value, which at the time was significantly lower. Under the Platinum deal, Delphi would have had much more in real money for operations: $250 million in cash from Gores, another $250 million in credit, and $3.1 billion in “exit financing” from GM, all of it backed up by TARP. Still, under Chapter 11 rules, the Platinum bid was technically lower. And that’s how Singer’s funds—which included the Romneys’ investment—came to buy Delphi for the equivalent of only 67 cents a share.

Rattner and GM, embarrassingly outmaneuvered, tried to put a good face on it. As Rattner wrote in his memoir, “In truth we didn’t care who got Delphi as long as GM could extricate itself from the continual drain on its finances and assure itself of a reliable supply of parts.”

* * *

Even before the hedge funds won their bid for Delphi’s stock, they were already squeezing the parts supplier and its workforce. In February 2009, Delphi, claiming a cash shortage, unilaterally terminated health insurance for its nonunion pensioners. But according to Rattner, the Treasury’s Task Force uncovered foggy accounting hiding the fact that the debt holders had deliberately withheld millions of dollars in cash sitting in Delphi accounts. Even after this discovery, the creditors still refused to release the funds.

The savings to the hedge fund billionaires of dropping retiree insurance was peanuts—$70 million a year—compared with the profits they later extracted from Delphi. But the harm to Delphi retirees was severe. Bruce Naylor of Kokomo, Indiana, had been forced into retirement at the age of 54 in 2006, when Delphi began to move its plants overseas. Naylor’s promised pension was slashed 40 percent, and his health insurance and life insurance were canceled. Though he had thirty-six years of experience under his belt as an engineer with GM and Delphi, he couldn’t find another job as an engineer—and he doesn’t know a single former co-worker who has found new employment in his or her field, either. Naylor ended up getting work at a local grocery store. That job gone, he now sells cars online for commission, bringing in one-fifth of what he earned before he was laid off from Delphi.

Even with his wife Judy’s income as a nurse, it hasn’t been enough: the Naylors just declared bankruptcy, and their home is in foreclosure.

After the hedge fund takeover of Delphi, the squeeze on workers intensified through attacks on their pensions. During its years of economic trouble, Delphi had been chronically shorting payments to its pension funds—and by July 2009, they were underfunded by $7 billion. That month, Singer’s hedge fund group won the bid for control of Delphi’s stock and made clear they would neither make up the shortfall nor pay any more US worker pensions. Checkmated by the hedge funders, the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation agreed to take over Delphi’s pension payments. The PBGC would eat the shortfall.

With Delphi’s new owners relieved of its healthcare and pension obligations, its debts to GM and its union contracts—
and now loaded with subsidies from GM funded by TARP—the company’s market value rose from zero to approximately 
$10.5 billion today.

* * *

But there was still a bit of unfinished business: President Obama needed to be blamed for the pension disaster. In a television ad airing in swing states since September, one retired Delphi manager says, “The Obama administration decided to terminate my pension, and I took a 40 percent reduction in my pension.”

Another retiree, Mary Miller, says, “I really struggle to pay for the basics…. I would ask President Obama why I had no rights, and he had all the rights to take my pension away—and never ever look back and say, ‘Not only did I take it from Mary Miller, I took it from 20,000 other people.’”

These people are real. But it’s clear that these former workers, now struggling to scrape by, were hardly in the position to put together $7 million in ad buys to publicize their plight. The ads were paid for by Let Freedom Ring, a 501©(4) nonprofit advocacy organization partially funded by Jack Templeton Jr., a billionaire evangelical whose foundation has sponsored lectures at the Manhattan Institute (the anti-union think tank whose board of directors includes not only Singer but Loeb). The ads also conveniently leave out the fact that the law sets specific ceilings on what the PBGC is allowed to pay retirees—regardless of what they were originally owed.

In June 2011, Charles and David Koch hosted a group of multimillionaires at a retreat in Vail, Colorado. In secret recordings obtained by investigator Brad Friedman, the host, Charles Koch, thanks Singer and Templeton, among others, for each donating more than $1 million to the Koch brothers’ 2012 anti-Obama election war chest.

Of course, it wasn’t Obama who refused to pay the Delphi pensions; it was Paul Singer and the other hedge funds controlling Delphi. The salaried workers’ pensions were, after all, an obligation of Delphi’s owners, not the government. Delphi’s stockholders—the Romneys included—had one easy way to rectify the harm to these pensioners, much as GM did for its workers: just pay up.

Making good on the full pensions for salaried workers would cost Delphi a one-time charge of less than $1 billion. This year, Delphi was flush with $1.4 billion in cash—
meaning its owners could have made the pensioners whole 
and still cleared a profit. Instead, in May, Delphi chose to use most of those funds to take over auto parts plants in Asia at 
a cost of $972 million—purchased from Bain Capital.

* * *

That leaves one final question: Exactly how much did the Romneys make off the auto bailout? Queries to the campaign and the Romneys’ trustee have gone unanswered. And Romney has yet to disclose the crucial year of his tax returns, 2009. But whatever the tally, it was one sweet deal. The Romneys were invested with Elliott Management by the end of 2010, before Delphi was publicly traded. So, in effect, they got Delphi stock at Singer’s initial dirt-cheap price. When Delphi’s owners took the company public in November 2011, the Romneys were in—and they hit the jackpot.

In their 2011 and 2012 Federal Financial Disclosure filing, Ann Romney’s trust lists “more than $1 million” invested with Elliott. This is the description for all of her big investments—the minimal disclosure required by law. (Had Romney kept the holding in his own name, he would have had to reveal if his investment with Singer had made more than $50 million.)

It is reasonable to assume that Singer treated the Romneys the same as his other investors, with a third of their portfolio invested in Delphi by the time of the 2011 initial public offering. This means that with an investment of at least $1 million, their smallest possible gain when Delphi went public would have been $10.2 million, plus another $10.2 million for each million handed to Singer—all gains made possible by the auto bailout.

But that’s just the beginning. Since the November 2011 IPO, Delphi’s stock has roared upward, boosting the Romneys’ Delphi windfall from $10.2 million to $15.3 million for each million they invested with Singer.

But what if the Romneys invested a bit more with Singer: let’s say a mere 3 percent of their reported net worth, or 
$7.5 million? (After all, ABC News reported—and Romney didn’t deny—that he invested “a huge chunk of his vast wealth” with Singer.) Then their take from the auto bailout so far would reach a stunning $115 million.

The Romneys’ exact gain, however, remains nearly 
invisible—and untaxed—because Singer cashed out only a fragment of the windfall in 2011. And the Singer-led hedge funds have been able to keep almost all of Delphi’s profits untaxed 
by moving Delphi’s incorporation from Troy, Michigan, to the Isle of Jersey, a tax haven off the coast of France.

The Romneys might insist that the funds were given to Singer, Mitt’s key donor, only through Ann’s blind trust. But as Mitt Romney said some years ago of Ted Kennedy, “The blind trust is an age-old ruse, if you will. Which is to say, you can always tell a blind trust what it can and cannot do.” Romney, who reminds us often that he was CEO of a hedge fund, can certainly read Elliott Management’s SEC statements, and he knows Ann’s trust is invested heavily in a fund whose No. 1 stake is with Delphi.

Nevertheless, even if the Romneys were blind to their initial investment in Elliott, they would have known by the beginning of 2010 that they had a massive position in Delphi and would make a fortune from the bailout and TARP funds. Delphi is not a minor investment for Singer; it is his main holding. To invest in Elliott is essentially a “Delphi play”: that is, investing with Singer means buying a piece of the auto bailout.

Mitt Romney may indeed have wanted to let Detroit die. But if the auto industry was going to be bailed out after all, the Romneys apparently couldn’t resist getting in on a piece of 
the action.

In last week’s issue, Lee Fang revealed how Mitt Romney’s son Tagg and investors in his firm Solamere Capital can cash in if his father wins.

Edited October 21, 2012 by jchawaii

[abner]

Mitt the Crook - God is going to get him.

Romney and Cronies hit it big on the bailout of Detroit.

 

This investigation was supported by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and by the Puffin Foundation. Elements of it appear in Palast’s new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). Research assistance by Zach D. Roberts, Ari Paul, Nader Atassi and Eric Wuestewald.

 

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.

One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—
$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by 
Paul Singer. According to The Wall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to the Journal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Singer, whom Fortune magazine calls a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has carved out a specialty investing in distressed firms and distressed nations, which he does by buying up their debt for pennies on the dollar and then demanding payment in full. This so-called “vulture investor” received $58 million on Peruvian debt that he snapped up for $11.4 million, and $90 million on Congolese debt that he bought for a mere $20 million. In the process, he’s built one of the largest private equity firms in the nation, and over decades he’s racked up an unusually high average return on investments of 14 percent.

Other GOP presidential hopefuls chased Singer’s endorsement, but Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook, investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust (it could be far more, but the Romneys have declined to disclose exactly how much). Along the way, Singer gained a reputation, according to Fortune, “for strong-arming his way to profit.” That is certainly what happened at Delphi.

* * *

Delphi, once the Delco unit of General Motors, was spun off into a separate company in 1999. Alone, Delphi foundered, declaring bankruptcy in 2005, after which vulture hedge funds, led by Silver Point Capital, began to buy up the company’s old debt. Later, as the nation’s financial crisis accelerated, Singer’s Elliott bought Delphi debt, as did John Paulson & Co. John Paulson, like Singer, is a $1 million donor to Romney. Also investing was Third Point, run by Daniel Loeb, who was once an Obama supporter but who this summer hosted a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser for Romney and personally donated about $500,000 to the GOP.

As Delphi was in bankruptcy, making few payments, the bonds were junk, considered toxic by the banks holding them. The hedge funds were able to pick up the securities for a song; most of Elliott’s purchases cost just 20 cents on the dollar of their face value.

By the end of June 2009, with the bailout negotiations in full swing, the hedge funds, under Singer’s lead, used their bonds to buy up a controlling interest in Delphi’s stock. According to SEC filings, they paid, on average, an equivalent of only 67 cents per share.

Just two years later, in November 2011, the Singer syndicate took Delphi public at $22 a share, turning an eye-popping profit of more than 3,000 percent. Singer’s fund investors scored a gain of $904 million, all courtesy of the US taxpayer. But that’s not all. In the year since Delphi began trading publicly, its stock has soared 45 percent. Loeb’s gains so far for Third Point: $390 million. The gains for Silver Point, headed by two Goldman Sachs alums: $894 million. John Paulson’s fund, which has already sold half its holdings, has a $2.6 billion gain. And Singer’s funds and partners, combining what they’ve sold and what they hold, have $1.29 billion in profits, about forty-four times their original investment.

Yet without taking billions in taxpayer bailout funds—and slashing worker pensions—the hedge funds’ investment in Delphi would not have been worth a single dollar, according to calculations by GM and the US Treasury.

Altogether, in direct and indirect payouts, the government padded these investors’ profits handsomely. The Treasury allowed GM to give Delphi at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep Delphi in business. GM also forgave $2.5 billion in debt owed to it by Delphi, and $2 billion due from Singer and company upon Delphi’s exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The money GM forgave was effectively owed to the Treasury, which had by then become the majority owner of GM as a result of the bailout. Then there was the big one: the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over paying all of Delphi’s retiree pensions. The cost to the taxpayer: $5.6 billion. The bottom line: the hedge funds’ paydays were made possible by a generous donation of $12.9 billion from US taxpayers.

* * *

One of President Obama’s first acts in office, in February 2009, was to form the Auto Task Force with the goal of saving GM, Chrysler, their suppliers and, most important, auto industry jobs. Crucial to the plan was saving Delphi, which then employed more than 25,000 union workers.

Obama hired Steven Rattner, himself a millionaire hedge fund manager, to head the task force that would negotiate with the troubled firms and their creditors to avoid the collapse of the entire industry. In Rattner’s memoir of the affair, Overhaul, he describes a closed-door meeting held in March 2009 to resolve Delphi’s fate. He writes that Delphi, now in the possession of its hedge fund creditors, told the Treasury and GM to hand over $350 million immediately, “because if you don’t, we’ll shut you down.” His explanation was corroborated by Delphi’s chief financial officer, John Sheehan, who said in a sworn deposition in July 2009 that the hedge fund debt holders backed up their threat with “an analysis of the cost to GM if Delphi were unwilling or unable to provide supply to GM,” forcing a “shutdown.” It would take “years and tens of billions” for GM to replace Delphi’s parts. At that bleak moment, GM had neither. The automaker had left the inventory of its steering column and other key components in Delphi’s hands. If Delphi laid siege to GM’s parts supply, the bailout would fail and GM would have to be liquidated or sold off—as would another Delphi dependent, Chrysler.

Rattner could not believe that Delphi’s management—now effectively under the hedge funders’ control—would “want to be perceived as holding GM hostage at such a precarious economic moment.” One Wall Street Journal analyst suggested that Singer was treating Delphi “like a third world country.” Rattner likened the subsidies demanded by Delphi’s debt holders to “extortion demands by the Barbary pirates.”

Romney has slammed the bailout as a payoff to the auto workers union. But that certainly wasn’t true for the bailout of Delphi. Once the hedge funders, including Singer—a deep-pocketed right-wing donor and activist who serves as chair of the conservative, anti-union Manhattan Institute—took control of the firm, they rid Delphi of every single one of its 25,200 unionized workers.

Of the twenty-nine Delphi plants operating in the United States when the hedge funders began buying up control, only four remain, with not a single union production worker. Romney’s “job creators” did create jobs—in China, where Delphi now produces the parts used by GM and other major automakers here and abroad. Delphi is now incorporated overseas, leaving the company with 5,000 employees in the United States (versus almost 100,000 abroad).

Third Point’s Daniel Loeb, whose net worth of $1.3 billion owes much to his share in the Delphi windfall, told his fund’s backers this past July that Delphi remains an excellent investment because it has “virtually no North American unionized labor” and, thanks to US taxpayers, “significantly smaller pension liabilities than almost all of its peers.”

* * *

Another outcome may have been possible. In June 2009, the Treasury and GM announced a bailout deal they’d crafted over months with the cooperation of the United Auto Workers. GM would take back control of Delphi via a joint venture with Platinum Equity, a buyout firm led by billionaire Tom Gores, a self-described “Michigan man” who grew up in the shadow of Delphi’s Flint plant.

The final Platinum plan, according to Delphi’s official statement posted on Marketwire in June 2009, lists plants in fourteen locations slated for closing, which would have left several of Delphi’s plants still in business, still unionized—and still in the United States. Crucially, the deal would have returned key Delphi operations, including the production of steering columns, directly to GM.

The hedge funders stunned Delphi by refusing to accept the Platinum plan. Harshly criticizing it as a “sweetheart deal,” they demanded 45 cents on the dollar for the debt bonds they had bought on the cheap—more than double what the Treasury-brokered Platinum deal would pay.

Then the Singer-led debt holders swooped in. After the Platinum deal was announced, Elliott Management quietly tripled its holdings of Delphi bonds, purchased at just one-fifth of their face value. By joining forces with Silver Point, Paulson and Loeb, Singer now controlled Delphi’s fate.

Gores, Delphi and UAW officials declined to respond to queries about the deal on the record, but the sworn deposition by Delphi CFO Sheehan (confidential then, but later posted on Scribd.com) lets us in on the tense negotiations culminating in a twenty-hour showdown between Delphi, GM, the UAW, the Auto Task Force and the US pension agency, on the one hand, and Singer’s hedge fund group, on the other. Delphi said it would dump the Platinum deal if the hedge funds would agree to terms that would take care of all stakeholders, including the following stipulation: “Agree on plan structure to maximize job preservation.”

The hedge funders said no, since they had a billion-dollar ace up their sleeve. According to Sheehan, Singer and company’s controlling interest allowed them to force the bankruptcy judge to hold an auction for all of Delphi’s stock. The debt holders outbid the Michigan Man’s team, offering $3.5 billion. But it wasn’t $3.5 billion in cash: under the rules of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, debtors-in-possession may bid the face value of their bonds rather than their current market value, which at the time was significantly lower. Under the Platinum deal, Delphi would have had much more in real money for operations: $250 million in cash from Gores, another $250 million in credit, and $3.1 billion in “exit financing” from GM, all of it backed up by TARP. Still, under Chapter 11 rules, the Platinum bid was technically lower. And that’s how Singer’s funds—which included the Romneys’ investment—came to buy Delphi for the equivalent of only 67 cents a share.

Rattner and GM, embarrassingly outmaneuvered, tried to put a good face on it. As Rattner wrote in his memoir, “In truth we didn’t care who got Delphi as long as GM could extricate itself from the continual drain on its finances and assure itself of a reliable supply of parts.”

* * *

Even before the hedge funds won their bid for Delphi’s stock, they were already squeezing the parts supplier and its workforce. In February 2009, Delphi, claiming a cash shortage, unilaterally terminated health insurance for its nonunion pensioners. But according to Rattner, the Treasury’s Task Force uncovered foggy accounting hiding the fact that the debt holders had deliberately withheld millions of dollars in cash sitting in Delphi accounts. Even after this discovery, the creditors still refused to release the funds.

The savings to the hedge fund billionaires of dropping retiree insurance was peanuts—$70 million a year—compared with the profits they later extracted from Delphi. But the harm to Delphi retirees was severe. Bruce Naylor of Kokomo, Indiana, had been forced into retirement at the age of 54 in 2006, when Delphi began to move its plants overseas. Naylor’s promised pension was slashed 40 percent, and his health insurance and life insurance were canceled. Though he had thirty-six years of experience under his belt as an engineer with GM and Delphi, he couldn’t find another job as an engineer—and he doesn’t know a single former co-worker who has found new employment in his or her field, either. Naylor ended up getting work at a local grocery store. That job gone, he now sells cars online for commission, bringing in one-fifth of what he earned before he was laid off from Delphi.

Even with his wife Judy’s income as a nurse, it hasn’t been enough: the Naylors just declared bankruptcy, and their home is in foreclosure.

After the hedge fund takeover of Delphi, the squeeze on workers intensified through attacks on their pensions. During its years of economic trouble, Delphi had been chronically shorting payments to its pension funds—and by July 2009, they were underfunded by $7 billion. That month, Singer’s hedge fund group won the bid for control of Delphi’s stock and made clear they would neither make up the shortfall nor pay any more US worker pensions. Checkmated by the hedge funders, the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation agreed to take over Delphi’s pension payments. The PBGC would eat the shortfall.

With Delphi’s new owners relieved of its healthcare and pension obligations, its debts to GM and its union contracts—
and now loaded with subsidies from GM funded by TARP—the company’s market value rose from zero to approximately 
$10.5 billion today.

* * *

But there was still a bit of unfinished business: President Obama needed to be blamed for the pension disaster. In a television ad airing in swing states since September, one retired Delphi manager says, “The Obama administration decided to terminate my pension, and I took a 40 percent reduction in my pension.”

Another retiree, Mary Miller, says, “I really struggle to pay for the basics…. I would ask President Obama why I had no rights, and he had all the rights to take my pension away—and never ever look back and say, ‘Not only did I take it from Mary Miller, I took it from 20,000 other people.’”

These people are real. But it’s clear that these former workers, now struggling to scrape by, were hardly in the position to put together $7 million in ad buys to publicize their plight. The ads were paid for by Let Freedom Ring, a 501©(4) nonprofit advocacy organization partially funded by Jack Templeton Jr., a billionaire evangelical whose foundation has sponsored lectures at the Manhattan Institute (the anti-union think tank whose board of directors includes not only Singer but Loeb). The ads also conveniently leave out the fact that the law sets specific ceilings on what the PBGC is allowed to pay retirees—regardless of what they were originally owed.

In June 2011, Charles and David Koch hosted a group of multimillionaires at a retreat in Vail, Colorado. In secret recordings obtained by investigator Brad Friedman, the host, Charles Koch, thanks Singer and Templeton, among others, for each donating more than $1 million to the Koch brothers’ 2012 anti-Obama election war chest.

Of course, it wasn’t Obama who refused to pay the Delphi pensions; it was Paul Singer and the other hedge funds controlling Delphi. The salaried workers’ pensions were, after all, an obligation of Delphi’s owners, not the government. Delphi’s stockholders—the Romneys included—had one easy way to rectify the harm to these pensioners, much as GM did for its workers: just pay up.

Making good on the full pensions for salaried workers would cost Delphi a one-time charge of less than $1 billion. This year, Delphi was flush with $1.4 billion in cash—
meaning its owners could have made the pensioners whole 
and still cleared a profit. Instead, in May, Delphi chose to use most of those funds to take over auto parts plants in Asia at 
a cost of $972 million—purchased from Bain Capital.

* * *

That leaves one final question: Exactly how much did the Romneys make off the auto bailout? Queries to the campaign and the Romneys’ trustee have gone unanswered. And Romney has yet to disclose the crucial year of his tax returns, 2009. But whatever the tally, it was one sweet deal. The Romneys were invested with Elliott Management by the end of 2010, before Delphi was publicly traded. So, in effect, they got Delphi stock at Singer’s initial dirt-cheap price. When Delphi’s owners took the company public in November 2011, the Romneys were in—and they hit the jackpot.

In their 2011 and 2012 Federal Financial Disclosure filing, Ann Romney’s trust lists “more than $1 million” invested with Elliott. This is the description for all of her big investments—the minimal disclosure required by law. (Had Romney kept the holding in his own name, he would have had to reveal if his investment with Singer had made more than $50 million.)

It is reasonable to assume that Singer treated the Romneys the same as his other investors, with a third of their portfolio invested in Delphi by the time of the 2011 initial public offering. This means that with an investment of at least $1 million, their smallest possible gain when Delphi went public would have been $10.2 million, plus another $10.2 million for each million handed to Singer—all gains made possible by the auto bailout.

But that’s just the beginning. Since the November 2011 IPO, Delphi’s stock has roared upward, boosting the Romneys’ Delphi windfall from $10.2 million to $15.3 million for each million they invested with Singer.

But what if the Romneys invested a bit more with Singer: let’s say a mere 3 percent of their reported net worth, or 
$7.5 million? (After all, ABC News reported—and Romney didn’t deny—that he invested “a huge chunk of his vast wealth” with Singer.) Then their take from the auto bailout so far would reach a stunning $115 million.

The Romneys’ exact gain, however, remains nearly 
invisible—and untaxed—because Singer cashed out only a fragment of the windfall in 2011. And the Singer-led hedge funds have been able to keep almost all of Delphi’s profits untaxed 
by moving Delphi’s incorporation from Troy, Michigan, to the Isle of Jersey, a tax haven off the coast of France.

The Romneys might insist that the funds were given to Singer, Mitt’s key donor, only through Ann’s blind trust. But as Mitt Romney said some years ago of Ted Kennedy, “The blind trust is an age-old ruse, if you will. Which is to say, you can always tell a blind trust what it can and cannot do.” Romney, who reminds us often that he was CEO of a hedge fund, can certainly read Elliott Management’s SEC statements, and he knows Ann’s trust is invested heavily in a fund whose No. 1 stake is with Delphi.

Nevertheless, even if the Romneys were blind to their initial investment in Elliott, they would have known by the beginning of 2010 that they had a massive position in Delphi and would make a fortune from the bailout and TARP funds. Delphi is not a minor investment for Singer; it is his main holding. To invest in Elliott is essentially a “Delphi play”: that is, investing with Singer means buying a piece of the auto bailout.

Mitt Romney may indeed have wanted to let Detroit die. But if the auto industry was going to be bailed out after all, the Romneys apparently couldn’t resist getting in on a piece of 
the action.

In last week’s issue, Lee Fang revealed how Mitt Romney’s son Tagg and investors in his firm Solamere Capital can cash in if his father wins.

-YUP how right you are---I read some of this and thot i cant put this on-people are going to get mad and ill get negs- -Thanks- the info here is correct and now the Mitt The Glove(cause he catches it all) is ahead in the poles haha by 54-48 or sumthin l ike that he is a shoe in--- yup and thats where we will find it - well now e know what we will have for the next 4 years ? ----mmmm

[cris]

4 wives huh?

Have you seen those Mormon Gals though?

Those are some good lookin Ladies

[littlefeet]

4 wives huh?

Have you seen those Mormon Gals though?

Those are some good lookin Ladies

[bamf1414]

So what did he Promised, did he actually live up to it!! Did he cut the Debt in half as he stated, (or as Mr. O stated i will be a one term president), did he get unemployment down to 5% as he promised!! Did he go line by line on bill passed to cut wasteful spending, did he remove Lobbyist!!

Good call!!!!!!!!!!

I will tell all of you, I live in Utah, however I am not LDS. This religion is not as bad as everyone thinks it is. They do have some weird rules for themselves but for the most part the religion is just about keeping your family together and safe. I for one will be voting for Romney no matter what his religion. We already know Obama's policies are breaking this country more and more every day. This election should not be a choice over religion, it should a be choice between a business man and a man that has never had a real job.

[jonjon]

Because our only choice is the Mormon or the Moron I'll pick the Mormon.

[KiaKaha]

A. Abner, you are being told lies in order to sway people away from the man that can save this great country. Perhaps instead of passing on lies about the LDS church you should do some research. "Mormons" use the KJV Holy Bible as most mainstream religions do. It's the folks that use other versions I'm more concerned with. Go to lds.org or mormon.org and do some reading. Would you believe your child's kindergarten teacher's advice on changing a water pump on a truck over a mechanic? Not if you had any sense at all!!! There is so much garbage being spread as truth yet no one goes to the source. Odd.

B. JCHawaii, Dude... It's capitalism in a capitalist country. I can only guess you are not planning to make any money from this IQD investment... Otherwise you'll be a hypocrit! People make good investments and make great money every day! He's a smart man, wish I'd made some of his investments! Maybe after the rv I'll look for his portfolio and shadow him!

Wow, guys. Really? Believing all the rhetoric. Yes, a third party system would be great for this country, but it ain't happening, so suck it up and vote for the best man for the job, OBVIOUSLY Mitt Romney!

KK

MADD for Heather

[Luigi1]

A binder full of women is enough to make me want to become a Mormon.

During the Great Depression the motto was "A Chicken In Every Pot"

If Romney wins...it will be "A Binder Full Of Women"

Sign me up.

[Lutie]

4 wives huh?

Have you seen those Mormon Gals though?

Those are some good lookin Ladies

You people are disgusting! You know damn well Romney does not believe in having more then one wife as do most other Mormons. There is a very small segment of Mormons that still live that life style. Maybe you prefer the life style where they kill their own children because they don't behave the way they want. My grand daughter goes to college in Utah and says these are some of the kindest caring people she has ever met. Thank God you still have the right to vote anyway you want but at least speak with some truth.

[cris]

You people are disgusting! You know damn well Romney does not believe in having more then one wife as do most other Mormons. There is a very small segment of Mormons that still live that life style. Maybe you prefer the life style where they kill their own children because they don't behave the way they want. My grand daughter goes to college in Utah and says these are some of the kindest caring people she has ever met.

Hey Lutie....Just making a joke....Im a Romney supporter

[Lutie]

Hey Lutie....Just making a joke....Im a Romney supporter

LOL sorry I guess I'm losing my sense of humor. I spoke too soon. I'm in the hospital because I had both knees replaced and I needed a good rant.

[JREDinars]

My attention span was a little short on the first video. The second was far more interesting. I urge people to watch that one and comment on it. Just wondering what people think about all that. It's interesting Id say...not saying it's just conspiracy talk or not. Just wondering what folks really think about what is shown in that video.

[abner]

A. Abner, you are being told lies in order to sway people away from the man that can save this great country. Perhaps instead of passing on lies about the LDS church you should do some research. "Mormons" use the KJV Holy Bible as most mainstream religions do. It's the folks that use other versions I'm more concerned with. Go to lds.org or mormon.org and do some reading. Would you believe your child's kindergarten teacher's advice on changing a water pump on a truck over a mechanic? Not if you had any sense at all!!! There is so much garbage being spread as truth yet no one goes to the source. Odd.

B. JCHawaii, Dude... It's capitalism in a capitalist country. I can only guess you are not planning to make any money from this IQD investment... Otherwise you'll be a hypocrit! People make good investments and make great money every day! He's a smart man, wish I'd made some of his investments! Maybe after the rv I'll look for his portfolio and shadow him!

Wow, guys. Really? Believing all the rhetoric. Yes, a third party system would be great for this country, but it ain't happening, so suck it up and vote for the best man for the job, OBVIOUSLY Mitt Romney!

KK

MADD for Heather

:lol: :lol: Get a grip---- im just showing yall what i saw. I also have studied the Morman Dynasty. You should get a book and it is called --The Kingdom of the Cults. I dont think you would get thru the 1st doz pages but give it a try. No im not angry but i have studied and i also know a few of the elders and i also know how they operate.So i dont speak lightly of what i knoiw. That being said -you dont have to believe me. I want you to stop and think about something here. Back when Obb-CON-obee was running yes alot came out then and people scoffed at the idea that Obee was a good guy-SO YOU TELL ME NOW -WHO WAS WHAT? yet everyone wanted to vote for an AFRICAN AMERICAN----YUP- and he is KENYAN-So please explain how the switch was made in front of our eyes .Better ask Penn and Teller huh? Magic in the Whitehouse. So YES we have been lied to and thru. If you dont like what is presented you dont have to look or watch . Im just presenting what i see and what is out there and believe this ---im not indoctrinated on anything i see but JESUS CHRIST. Him i will follow. So you choose who you want and yes a 3 party system would be nice and it has been touted. I f people in this country wanted it bad enough maybe it will happen but then again someone will say- What a Mickey Mouse deal this is and wham you will find a box with that name. ( being playfull hee) but yes a 3 party system would be nice.I dont think the founding fathers would abject now if they saw what is going on. thanks for replying but a forum is fun and we do learn alot here dont we? As for lies? I dont think so-If i was you i would sit back and watch things unfold and come back in a year and tell me if im wrong and if i am i will apologise - But I dont think that will happen. I also watch the Vulture Funds and believe me when i say Mitt the Glove knows how to tear up a Corporation and GUESS WHAT---- THE US -is a CORPORATION and you wont be able to fire the Pres of a Corporation- ---- jmho

[Lutie]

A binder full of women is enough to make me want to become a Mormon.

During the Great Depression the motto was "A Chicken In Every Pot"

If Romney wins...it will be "A Binder Full Of Women"

Sign me up.

Sorry Luigi now you sound as stupid as Chris Matthews and all all those other haters.

[jonjon]

I think every one in America knows that for us to maintain or regain our sovereignty we will have to sacrifice some of the borrowed monies that we are surviving on now.

A sacrifice that no one in the country is willing to accept.

Mitt is the perfect head to instill a path to regeneration for this country.

Attacking his religious beliefs and inferring that they are rooted in satanic origins is petty.

The problems with our economy are not imagined, they are severe and will require great attention.

Our only path to recovery seems impossibly passable, but if we don’t start we will never recover from the crippling fraud.

Our government is as corrupt as the Iraqi government but on a much larger scale. The thieves we now have in office are going to be extremely uncomfortable when Mitt starts placing checks and balances on them to stop borrowing from China so they can steal it from us.

Spewing hatred about the only candidate that is qualified for this position is a demonstration of deep-seated stupidity.

We don’t need to end the Fed we need to end the stupid.

[watercop]

------This really worth a look- there is some great info here . If there are any Mormons on the forum Please join in I would really enjoy your view. We know about Obummer so lets get to know the New Comer shall we? -

Here is something else you should watch - if you Prize your family-Please DIGEST this real slow- This one is hard to take but True. As far as my studies go -these 2 pieces hit the nail on the head.Like i said we know what Obammer can do and what he Promised and what we got so take it from there Please -I Thankyou--- http://www.pakalertp...or-bush-cartel/

I am a Mormon and this guy is an idiot. I don't know where he gets his crap but that is just what it is. We are Christians and Jesus is my Savior and Redeemer. He died for my sins and there is nothing about shedding our blood or anyone else's blood. We do covenant that we would do anything for our Savior including giving our own life for Him and for the service of others if we need to. All Christians believe that. We do not believe that we are God or that our Prophet is God. We do believe that we in this day are blessed with Prophets and Apostles as in the days of Christ on the earth. We do believe that God is our Father in Heaven and in such, we are his children. What are children of a King, princes and princesses that means that everyone on the earth now or ever has been or ever will be can inherit the Kingdom of God. Basic Christian doctrine. We all are "Children of God" Not God Himself. We all are not just Mormons but everyone is and we believe that everyone is of great worth. We should serve on another. We have thirteen core beliefs that (Articles of Faith)

There have been men who distort our beliefs from the beginning and like this conspiricy guy want to spread hate and lies and distort the truth. There is so much anti-mormon stuff out there and I pray that everyone can see it for the lies it is. If you have any more questions just ask. Thanks Twila

1 We ^abelieve in ^bGod, the Eternal Father, and in His ^cSon, Jesus Christ, and in the ^dHoly Ghost.

2 We believe that men will be ^apunished for their ^bown sins, and not for Adam’s ^ctransgression.

3 We believe that through the ^aAtonement of Christ, all^bmankind may be ^csaved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

4 We believe that the first principles and ^aordinances of the Gospel are: first, ^bFaith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second,^cRepentance; third, ^dBaptism by ^eimmersion for the ^fremission of sins; fourth, Laying on of ^ghands for the ^hgift of the Holy Ghost.

5 We believe that a man must be ^acalled of God, by ^bprophecy, and by the laying on of ^chands by those who are in ^dauthority, to^epreach the Gospel and administer in the ^fordinances thereof.

6 We believe in the same ^aorganization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, ^bprophets, ^cpastors,^dteachers, ^eevangelists, and so forth.

7 We believe in the ^agift of ^btongues, ^cprophecy, ^drevelation,^evisions, ^fhealing, ^ginterpretation of tongues, and so forth.

8 We believe the ^aBible to be the ^bword of God as far as it is translated ^ccorrectly; we also believe the ^dBook of Mormon to be the word of God.

9 We believe all that God has ^arevealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet ^breveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

10 We believe in the literal ^agathering of Israel and in the restoration of the ^bTen Tribes; that ^cZion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will ^dreignpersonally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be ^erenewedand receive its ^fparadisiacal ^gglory.

11 We claim the ^aprivilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the ^bdictates of our own ^cconscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them ^dworship how, where, or what they may.

12 We believe in being ^asubject to ^bkings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in ^cobeying, honoring, and sustaining the ^dlaw.

13 ^aWe believe in being ^bhonest, true, ^cchaste, ^dbenevolent, virtuous, and in doing ^egood to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we ^fhopeall things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to^gendure all things. If there is anything ^hvirtuous, ⁱlovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Joseph Smith.

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[watercop]

:lol: :lol: Get a grip---- im just showing yall what i saw. I also have studied the Morman Dynasty. You should get a book and it is called --The Kingdom of the Cults. I dont think you would get thru the 1st doz pages but give it a try. No im not angry but i have studied and i also know a few of the elders and i also know how they operate.So i dont speak lightly of what i knoiw. That being said -you dont have to believe me. I want you to stop and think about something here. Back when Obb-CON-obee was running yes alot came out then and people scoffed at the idea that Obee was a good guy-SO YOU TELL ME NOW -WHO WAS WHAT? yet everyone wanted to vote for an AFRICAN AMERICAN----YUP- and he is KENYAN-So please explain how the switch was made in front of our eyes .Better ask Penn and Teller huh? Magic in the Whitehouse. So YES we have been lied to and thru. If you dont like what is presented you dont have to look or watch . Im just presenting what i see and what is out there and believe this ---im not indoctrinated on anything i see but JESUS CHRIST. Him i will follow. So you choose who you want and yes a 3 party system would be nice and it has been touted. I f people in this country wanted it bad enough maybe it will happen but then again someone will say- What a Mickey Mouse deal this is and wham you will find a box with that name. ( being playfull hee) but yes a 3 party system would be nice.I dont think the founding fathers would abject now if they saw what is going on. thanks for replying but a forum is fun and we do learn alot here dont we? As for lies? I dont think so-If i was you i would sit back and watch things unfold and come back in a year and tell me if im wrong and if i am i will apologise - But I dont think that will happen. I also watch the Vulture Funds and believe me when i say Mitt the Glove knows how to tear up a Corporation and GUESS WHAT---- THE US -is a CORPORATION and you wont be able to fire the Pres of a Corporation- ---- jmho

See this is what I mean about lies that have erupted over the last hundred fifty years. You don't even have to look to find it. Christ is the foundation of our church. Pray about what you read. One of the eternal truths is, that if it brings you toward Christ it is of God. If it takes you away from God it if of the devil. Members of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" (Mormons) is that everything is to come to Christ and bring our brothers and sisters in this world to him also. That is why we have so many missionaries. Most of us love missionary service (to bring others to Christ)