Samandigrow: Making Money Cash

Marc Theissen recently asked some very important questions about where the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is getting the mountains of cash that it spends on Democrat political campaigns. He finds that it is coming from foreign sources, but the SEIU is refusing to yield to requests for transparency.

If the SEIU is getting the millions of dollars it is spending on Democrats from foreign sources, this should put a major dent in the alarmist claims that Obama has been making about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supposedly getting its money from outside the country — a charge that was resoundingly refuted. After all, if one of Obama’s biggest left-wing campaign supporters is suffused with foreign cash, why should it be such a big deal if anyone else is?

Sadly, the Old Media will never play up this aspect of Obama’s hypocrisy, but that is another subject.

In any case, Theissen asked the SEIU where its political cash was coming from because federal financial reporting records seemed to prove that it could not have been coming solely from the dues of American union members. Since the SEIU has thousands of members in foreign nations, Theissen wondered how that factored in.

Initially the SEIU lied to him and claimed that “most” of its political cash came from domestic dues payers. But Theissen persisted with his doubts. It wasn’t long before the SEIU admitted that they were lying previously.

“Most” of the money the SEIU uses for “political purposes” does not come from [the union's Committee on Political Education] COPE (to which you must be a U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident to contribute). “Most” of the SEIU’s political spending, he now admits, comes from other accounts.

Theissen still has more questions, ones that the SEIU is still stonewalling.

And who funds those other accounts? “Our own members,” Youngdahl writes. Well, the SEIU’s members include foreign workers and — as an SEIU executive boasts in this video — illegal immigrants. Youngdahl has twice failed to answer my question, so I will ask it a third time: Do the SEIU’s foreign workers and illegal immigrant members (who are by definition foreign nationals) contribute any money to the accounts that the union uses for “political purposes”?

It seems pretty clear that the SEIU is using the dues from illegal workers in the U.S. and foreign workers for its domestic political operations and that those funds are directed solely toward Obama and his Democrats.

Hypocrites extraordinaire.

From Claire Berlinski in City Journal:

You see, about a month ago, I asked my mother to bail me out. I knew she’d do it. She’s done it before. She sent me money she’s been saving toward my retirement. I resolved to stop spending money on stupid things. (There was really no excuse for that lamp, Mom, I know. Sorry! In my defense, I was sure there was a genie in it.)

With my mom paying my rent, I’ve been able to charge less for what I write and stay in the black. Voilà, I’m selling a cheaper product (for now) than Reuters and AP. That will teach them where to stuff their “good investment decisions” and their “economies of scale.” I fired the guy who does my odd jobs—it was painful, but it had to be done. So, congratulations to me! I’m making it in this tough business climate, with a little help from Mom. America’s back! And if I’m broke again in a year, I’ll hit her up again. (Don’t forget, Mom, that you really have no choice: no matter what you do, I’m still going to be a huge financial drag on you. If I fail, I’ll end up coming home with all my cats. You don’t want me sleeping on your couch, do you? And you sure don’t want to see what my cats would do to that couch. Antique, I believe it is?)

All of this is, alas, a perfectly accurate description of my financial life. The reader may wonder about my mom’s wisdom in going along with this plan. That’s between me and her—she loves me, and it’s her money, not yours. The money that went to GM was yours, however. And I suppose you must love GM as if it’s your profligate kid, because surely you could not be so credulous as to believe these reports about the spectacular success of the bailout.

There was a rush to buy GM shares last Thursday, when the company, which emerged from bankruptcy restructuring last summer, held an IPO. The company has been drowned in taxpayer cash. It’s going to be fine in the short term. No one should be surprised by this. Anyone—and any company—can get back in the black in the short term if someone gives it a ton of money. And who wouldn’t want to invest in a company that everyone knows won’t be allowed to go down? All the merchants in my neighborhood would lend me money, too, if I asked, confident that their loan would be repaid. A “generous American mom” sounds pretty good to them.

Of course, GM is paying back its new loans, though this doesn’t help investors who hold old GM stock; that’s worthless. By the way, I’m also considering stiffing my creditors. The GM example proves that it will result in an immediate improvement of my balance sheet. GM’s production numbers have been increasing, and mine have, too: it’s a lot easier to write when you’ve got peace of mind. Whether anyone will buy the stuff I’m writing, God knows, but my word count is definitely up, and that, apparently, is the number that matters.

Note that GM is still producing those gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs that no one seemed to want before. Great news for me: I’ll just keep writing about the arcana of Turkish constitutional politics. It’s what the market should want. Turkish politics are fascinating. I don’t know what’s wrong with Americans. If they understood what was good for them, they’d want to be better informed about Turkey. (They’d want that Volt electric car, too. I hear it’s much better for the environment.)

Naturally, I’ll pay my mother back. Here’s how: I’m going to have her put a small percentage of all the money she’s given me in an escrow account, which I’ll call a “working capital” account. Then I’ll transfer the rest of my assets to her. (Good news, Mom: you own seven cats and seven litter boxes.) Then I’m going to use the money from that escrow account to pay her back at an interest rate no one but my own mother would give me. As soon as I empty the escrow account, I’ll declare the loans repaid. What do you mean, that makes no sense? That’s just what the U.S. governmentdid for GM, and no one finds that problematic, do they? Never mind that the cash part of the loan has been repaid from TARP, or that this in fact represents only about 15 percent of the total bailout, or that the rest remains tied up in the automotive equivalent of cats and litter boxes. By the way, I’m thinking of bundling all my liabilities into a separate company, just like GM. I’ll call the company “Some other Claire who can deal with the creditors, never heard of that Claire.”

Read the whole thing here.

eric seiger do

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Making Money Cash

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