NOW CANADA GIVES BILLIONS TO BAIL AUTOMAKERS

Well here comes Canada to the rescue of the US auto industry in a move to try and save Canadian jobs. If you look closely you’ll see the Canadian government is also attaching strings to their money just like accepting the US government’s money did.

NOW CANADA GIVES BILLIONS TO BAIL AUTOMAKERS
BY HUGO MILLER AND REG CURREN

(Bloomberg) — General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC will get C$4 billion ($3.3 billion) in government loans from Canada and the province of Ontario, a day after the U.S. agreed to aid to keep the two automakers operating.

General Motors’ Canadian unit will receive C$3 billion while Chrysler is set to get C$1 billion, the two governments said today. Borrowers must accept limits on executive compensation and also report “material transactions in excess of C$125 million or more,” the two governments said in a joint statement.

“This is a huge problem that faces the Ontario community and the Canadian economy by extension,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at a press conference in downtown Toronto today.

Canada’s aid builds on the $13.4 billion in U.S. emergency loans announced by President George W. Bush. Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement on Dec. 12 pledged to offer GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor Co.’s Canadian units federal and provincial aid “proportional” to the their contribution to North American production, which is about 20 percent.

“We will not allow catastrophic collapse” of the industry, Harper said. “But the auto companies have to change the way they do their business in a very serious way.”

The aid package is “not a blank check” and Canadian taxpayers expect the money to be used to renew the industry and involve all stakeholders in that process, Harper said.

Ontario’s Contribution

Ontario will contribute C$1.3 billion to the package and the Canadian government C$2.7 billion, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said at the same news conference.

“This is about 400,000 jobs and 400,000 families,” said McGuinty. “There’s a lot at risk.”

The Canadian Auto Workers union lauded the package and pledged to continue working with the companies and governments to ensure the industry’s survival in Canada, Ken Lewenza, president of the union said.

“The announcement today was important for our industry, our workers and for all citizens of Canada,” said Lewenza. “There are 400,000 jobs at stake here.”

He declined to speculate on whether his membership will have to take wage-and-benefit cuts as part of the package.

U.S. Package

The U.S. package requires companies to have pay and work rules in place by the end of 2009 that make them competitive with those of overseas automakers with plants in the U.S.

GM had asked for C$800 million ($641 million) in aid from Canada by month’s end and an additional C$1.6 billion line of credit through the second quarter.

GM will receive C$800 million now and on Jan. 30 another C$1.2 billion and further C$1 billion on Feb. 27. Chrysler gets C$400 million immediately with another C$400 million at the end of January and the balance in February.

The industry will have to restructure and will probably end up being smaller, said Harper. (In layman speak, this means eventually we may see a merger and only one or two US automakers left.)

“This will be a difficult restructuring,” said McGuinty.

Ford’s Canadian unit had asked for access to as much as C$2 billion in “standby” credit, to be used if the current economic crisis worsens. Chrysler LLC didn’t say how much it was seeking.

Bloomberg.com

Cheney: We Asked If We Needed Approval For Wiretapping, Congress Told Us ‘Absolutely Not

Well here’s something a lot of us have know for a while, but hasn’t been made public until now. The fact that the Democrats were briefed on the “illegal wiretapping” and told to go ahead and do it. Never mind that we have a 4th amendment right to unlawful searches without “probable cause”. And what about the “rule of law” president Bush is always talking about? Oh I forgot, it doesn’t apply to him.

We Asked If We Needed Approval For Wiretapping, Congress Told Us ‘Absolutely Not

In an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace yesterday morning, Vice President Cheney defended the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, and claimed that the congressional leaders briefed on the program wholeheartedly approved. In fact, Cheney claimed, when the White House asked if it needed congressional approval for the program, they unanimously agreed it did not:

CHENEY: We briefed them on the program and what we’d achieved and how it worked and asked them should we continue the program. They were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike. All agreed: Absolutely essential to continue the program. I then said, Do we need to come to the Congress and get additional legislating authorization to continue what we’re doing? They said absolutely not. Don’t do it.

Watch it:

Cheney’s startling claims run directly counter to accounts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Rather than asking for congressional input, Pelosi and Rockefeller said in 2005 that Cheney simply informed them of what was going on — and ignored their objections:

PELOSI: The Bush Administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval. As is my practice whenever I am notified about such intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings.

ROCKEFELLER: The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program.

Other congressional members who attended those briefings have said that they were told only the barest outlines of the program. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Jane Harman (D-CA) said that the White House never disclosed that it was skirting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) said the same thing:

The assumption was that if we did that, we would do it pursuant to the law, the law that regulates the surveillance of national security issues. And there was no suggestion that we were going to begin eavesdropping on United States citizens without following the full law. … There was no reference made to the fact that we were going to use that as the subterfuge to begin unwarranted, illegal — and I think unconstitutional — eavesdropping on American citizens.

What’s more, Rockefeller, then vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote a hand-written letter to Cheney in 2003 to “reiterate [his] concerns” about the wiretapping program. “I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities,” he wrote.

Cheney claims to have suggested seeking congressional approval right away. However, the White House put up a stiff fight just a few years later, when Congress finally sought to impose oversight of the wiretapping program. The Vice President has already presented misleading infomration about the dates and frequency of these supposed briefings; now he appears to be offering misleading descriptions of them.

Read the article @ Think Progess