Good news today for the Delphi salaried retirees who were screwed over by Team Obama’s auto task force and the UAW.

As I reported Wednesday, the Delphi white-collar workers were in court today for a hearing on their federal lawsuit challenging the backroom deals that led to massively slashed pension benefits for non-union workers while union workers’ pensions were made whole.

The Detroit News reports today that the judge in the case refused to dismiss their key charges against the government:

A federal judge today refused to dismiss three charges in a lawsuit filed by thousands of salaried Delphi retirees seeking to restore pension benefits.

U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow denied an attempt to dismiss the retirees’ claim that their pension plan was terminated illegally in an agreement made between Delphi and the PBGC, not by court decision. He also would not dismiss a claim the retirees’ constitutional rights were violated when the pension plan was terminated.

Delphi’s 20,000 salaried retirees filed a class-action lawsuit last year seeking to block the company’s decision to abandon its pension plans and hand them to the government’s insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

…Retirees also sued the Treasury Department and members of President Barack Obama’s auto task force. The Treasury, and task force members have asked Tarnow to dismiss the lawsuit or, in the alternative, for summary judgment.

The ruling means that the retirees can now ask to subpoena documents from the Treasury Department, the PBGC and GM as evidence that political considerations led to unfair treatment of Delphi’s 20,000 salaried workers and retirees.

Let the sun shine in…and prepare for the Obama stonewallers.

***

Support the Delphi salaried retirees’ fight here.

***

Obama loves to attack Republicans for driving America’s economic vehicle into the ditch.

Republicans need to slap back at the analogy and make clear what Obama did: He seized the title to the car, put Big Labor in the driver’s seat, and rode shotgun as the Democrats committed mass vehicular homicide — running over workers, dealers, bondholders, and anyone else who stood in the way.

***

Delphi retiree Joe Musick writes that the GOP needs to up the ante: Propose legislation to use TARP funds to make the Delphi salaried retirees whole — just as they did with the union workers.

Last month, I mentioned the plight of the Delphi salaried retired workers on the Hannity Show (starts at 4:00 minute mark) during our segment on the Obama Beltway Chainsaw Massacre. Today, my column delves further into the economic horror stories of these forgotten victims of Obama’s auto bailout/union payoff. I’ll be telling more of them in coming days.

As I’ve noted over the past several months, the Right needs to forcefully counter the Obama machine’s Alinsky story-telling tactics as the desperate White House strategists ramp up the “personal tone.” (Underscoring my point: Obama was in Virginia at a backyard event this afternoon “telling stories” to tout health care.) The leftists who claim to speak for hard-working people who play by the rules won’t put the names and faces and suffering of Obama’s jobs death toll victims front and center. We must.

Related:

UAW Bailout: White House Kneecapped White-collar Pensioners

Nonunion Delphi Retired Employees Get Shaft in Auto Bailout

Oversight Committee Republicans Question Politicization of Delphi Bankruptcy Deal

Boehner and Wicker Request GAO Report to Investigate Delphi Pension Treatment

Delphi pension dispute due for federal probe

***

The Delphi disaster: An economic horror story Obama won’t tell
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

The White House believes it can win back depressed and economically stressed voters by turning President Obama into the storyteller-in-chief again. But victims of Obama’s Chicago politics don’t want to hear any more of his own well-worn tales of struggle and sacrifice. They’ve got their own tragedies to tell — heart-wrenching dramas of personal and financial suffering at the very hands of Obama.

Consider the real-life horror story of 20,000 white-collar workers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago. As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer “rescue” funds and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members’ costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts. In addition, the nonunion pensioners lost all of their health and life insurance benefits.

The abused workers — most from hard-hit northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states — had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees at Delphi/GM. Some workers have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish.

John Berent of Marblehead, Ohio, lost one-third of his pension: “I worked as a salaried employee for GM (30 years) and Delphi (10 years). After 40 years of dedicated service, I was forced to retire. Then Delphi terminated my health care, life insurance, vision, dental, then terminated the pension plan. Everything I worked 40 years for was wiped out.”

Kelly Fabrizio of Franksville, Wis., saw her pension reduced by 55 percent after working 30 years at Delphi/GM: “I am truly scared for my future. Every day I wake up, shake my head and say out loud — This Is Not How It Was Supposed To Be.”

Roger Hoke of Columbus, Mich., and his wife were both longtime Delphi workers. His pension shrunk by more than 40 percent: “After 33 years with GM and another 10 with Delphi, what did I do wrong to deserve such a fate?”

Paul Dobosz of the Delphi Salaried Retiree Association, which represents the pensioners and is suing the feds, recounts how they got screwed: The Auto Task Force hatched a plan to dump their pensions on the federally run Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which slashed their benefits. At the same time, the White House and Treasury officials devised “a clever way to make the UAW pensions whole using GM and TARP money to accomplish it. The scheme was documented in sworn depositions (that) revealed … that some groups of workers were more ‘politically sensitive’ and would be afforded special treatment (i.e. subsidy using TARP money) while others less politically worthy would be left out.” The PBGC, which had the fiduciary duty to represent the best interests of all the Delphi workers, helped sacrifice the non-union employees at the UAW altar.

In other words: Obama’s team of auto-crats — stocked with Big Labor-friendly appointees and self-admitted know-nothings about the car industry — decided to “cherry pick” (one Obama official’s own words) which obligations the new Government Motors company would assume and which they would abandon based on their own political whims and fealty. Due process and equal treatment of union and nonunion workers be damned. Administration officials assert that the Delphi workers’ pension fund was underfunded, but two separate actuarial analyses undercut the claim.

The Delphi workers sued the feds and will have a day in court on Sept. 24. They are not asking for a bailout. They are simply asking for fair treatment under the rule of law. Delphi supporters also point out that the very scheme used to “top up” the union workers’ pensions with taxpayer subsidies was challenged by the federal government and ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in the 1990s.

A separate investigation by TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky, announced last week, will also probe “whether political considerations played a role in favoring hourly over salaried retirees.” It shouldn’t take long to unearth the facts. Obama’s own former auto czar Steve Rattner admitted in his new memoir that “attacking the union’s sacred cow” could “jeopardize” the auto bailout deal.

While Obama conducts his worker empathy tour at staged town halls and rallies across the country, his Treasury Department continues to stonewall and refuses to answer questions about the Delphi disaster. But many workers left out in the cold know the truth:

Lip-biting, yarn-spinning Obama doesn’t feel their pain. He caused it.

***

More from Skeptical CPA, who saw through GM’s schemes two years ago.

Aug. 27, 2008:

Delphi was carved out of GM on 1 January 1999. Delphi’s CPAs were Deloitte & Touche (D&T). D&T also audits GM. D&T should never have been appointed Delphi’s CPAs given GM and Delphi’s relationship. Delphi replaced D&T with Ernst & Young for its 2006 audit. Delphi had some accounting restatements and accounting related lawsuits for 2000-03. It recorded a $202 million payment to GM in 2000 as a pension settlement instead of warranty expense. That Delphi could do this when D&T was on both sides of the transaction shows something. Something not too complementary to CPAs. GM should be forced to pony up all of Delphi’s pension contributions. Now. If GM can’t pay, it should join Delphi in bankruptcy. The two cases could be jointly administered.

September 9, 2008:

As I see it, Delphi was part of GM all along, just an “unconsolidated subsidiary”. Delphi was created primarily to let GM offload pension liabilities on Uncle Sam.

Zero Hedge covers a court hearing involving terminated Chrysler dealers with some follow-up on its previous analysis of Dealergate and possible Clinton-tied cronyism in Arkansas.

Tyler Durden points to one very interesting declaration from Ethel L. Cook, a Chrysler dealer based in Little Rock. Click on his post for the PDF link to the full testimony, but here’s an excerpt:

Having reviewed the pattern of assumption and rejection of dealers throughout their region, I have detected a pattern: In every market where there is a dealership connected with former Penske Automotive executive Steve Landers, or his new automotive partnership with “Mac” McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President Clinton) and Robert L. Johnson (majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats), the competitors are rejected.

In the Little Rock, Landers Chrysler Dodge Jeep is located far out of town in Benton, Arkansas. Nevertheless, the two Little Rock dealers, Cook and Crain were rejected.

In the Fayetteville, Arkansas area, Landers-McLarty Dodge Chrysler Jeep is located far out of town in Bentonville, Arkansas. Competitors Springdale Dodge Chrysler, Steve Smith County Jeep and Jones Brothers were all rejected.

In the Shreveport, Louisiana market, Lee’s Summit Dodge Chrysler Jeep (a Landers McLarty dealership) is located in Bossier City, Louisiana. Both competitive dealers, Claude de Beaux in Vivian, Louisiana and Greater Birmingham Dodge Chrysler in Shreveport were rejected.

In the Springfield, Missouri market, Tri-Lakes Motors (a Landers-McLarty dealership) is located in Branson, Missouri. Competitors Heritage Chrysler Jeep in Ozark, Missouri and Ramsay Motor Company in Harrison, Arkansas were rejected. A pattern seems to be emerging. Everywhere there is a Landers-McLarty dealership, Chrysler has rejected the competition.

In the Huntsville, Alabama market, Landers McLarty Dodge Chrysler Jeep, is located in Huntsville. Competitor Cloverleaf Chrysler Dodge Jeep was rejected.

Favoritism and cronyism towards preferred dealer group is not a valid exercise of business judgment.