This week I watched the DVD of a wonderful documentary film -- "Trumbo," the story of Dalton Trumbo, the most famous of the "Hollywood 10" screenwriters who were blacklisted in the 1950s after being accused of being a communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It's a terrifying and tragic story of lives ruined by a political witch-hunt.
My, how things have changed since then.
Oh, we still have political witch-hunts. But instead of hunting Hollywood people, it's now Hollywood people who do the hunting. America's top witch-hunter today is Congressman Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), whose district includes West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Malibu. And instead of hunting communists, Waxman hunts capitalists.
That's what he's doing by commanding the appearance before his powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee next month by top executives of AT&T, Caterpillar, Verizon and Deere. Not only do these executives have to show up for hearings, but in advance of it, they have to provide internal documents including emails. It's basically a criminal investigation being conducted outside regulatory or law enforcement channels.
And what's the crime? None at all that I can see. Waxman is focusing on the noncash charges to earnings this quarter these companies are taking -- measured in the billions -- as a result of the changing tax treatment of health care benefits, as a direct consequence of the enactment this month of ObamaCare.
Huh? I can understand how eyebrows would be raised if these companies tried to report big gains. Then maybe you could wonder whether they were trying to prop up their reported earnings with trickery like Enron or Worldcom did. But these guys are taking losses, not gains. That's not what CEOs do when they are trying to cook the books!
And it's not something these companies or others (on Wednesday, Boeing announced a similar loss) would do casually. Under 2002's Sarbanes Oxley Act, which Waxman voted in favor of, it's a federal crime -- punishable by huge fines and long jail time -- for a chief executive officer or chief financial officer to file a false or misleading financial statement.
So what is Waxman objecting to, so much that he is holding public hearings and commanding the appearance of these busy executives at a time when they ought to be concentrating on getting the American economy out of recession? Simple. Waxman apparently is infuriated that these companies are revealing to the American public that Obamacare has costs associated with it. According to Waxman, their losses "appear to conflict with independent analyses, which show that the new law will expand coverage and bring down costs."
Now just what "independent analyses" might he be talking about? If we look at the work two weeks ago of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S.
Congress to determine the costs of ObamaCare, we see an estimate of more than $4 billion in costs to corporations for the loss of a special tax subsidy for providing prescription drug benefits to employees and retirees. That’s the exact reason cited by the companies for their losses.
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Congress Hates Capitalism, It Seems: Not only do these executives have to show up for hearings, but... http://bit.ly/bbRDkY - America1First
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