Louisville, KY - I continue to get inundated with so much email from the Fischer/Ford situation it is mind boggling. You can find the stories that began all of this here and here. I didn't start out looking into Ford, the investigation led to it thanks to Mayor Greg Fischer. To save me many hours of responding, I hope the following will help most of you understand why I delved into Ford in the first place.
Thanks to all who have written, yes even including the haters. The original story on the myth of the auto bailout can be found here.
The most often asked question to me is, "why are you exposing Ford?"
It is a simple answer really.
Because Mayor Greg Fischer and his illegally taxpayer funded, in my opinion anyway, Jefferson County Attorney Mike O'Connell's legal staff possibly colluded with Ford Motor Company on the private personal lawsuit brought against Mayor Fischer by Jay Morgan. You can read about that here.
Instead of Fischer manning up and answering a simple question, he decided to try and hide behind immunity as Mayor, which doesn't apply in a personal matter, and decided it was OK to abuse our taxpayer funded, and overworked, County attorney staff to work on his personal lawsuit. Someone on that staff appears to have colluded with someone at Ford, who then sent in their own attorney to double down on Jay Morgan and try to scare him into going away.
Classic David vs. Goliath type stuff, or in this case TWO David's vs. One Goliath, is always a red flag that something doesn't pass the smell test.
Their plan failed miserably.
Additionally, assistant county attorney Joel Frockt, one of the many county attorneys' working on the Fischer lawsuit, made an FOIA request to the US Department of Labor for the Sarbanes/Oxley complaint filed by Morgan against Ford and added it to the public record.
Thanks to Joel Frockt, for the first time we could see what led to the allegations against Greg Fischer and why he may have lied. It gave us a first hand look at the machine in action and an insight into the potential cover-up that was begun by Ford.
How did they know about the Sarbanes/Oxley complaint? I doubt Morgan told them since he filed the suit leaving the only other party involved to be the ouster. The only way Fischer could have known about the Sarbanes/Oxley is if either Ford reached out to Fischer or vice versa. It is logical, which means there was collusion regarding a complaint that had a non disclosure agreement.
In my opinion Ford had to supply that information to Fischer because the original agreement included a non disclosure clause that applied equally to Morgan and Ford. They always do.
How would Fischer know about it to request it in the first place without Ford violating the agreement?
No one can read that complaint and not see the roughshod way Morgan was treated and the illegalities outlined by Morgan. Greg Fischer and his taxpayer funded legal team exposed it.
I didn't start out exposing Ford. They decided to interject themselves into a lawsuit they were not named in and Fischer taxpayer funded county attorneys' compounded it. Alleged insider trading, harassment, whistle blower retaliation, local government in collusion with Ford?
Want to know why the feds are now investigating?
It was begging to be exposed and it was very necessary to do so. The federal investigation that is now ongoing should have been done long ago. There is no hiding anymore. The cover-up very likely included illegal collusion between our Mayor and Ford. The situation will get much worse for Louisville, Greg Fischer, and a whole host of other elected officials including some metro council members.
Thank Greg Fischer's arrogance and ego for what is to come. He should have answered a simple question and resolved it quietly. I am glad he didn't though or we would never know about him or the myth and lies of Ford Motor Company.
With all that said however, many have also asked why I have keyed in on the $5.9 billion loan as being a bailout when Ford spent so much money advertising they did not get one. Simple answer. Follow the money.
Let's break it down.
No loan is ever made to anyone without at least 2 bare minimum requirements having been met.
1. The borrower has the ability to repay the loan, and
2. There is an agreed upon repayment plan in place.
In the case of the $5.9 Billion "loan" (bailout) Ford received the money with no assigned maturity date as part of its repayment term on the principle repayment at a rate of 1/2 of 1% interest per annum.
With no repayment terms attached to our taxpayer money, Ford DOES NOT have to spend one dime of their cash to pay anything back. Ford currently has about $17 BILLION in cash on hand.
You read that right. CASH. Yet their only requirement with our money is to pay the interest each year. It only costs them $29.5 million a year to do so.
Go to McDonald's and order a glass of water. To a multi-billion dollar business like Ford Motor Company that would be the equivalent monetarily speaking to them. In short it is not costing them a die while they rake in billions.
How does this benefit Ford?
They invest the $5.9 Billion at a 3-4% return and receive between $177 - $236 million annually. Do the math.
From the low end of 3% Ford receives $177 million minus their interest cost of the loan at $29.5 million creating a net profit of $147.5 million each year!
They have no skin in the game. Over the last 6 years Ford has made a minimum of $885 MILLION in interest on our money.
With none of their own money involved.
Wonder why the penalty fine paid should exceed hundreds of millions of dollars? There has to be a penalty large enough to stop the behavior.
How did they do it? We the taxpayer, rather our elected leaders, gave them $5.9 Billion of our money to spend instead of their own. They use our tax money to create a nice profit for their business without ever paying us back.
Wonder how they have been paying almost record breaking profit sharing to their employees?
This is part of it. We the taxpayers have been the ones footing the bill. We are the ones paying employee profit sharing checks. Corporate welfare anyone?
Why hasn't Ford paid back the so called "loan?" Why won't they pay the monies back to we the taxpayer?
The simple answer is because they don't have to and don't care. They are making hundreds of millions of dollars with our money not theirs. With no principle repayment plan attached to the original "loan" they have no obligation to pay us back. They can continue abusing our monies and our trust for their own profits and gain.
Go to your bank and see if they give you the same deal using your property for collateral.
So much for the good corporate image right?
Need more proof? Knowing all of this our Governor Steve Beshear gave Ford over $300 million as well.
Then Ford got greedy, and if the allegations are correct, they compounded the situation by illegally using insider trading to profit further. Insider trading that very possibly include members of the Ford family itself. Perhaps that is why Ford has their crisis management team assembled in a hotel in Washington, Yes we know about that,
Remember the brouhaha that Ford spread about mortgaging the blue oval itself? They didn't mortgage anything. The deal for the money was already made and the alleged insider trading would have begun right away.
The government would not let them fail. For you "anonymous" Ford employees who continue to write, start blaming the people who created all of this.
I will be outing a lot more soon, but anyone who thinks Ford did not know about any of this is delusional in my opinion.
We will prove it. Hope that helps answer some of your questions.
Stay tuned it gets a lot better............
Listen daily from 7-8pm at The Ed Springston Show. Also visit Louisville Politics for more details and in depth coverage of local political and news issues.
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