First 100 Days a Smashing Success? UPDATE

According to who? By who's standard?


The Things You Don’t Read About Barack Obama
--Andrew W. Smith, May 2, 2009

...Why should these points, and many more like them, have to be made by some obscure contributor to The Chronicle Herald’s opinion pages?

Fox News Channel is the butt of jokes and the target of attacks like no other media outlet in the English-speaking world, not least by people who fancy themselves the guardians of a free press. But Fox News is today the lone television news service in the English-speaking world capable of serious skepticism and scrutiny of the sitting president and the Congress of the United States.

Fox News is also the second most-watched channel in all American cable television. It long ago became by far the most-watched cable news channel; more Americans watched Fox News than CNN and MSNBC combined in every time slot from 6 a.m. to midnight in April. Now, while The New York Times is $1.3 billion in debt, Fox has expanded its operations with a business channel and a juggernaut Internet presence.

There’s a lesson there, though Fox News will be just as well pleased if the impeccably "mainstream" news business remains clueless about it.

The people need a Fourth Estate, not yet another adulator of Barack Obama, yet another smearer of Sarah Palin, yet another patrician editor to keep out anything disagreeable to progressive sensibilities, yet another laptop-and-latte journalism-schooler to spit on everything pre-dating 1968. And they wonder why the news business has come on hard times.

For myself, what Obama HAS managed to accomplish is far more frightening that any future terrorist attack because, depending on your perspective, Barack Obama is either the greatest terrorist against the very liberties the Constitution of the United States once guaranteed every man, woman, and child, or the savior of every man, woman, and child in America. There really is no middle-ground to speak of here, at least none that the Media are reporting.

Consider how he is screwing investors in the failing auto industry in Detroit; preferring the rights of unsecured debt-holders to those of SECURED debt-holders.

Obama is poised to literally take over everything he chooses. Compare what he is doing to secured debt-holders to what will happen to Social Security in due course; to those of us who have paid in all our lives and could very likely see nothing in return. The debt owed us by the Federal Government is unsecured-- NOT guaranteed.

Take a look at the fine print on your next Social Security Statement, the net effect of which is, the government can cut your benefits by any amount, at any time, for any reason or no reason at all, and you have no legal recourse. True. Just try suing the federal government over money they say they owe you, especially since congress can at any time pass legislation that will reduce, delay, or eliminate benefits.

Now Don Obama is strong-arming the auto industry, specifically it's investors. The banks have loaned money... secured loans. Money owed to union pensions and retired workers are unsecured; contingent on robust sales and continued growth. But Obama has given the Unions and workers the preeminence, telling holders of secured loans to take a hike.

The unions have managed to destroy the industry that fed them, now they're in charge. Fine. Let's see them run Chrysler and GM better than their predecessors.

This could all be a back door effort to make Government the only resource any struggling company has. With banks unwilling to offer even secured loans for fear the government will wipe away their investments, government will be the only daddy to go to when the wallet is slim.

This is the change we were promised? Where is the Hope?

President Obama's broadside against bankers yesterday illustrates better than any argument ever could that bankruptcy court, and not the political arena, is where Chrysler belongs. Yesterday's filing isn't the end of the U.S. auto industry, or even necessarily of Chrysler, and it offers the best chance to protect all parties under the rule of law.

"I don't stand with those who held out when everyone else is making sacrifices," Mr. Obama nonetheless declared, blaming what he called "a small group of speculators" for the car maker's Chapter 11 filing. To hear the President tell it, you'd never know that Chrysler had borrowed, and since frittered away, the $6.9 billion that it owes to those "speculators." The Administration had only offered $2 billion to those secured creditors as part of its proposed restructuring for the car maker. So it's hardly a surprise that many lenders would rather take their chances in bankruptcy court.

Speculators? Offering a secured loan is speculation? Obama wants these lenders to sacrifice... he wants everyone to sacrifice, including you and me. But if it is forced, it is not sacrifice. It is authoritarianism.




..::Update::.. Tuesday, May 5

Taken whole from Boortz.com...

Yesterday I gave you a Boortz economic lesson in an attempt to explain what the Barack Obama administration is trying to pull in this Chrysler bankruptcy. The latest on this story ... Thomas Lauria, a lawyer for top creditors, has officially filed a motion to stop the Chrysler bankruptcy. Lauria claims that the Obama administration has violated the Constitution by trying to devalue the senior creditors' holdings on behalf of junior creditors. What does Lauria base this on? Something called the 5th Amendment. Maybe you have heard of it. Just in case, here is a little reminder:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

But wait ... as they say ... there's more! Lauria, who represents the group referred to as the non-TARP lenders, is going to ask that the bankruptcy court keep the names of his client confidential. Why would that be? Because they have been receiving threats. You can bet that some of the threats are coming from union members. These union goons like the idea of their pension debts being given priority to Chrysler's secured lenders, and I think we all know what union goons do when something happens they don't like. There was a time not too long ago when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms noted that the number one illegal use of explosives in the United States came at the hands of union members engaged in work actions.

But there's another group threatening the secured non-TARP creditors. That would be the White House. Lauria and others have claimed that people within the Obama administration have made it clear that if any of these secured lenders get in the way of Obama's gift to the unions the White House will work to destroy their reputation. Now the White House denies this. What would you expect? But listen to the language ... Obama has attacked these people in public as being "vultures" and has painted them as evil capitalists who don't want to stand by the families of Chrysler workers. If he'll do this in public, what do you think his attack dogs will do in private?

Even if you think Obama hung the moon; even if you're now calling him the best president this country ever had; you just have to recognize the danger in the precedent that's been set here. The United Auto Workers are getting priority for their unsecured Chrysler debt simply because they are political[ly] powerful. Now just how is that going to work out for us in the future? Do you want to live in a financial world where lenders base lending decision in part on the political prominence of the borrower?

Giving unsecured creditors priority over secured lenders in bankruptcy proceedings... now that's change you can believe in.

From where I sit, I can't see Obama wearing a swastika armband, nor do I believe his bent lies in that direction. But neither can I see how what he is trying to do is morally right or legal. Barack Obama is attempting to ride roughshod over the constitution to reshape American life and commerce into his own ideological image, circumventing the constitution and congress in the process. Were this Bush [and some of you will say he did as much if not more] the press and congress would be ready to burn the man at the stake. But Barack Obama acts like a Chicago thug, and everyone smiles? Why? Are they afraid he'll send Rohm Emmanuel to break their legs?

For a so-called constitutional lawyer, Barack Obama plays pretty loose with the document he swore to PRESERVE and DEFEND.

What's to keep the next administration from siccing its new attorney general on HIS administration's lawyers for gross and criminal breach of constitutionality. After all, Barack has set the precedent for attacking the previous administration with criminal investigations.