A Very Good Day At The Supreme Court

Hats off to the Supreme Court. They had a really good day. They stopped, at least temporarily, the sale of Chrysler to Fiat in bankruptcy court. They refused to hear a constitutional challenge to the military's "don't ask, don't tell policy." And they decided that Judges who take sizable campaign contributions shouldn't later sit in judgment of their benefactors.

First up, the challenge of some Indiana secured creditors to the Chrysler bankruptcy. Justice Ginsburg refused to rule on the merits of the challenge and, instead, issued an order halting the sale of Chrysler assets to Fiat pending further hearing on the matter. This from the Washington Post:

The decision buys the court time to consider objections filed over the weekend, and it comes as the clock is ticking. Fiat can back out of the deal if it is not finalized by Monday, and the government has warned that the only alternative would be to force the nation's third-largest automaker into liquidation, throwing the industry in turmoil and leaving tens of thousands of people without jobs.

The stakes may be higher for the Obama administration: If the court backs some of the claims, it could disrupt plans to rescue General Motors and weaken the government's hand in stabilizing the troubled economy.

"Every day that Chrysler remains in bankruptcy without consummating the sale threatens to postpone the resumption of production even further and to prolong the period of $100-million-per-day losses" financed by taxpayers, Elena Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general, said in a 26-page filing with the high court.

To be absolutely clear, the reason this matter has reached the Supreme Court is because the Obama administration has walked all over the constitutional and statutory rights of those people who invested in Chrysler. If the Obama administration had tried to come up with a fair plan to begin with, one that didn't favor the unions over Chrysler's secured creditors, they wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. And now, they are trying to strong arm Justice Ginsburg with the same crisis like atmosphere that arm twisted Congress into passing the largest spending bill in history without ever having read what they had voted on. A tip of the hat to Justice Ginsburg for refusing to cave in to this crisis mongering.

In other big news from the Supreme Court, they knocked out a challenge to the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays in the military. They refused a petition for cert. This is in fact an issue of both social policy and defense policy - two areas were the Court should always defer to the Executive and Congress. The Court has no enumerated powers as to defense, and as to social policy, that is the whole purpose behind the legislature. Whether to allow gays in the military was clearly not at issue when the Equal Protection clause was passed, and therefore this question should not fall under the sphere of issues amenable to Supreme Court decision making.

Lastly, the Court decided, in a 5-4 decision, that Judges who are the recipients of substantial campaign contributions from a party should not sit on cases where that party is a litigant. The conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety are so obvious one would think that this one would be a no-brainer. And for five of the justices, it was. The liberal five. I can mark my calendar as the last time I found myself in agreement with the left of the Supreme Court was in the 1990's. It's a once in a decade type of thing. Alas, this is one of those rare occasions when I think Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas got it wrong.

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"Lucky Lefty" Obama, TARP, Chrysler, California and Gangster Government

Obama is not running the government as President according to the Constitution - he is running it like a mafia don from the pages of a Mario Puzo novel. As Michael Barone describes it, we now have "Gangster Government." And as Dafydd ab Hugh has cynically but appropriately tagged him, our nation's leader is more aptly termed "Lucky Lefty" Obama.

First are the TARP "loans" to banks. They came with numerous strings attached. When some of the banks said they wanted to pay the loans back and crawl out from under the thumb of the Obama government, Obama's administration said "not so fast." Like the most lawless of loan sharks, to the contrary, the Obama administration floated a plan to forcibly convert the TARP loans into common stock, thereby making the government the dominant owner of the banks.

As it is, TARP funds are grossly distorting our economy in three ways. One, recipients of TARP loans are being leaned on by the government to act in ways that support Obama goals instead of those of the bank's shareholders and customers. Two, this government interference is going to give great pause to anyone so foolish as to be thinking of investing in any entity subject to Obama administration interference. And lastly, TARP funds are leading to corruption and fraud on a world record scale.

Then there is Obama's well blogged (though anything but well publicized in the MSM) extortion of Chrysler secured bond holders. It is a charge the Obama administration first categorically denied. Now, after others have verified the story, the White House simply refuses to answer questions on the topic . Obama strong-armed the secured creditors to give up their property rights - rights protected both in bankruptcy law and the Constitution - so that Obama could reward the UAW on a grand scale. It is government theft - stealing from innocent investors to give to his union supporters. The Obama administration threatened to destroy the bondholders in the press if they did not comply. Obama excoriated the bond holders as "speculators" at his 100 days press conference - an absolutely outrageous act. There were anonymous death threats made to the bond holders. And to put the icing on the cake, the bankruptcy court ordered exposure of the bond holders.

To add onto all of this, many of the secured bond holders were TARP recipients. These entities were not among the hold-outs seeking to uphold their legal rights. To the contrary, the TARP recipients rolled over long before this, giving up their legal rights so Obama could legally steal from them and give to the UAW. Do you think they were given an offer they couldn't refuse?

Then there is California, a state whose finances have been so mismanaged by the far left for over a decade that now, under fiscal stress, they are headed for bankruptcy by July. Seeing the writing on the wall, Gov. Schwarzenager pushed through legislation to lower compensation for union health care workers - a move that was expected to save over $72 million. The Service Workers International Union appealed directly to Obama. Now, in an absolutely outrageous act, Obama has unilaterally threatened to withhold all $6.8 billion in stimulus funds slated for California unless the California government reinstates the old wage rate for the unionized workers. Dafydd at Big Lizards has the entire story - and it is Obama's extrajudicial actions that led Dafydd to tag Obama as "Lucky Lefty" - an appropriate gangster nickname for our Don in Chief.

I have to laugh when I look back at this point and ponder the last eight year's worth of baseless left wing claims that the Bush Administration was shredding the Constitution. What we are being treated to now is the real deal. It really is "gangster government," and the Constitution doesn't seem worth the paper it is printed on to "Lucky Lefty."

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Will On Obama, Fantasies & Our Auto Industry

George Will has a great article today pointing out the demagoguery of Obama and the problems of Obama's decision to become the director of our auto industry.

George Will begins his article referring to a fantasy land where people pursue utopian ideas with ever more fanatical focus as all crumbles about them. He then analogizes this to Obama's foray into the auto industry:

At the Academy of Obama, professors and others devise plans for extracting a new and improved automobile industry from a semi-sort-of-bankruptcy arrangement that -- if it survives judicial scrutiny; that is not certain -- will give the United Auto Workers 39 percent of General Motors, with the government owning 50 percent. During future contract negotiations, will the union's adversary be an administration that the union helped to put in power?

The UAW will own 55 percent of Chrysler, . . .

. . . The president's "surgical" bankruptcy plan for Chrysler requires some of the company's lenders, mostly non-banks, to receive less than they would as secured creditors under bankruptcy law.

The law may still make itself heard over the political thunder. Meanwhile, the president faults these "speculators" for not being as cooperative as are most of the banks that have lent to Chrysler. But the banks are compliant because they are mendicants: Having taken the government's money, they are the government's minions.

. . . It is Demagoguery 101 to identify an unpopular minority to blame for problems. The president has chosen to blame "speculators" -- a.k.a. investors; anyone who buys a share of a company's stock is speculating about the company's future -- for Chrysler's bankruptcy and the dubious legality of his proposal. Yet he simultaneously says he hopes that private investors will begin supplanting government as a source of capital for the companies. Breathes there an investor/speculator with such a stunted sense of risk that he or she would go into business with this capricious government?

Its chief executive says: "If the Japanese can design [an] affordable, well-designed hybrid, then, doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same." Yes they can -- if the American manufacturer can do what Toyota does with the Prius: Sell its hybrid without significant, if any, profit and sustain this practice, as Toyota does, by selling about twice as many of the gas-thirsty pickup trucks that the president thinks are destroying the planet.

Obama overflows with advice for Americans who he thinks need admonitions . . . He also advises that this is a good time for Americans to put their hygienic hands on the steering wheel of a new car. He hopes buyers will choose American cars. A sensible person might add: Buyers should choose cars made by the Ford Motor Co.

This is so because Ford has, so far, avoided becoming an appendage of the government. And because the national interest will not be served by GM and Chrysler flourishing. It might cost taxpayers more in the short run, but in the long run it will be less costly for the country if the government finds its confident plunge into industrial policy so unpleasant that, sadder but wiser, the incumbent professors and others will flee from such adventures in extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.

Read the entire article. Its clear Obama wants to force his vision of vast fleets of fuel efficient, small cars on the American public. My own opinion is that he is setting up GM and Chrysler to be moribund corporations that will be, whether wanted or unwanted, long parasites on the American taxpayer, and thus at his beck and call.

It is an utter atrocity that Obama is being allowed to pursue both his payoff to big Labor and his strong-arming of "speculators" who have every right to the protection of the law, all unremarked by a press corps that is now, seemingly, an arm of the government. Indeed, there is no need to create a Ministry of Propaganda, that is one executive department that was already formed and fully staffed on day one.

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WaPo's Hard Hitting Journalism On Bush & Obama (UPDATED)

There are two major stories in the Washington Post today regarding arguably unethical efforts to influence decisions. As to Bush, there is this front page story:

Bush Officials Try to Alter Ethics Report

Focus Is Approval of Harsh Interrogations

Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts. . . .

Read the entire article. An equally informative article, also on the front page, takes the Obama administration to task for their unethical and outrageous attempts to intimidate Chrysler's secured creditors into forgoing their rights in favor of the UAW:

Obama Officials Threaten Chrysler Creditors

Obama Administration Strong Arms Secured Creditors To Favor UAW

Obama officials negotiating the reorganization of Chrysler have been accused by attorney's for Chrysler's secured creditors of making extortionate threats in order to force an agreement with the Obama plan. While bankruptcy law would recognize the claims of the secured creditors as senior to other claims, the plan put forth by the Obama administration would favor the UAW at the expense of the secured creditors. When these charges were first made by attorney Thomas Lauria, the White House issued a blanket denial, but new information . . .

Read the entire . . . . nah, I'm just kidding. Only the first article is real. The second concerns an event apparently not deemed newsworthy by our MSM.

Update: This is moving into the realm of the Orewllian. The Washington Post now in fact has an article on its web page concerning the Chrysler bankruptcy proceeding. They studiously ignore the charges of abuse of power and extortionate threats by the Obama administration while highlighting Obama's message that those opposed to his massive give away to Big Labour at their expense are merely greedy:

Document Reveals Hedge Funds Opposed to Chrysler Sale

A small group of hedge funds revealed their identities today as the force behind the battle to stop the government-orchestrated sale of Chrysler, according to a court document. . . .

The lenders were sharply criticized by President Obama last week, who blamed them for forcing the third-largest U.S. automaker into bankruptcy. Obama had characterized the group as selfish "speculators." . . .

Read the entire article. This really is surreal. I can recall no point in the history of the U.S. where the MSM as a whole has been so corrupted as to play an active role in covering for an administration.

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The Constitution - - The Last Refuge Against A Scoundrel

We have been witness over the past several weeks to White House strong arming of businesses the likes of which have previously been unknown in this country. And now if appears Obama has crossed a threshold that the Constitution forbids.

First there are the TARP loans. The government has refused banks the ability to repay them. Instead, the Obama administration floated a plan, still under consideration, of de facto nationalizing the banks by converting bank TARP loans to common stock. One would think it could not get worse than that, but one would be wrong.

Obama, in proposing to reorganize the auto manufacturers, wants to place his major constituency, big Labour, at the front of the line when it comes to an ownership stake in GM and Chrysler. The end result of such a move is that secured creditors of the two companies would suffer a relative loss far in excess of that which would be suffered by the unions. Not only has the Obama plan been set up to show blatant favortism in contravention of the commercial code, but Obama and his crew were publicly criticizing - and privately threatening - the secured creditors holding out against this plan. Powerline, refering to this as banana republic capitalism, has the whole story. And indeed, there is nothing to distinguish this act of Obama from similar extortions of property by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or . . . well, pick your favorite dictator.

Fortunately, it seems that the creditors are fighting back. At least one attorney, Thomas Lauria, has gone public about the threat to the entities he represents made by the Obama administration - to use the White House Press Corps to destroy them in the eyes of the public. Today, Lauria has filed a brief challenging the proposed acts of Obama based on the Fifth Amendment. Specifically, he cites to a 1935 case, Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, that dealt with a provision of the New Deal that would have acted to strip a secured creditor of the value of his security by government fiat. The Supreme Court held that, regardless of the government's compelling interest in responding to the economic chaos of the depression, such an act violated the 5th Amendment prohibition against taking private property without just compensation. It is a case dead on point. Hot Air has the story.

I will assume, without looking it up, that this case is still good law. It's interesting to note that this case fell two years prior to FDR's "court packing" scheme. FDR was tired of being stymied by a Supreme Court that found much of his "New Deal" legislation unconstitutional. In 1937, FDR proposed to expand the number of Justices on the Supreme Court and pack the Court in his favor. FDR lost the battle and the legislation failed. That said, FDR won the war. The Supreme Court got the message and began regularly defering to FDR's wishes and taking congressional findings at face value.

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