The National Association For The Advancement of Some Colored People

The NAACP, once a great organization that pursued equality before the law and an end to racism, is today a corrupt organizaiton that embraces racism and reverse racism as a tool for political power. And if you happen to be black but don't embrace your status as a victim, the NAACP may well be your enemy.

Several months ago, at a Town Hall, Kenneth Gladney, a conservative black, was beaten up and subject to racial slurs by SEIU thugs. Now the NAACP has weighed in with a rally . . . wait for it . . . on the side of the SEIU thugs. Coming on the heels of the NAACP's praise for Robert "KKK" Byrd, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. But it is firm evidence of the NAACP's utter corruption. Gateway Pundit has the story - and the video.

Read More...

Summary only...

Will We End The Largest Theft In History?

What has been the largest theft in history? Was it the 1990 art theft from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum? That theft was worth a paltry $500 million. Was it Bernie Maddof? His Ponzi scheme cost investors $18 billion. No, the greatest theft in history has to be what we see playing out across the U.S. today, in every locality where you see the toxic combination of Democrat politicians and unions.

Unions, profligate state and local governments, and the Obama administration are executing the greatest theft in history - legally transferring hundreds of billions from the private sector wallets and into the insatiable union maw, to then be laundered back through into the campaign chests of Democrat politicians. This type of theft has been going on for decades - but what has brought it to the point of crisis is the combination of our failing economy and the vast overreach of unions. What was part and parcel of American politics over the past few decades now stands in stark relief for the toxin it is. And until Americans start to realize how they are being legally scammed at the point of the police power of the state, it will continue ever on.

I cringe when I think of my tax dollars going to fund bloated union pensions - as they are today at GM and Chrysler. I become apoplectic when I realized that Obama took money from my wallet as part and parcel of the Stimulus and transferred it to state and local governments to keep grossly overcompensated public sector union works employed so that they could continue paying dues. And I am grabbing for the keys to my gun rack when I read the of the next attempted theft. Here are a series of stories:

This from McQ at Q&O:

llinois seems bound and determined to take the title of "poster child for failed state government" away from basket cases Michigan and California.

Illinois is now billions behind in paying its bills. As Comptroller David Hynes points out:

“This is what the state owes right now to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, the state university — and it’s getting worse every single day,” he says in his downtown office. Mr. Hynes shakes his head.

“This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services,” he says. “That is obscene.”

Well not that obscene apparently, to the governor. In the midst of all of this, he’s decided now is a great time to give many on his staff 20% raises.

No, seriously – raises. How freakin’ politically tone deaf can you be

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has handed out raises—some of more than 20 percent—to his staff while proclaiming a message of "shared sacrifice" and planning spending cuts of $1.4 billion because the state is awash in debt.

The Democrat has given 43 salary increases averaging 11.4 percent to 35 staffers in the past 15 months, according to an Associated Press analysis of records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

. . . And as if that’s not bad enough, the state is handing out 7% “cost of living” raises to government unions:

On July 1st this year, 40,000 or so AFSCME state employees happily collected a 7% percent “cost of living adjustment”. July 1st next year, they will get another 7%. In short, in 2 years, they will get a 14% raise. Even in good years, 7% is well over inflation.

Almost 6 billion in debt and unable to pay for “absolutely essential services” and yet handing out 7% cost of living raises to government union employees and up to 20% raises to staffers in the governors office?

This would be the same Gov. Quinn today quoted in the Daily Caller stating "We need more help from Washington to protect against job cuts and health care cuts. If we don’t do that, we’re following Herbert Hoover economics." The utter corruption and shamelessness of it all is stomach churning. This governor gives truth to the apocraphyl story of a boy who killed his parents and then asked for clemency from the Court because he was an orphan. He really does need to be hung by his thumbs and turned into a pinata.

As bad as the above is, it is hardly an anamoly. It is being replicated, to a greater or lesser extent, in many states and localities throughout the U.S. The public sector has no intention of feeling the pain of the recession, nor of doing anything other than soaking the private sector and demanding ever more. Utterly corrupt Democratic politicians are, in many cases, playing along. California is legend for the size, power, and insatiability of its public sector unions. There is an exceptional article in City Journal discussing the rise of California's public sector unions and how they have turned California into a golden goose (only for themselves, of course; California is hemmoraging the private sector companies that are expected to pay for the golden goose):

The camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California’s largest public-employee union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking into a microphone. “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory,” she says matter-of-factly to the elected officials outside the shot. “Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.’

The video has become a sensation among California taxpayer groups for its vivid depiction of the audacious power that public-sector unions wield in their state. The unions’ political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state’s public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation’s and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination—high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes—has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.

How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening in slower motion. The story starts half a century ago, when California public workers won bargaining rights and quickly learned how to elect their own bosses—that is, sympathetic politicians who would grant them outsize pay and benefits in exchange for their support. Over time, the unions have turned the state’s politics completely in their favor. The result: unaffordable benefits for civil servants; fiscal chaos in Sacramento and in cities and towns across the state; and angry taxpayers finally confronting the unionized masters of California’s unsustainable government. . . .

Do read the entire article. A companion piece on City Journal, discusses how the left and the Unions have falsely tried to blame the disaster that is California on Proposition 13, the voter-passed 1978 initiative that made it much harder to increase property taxes.

I also blogged here on a related story of a Milwaukee teachers' union that refused to bargain in good faith to bring teachers' benefits in line with the private sector, thus closing the locality's $47 million shortfall. The union refused to make any concessions, forcing the lay off of more than 400 teachers - and they did so without consulting the teachers themselves:

The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association was immovable on benefits in part because it placed a bet on its Democratic friends in Washington rushing to the rescue. "The problem must be addressed with a national solution, a federal stimulus package that will restore educator positions," Pat Omar, the union's executive director said in June. The union's strategy in recent weeks has been to stage rallies demanding a federal bailout, and it used hundreds of school kids at those rallies as political props.

What the above stories all have in common is that the profligate states and public unions are now turning to Obama with the expectation that he will once again transfer hundreds of billions out of our pockets and into theirs. (And this is just to keep the unions afloat now . . . we are still awaiting the soon to come union pitch to have all American tax-payers pick up the tab for their underfunded pension plans.) This from The Hill:

The nation’s leading public-sector employees union will launch a newspaper advertising campaign this weekend to pressure centrist Senate Republicans to support increased federal aid to states.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will spend $175,000 on newspaper ads targeting Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe (R) and Susan Collins (R) and Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio).

The union is bracing for a major cut in public-sector jobs over the next year as states and cities scramble to balance their budgets. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, predicted earlier this week that as many as 400,000 workers could lose their jobs in the next year.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee is warning centrist Republicans that blocking increased aid to states will add to the federal deficit as unemployment rises.

“The GOP filibuster of the jobs bill means more pain for working families, more debt and a prolonged recession. We’re telling senators that it’s time to stop the obstruction. It’s time to pass the jobs bill!” McEntee said in a statement Friday. . . .

“We estimate that if no additional fiscal aid is forthcoming, the massive shortfalls that states will be forced to close could result in as many as 900,000 jobs lost,” said Mike Leachman, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “We’re talking about teachers being laid off and healthcare workers and others.”

. . . Brown acknowledged that the state assistance is important to Massachusetts but added “we need to find a way to pay for [it].”

“The federal government is clearly addicted to debt and wants to raise taxes on Americans during a time when we can least afford it. This bill was defeated in a bipartisan manner,” Brown said in a video statement posted on his website.

Brown has introduced his own proposal to extend unemployment benefits and cover state budget shortfalls. The deficit-neutral legislation would be paid for largely with un-obligated funds from the 2009 federal stimulus package.

Labor officials have dismissed Brown’s proposal as “robbing Peter to pay Paul” because the stimulus program was designed to spur job creation. Labor sources believe Brown’s action shows he’s feeling political heat over the state funding issue. . . .

AFSCME and Americans United for Change also launched a $100,000 television ad campaign at the end of June pressuring Snowe and Collins to support Democratic jobs legislation including state Medicaid assistance.

The AFL-CIO organized a 200-person rally in Portland on June 30 press Snowe and Collins to support the bill. The union organized a rally outside one of Brown’s offices on the same day.

A Senate Democratic leadership aide said Reid would make another attempt to pass funding for state governments before the August recess.

“We hope to again consider assistance to states (FMAP) in the coming weeks so that states do not have to lay-off more workers and businesses and taxpayers don't see their taxes increased in a recession,” said Reid spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle.

You will of course note what is missing from the Reid spokeswoman's statement. That would be any indication that, instead of soaking taxpayers for even more, that public sector unions are willing to accept even the slightest in cut-backs. The individual employees - many of whom have no choice about whether to join a union if they want to be, say, teachers - may well be willing to accept such accomodations, but the unions themselves are not, and thus neither are the Democrats.

I have, over the past few months, blogged extensively on the utter travesty of public sector unions and, in particular, how they are a toxic parasite on society. See Public Sector Unions: A Toxin, A Crisis & An Opportunity" and the related posts listed at the bottom thereof. Public sector unions, along with Democrats, are conducting the greatest theft in history. It is coming from your wallet and mine. The only way they will be stopped before they bankrupt us and destroy our nation will be to make unlawful all public sector unions.

Welcome, Larwyn's Lynx readers.

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama's Radical Friends - & Appointments

Over the weekend, Obama used his power to make recess appointments to appoint Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. This is an incredibly radical appointment as Becker, former counsel for the AFL-CIO and the SEIU is pro-union to a degree that would make an old Soviet proud. As the Washington Examiner explains some of his more radical positions:

Craig Becker . . . claims management should be barred from National Labor Relations Board hearings on labor-management disputes, and he is a strong advocate of Card Check, the union bosses' proposal to do away with secret ballots in workplace representation elections. . . .

So why is President Obama using his power of recess appointments -- the right of a president to put somebody in an executive branch position until the next Congress convenes, which in the present case will be January 2011 -- to install Becker as the deciding vote on the NLRB? The answer to that question, of course, starts with what the five-member NLRB does, which is oversee the administration of the National Labor Relations Act, the basic rule book for labor-management relations since it was signed by FDR in 1935. There is also the fact that last month Becker's nomination fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to defeat a threatened Republican filibuster in the Senate, which left a recess appointment as the only way Obama could get his man on the NLRB.

Expect Becker to come on like a man possessed once he is ensconced at the NLRB because nobody expects the next Congress to be any more receptive to his appointment than the current one. But nine months of Becker on the NLRB is better than nothing, especially because the Senate has been markedly unsympathetic to Card Check, despite it being the union bosses' No. 1 legislative priority.

This insane appointment is one that could well damage our already weak economy - changing the relationship between employers and unions in fundamental ways - and all outside the ballot box.

Of course, this is far from Obama's only appointment of radical individuals far outside the mainstream. Let's go down a short list:

Andy Stern - as head of the SEIU, represents numerous public sector union employees - the scourge of state and local budgets across America. Public sector unions operate outside of market forces and have every reason to seek bigger government and higher taxes. Obama appointed Stern to his deficit reduction commission which is to do the job of Congress and the President in deciding how to direct the future of taxes and spending in America.

Kevin Jennings - a radical homosexual who advocates sexualizing our children beginning at Kindergarden and, in the past, has taught "fisting" to students as young as fourteen years old. This man has no business being allowed near a single child, yet he was given an appointment outside of Congressional purview as Obama's Safe Schools Czar.

David Axelrod - Obama's counterpart to Karl Rove; is a purely political advisor with no experience in the military or in intelligence. What makes Axelrod a radical choice is that Obama includes him not merely in political decision making, but in all aspects of Presidential decision making, including military and intelligence decisions. That is a radical change from prior Presidents and marks the fact that Obama sees everything, including our national security, as subordinate to political concerns.

John Holdren - Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. He has in the past advocated for forced abortions and the use of sterilizing agents in drinking water in order to control America’s population. He believes that a baby may only ultimately become a human being if given the proper resources during the early years after birth. He is also a ridgid advocate of Global Warming who has dismissed Climategate out of hand as meaningless.

David Ogden - appointed by Obama to the post of Deputy Attorney General. He has in the past taken positions supporting abortion on demand, child pornography, and come out in opposition to parental notification laws on abortion.

Leon Panetta - this appointment was a purely political appointment to head our nation's major intelligence agency in time of war. Panetta had zero experience in intelligence. It is impossible to know how bad a job he has done since virtually all that the CIA does is shrouded in secrecy. Whatever may be the case, the appointment of a neophyte to this agency during two wars and an omnipresent terrorist threat was radical indeed. It marked Obama as elevating politics over national security.

Dawn Johnsen - Obama nominated her for, but has yet to appoint her to, the position of heading the Office of Legal Council. That is a critical a position that requires the occupant to, among other things, provide opinions of legality of proposed operations by the CIA. She is a doctranaire leftist idealogue whose previously articulated positions would virtually tie the hands of our government in dealing with terrorists.

Melody Barnes - appointed by Obama to the Head of Domestic Policy Council. She is a radical, progressive femenist who supports unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand. She also see capitalism as a "flawed economic philosophy."

Harold Koh - a lawyer who adheres to the radical position that international law should play a central role in interpreting our Constitution, essentially rendering the terms of our Constition meaningless and amenable to any personal policy preferences of five justices on the Supreme Court. It would substitute the policy preferences of unelected justices for the legislature. Moreover, Koh has led an attack on the first amendment right to free speech, finding it too liberal and advocating that court's interpret it more restrictively. And he has advocated allowing for use of Sharia law to be applied in appropriate cases in U.S. courts.

Van Jones - formerly appointed by Obama as the Special Advisor of Green Jobs to the White House, Jones was a self-described communist and a 9-11 truther.

Mark Lloyd - Obama's appointment to Diversity Officer for the FCC. Lloyd is sort of the Rev. Wright of the FCC. He would subordinate concerns with "freedom of speech and the press" to racial and other policies. His biggest concern as diversity officer is getting rid of whites. "We have to be conscious of the need to put more people of color, gays, and other people in the positions of power that white people currently hold. We're in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power." He is, not surprisingly, a big supporter of the Fairness Doctrine as a means of silencing conservative opinion.

Chai Feldblum - appointed by Obama as Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Feldblum is a radical advocate of gay lesbian transgender rights in America and does not advocate merely equality for the LGBT community, but would seemingly support advocating for an LBGT lifestyle as the new norm in American society. Indeed, Feldblum would evlevate LGBT rights above the conscious of Christians and others who do not wish to accept the LGBT lifestyle on religious grounds. Some of his recent comments on this topic: “[F]or all my sympathy for the evangelical Christian couple who may wish to run a bed and breakfast from which they can exclude unmarried straight couples and all gay couples, this is a point where I believe the “zero sum” nature of the game inevitably comes into play. . . . Government should “not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect LGBT people. . . . “[I]t is essential that we not privilege moral beliefs that are religiously based over other sincerely held core, moral beliefs” about homosexuality."

I could go on and on, but am tired of writing and linking at this point. There are many other radical "progressives" Obama has appointed to positions of power. And indeed, they will clearly effect our nation in fundamental ways. The job of the next President will not be merely to roll back all the damaging legislation put in place by Obama and Crazy Nancy, but to undo the destructive influence of the radical progressives Obama has put in positions of power virtually throughout the government.

Read More...

Summary only...

What, Marx or Lenin Weren't Available?

This really is beyond outrageous. Obama has just appointed SEIU President Andy Stern to his newly minted "deficit reduction commission." This is the same radical joker who was tied at the hip with ACORN and its founder, Wade Rathke. He has a past awash in the politics of left wing radicalism. This is the same man who, less than three months ago, was leading demonstrations in California - a state teetering on the brink of financial collapse - in opposition to any public sector cutbacks or wage freezes. More on this deeply anti-capitalist, deeply socialistic man from Big Government:

We saw their fury throughout 2009: “Capitalism is Dead”, “Kill the Corporation”, “Bust Up Big Banks”, “Greed Kills”, “Bank of America, Bad for America”. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) led an all-out assault on Wall Street – and on capitalism and corporations – coining words and phrases that have since become common staples in the vocabulary of the bank-bashing craze. That fury hit a fever pitch last March when word of the AIG bonuses went public. It was the SEIU out in front of the protests, at AIG offices, and bussing protestors to the homes of AIG executives.

The months that followed saw more of the same. In April, SEIU hailed the ousting of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner. That same week, it stepped up its battleplan with the Mother of all Corporate Campaigns against Ken Lewis, Bank of America CEO and Chairman – complete with videos, rolling billboards, smear sites, petition drives, letter campaigns, media blitzes and more, while it placed equal attention on Bank of America, forcing the company to respond with a $40 million image boosting campaign of television and print ads. . . .

As this very fine article also goes on to discuss in detail, SEIU is using its control of employee pension funds to oust anti-unionists from boards and to further the process of unionizing the employees in many of the institutions in which it invests.

And this is the guy Obama wants to decide for America how to fix our economy? You have got to be kidding. I wrote a detailed post recently on the unions, and in particular, public sector unions, discussing this cancer on our society and how they were anti-free market, anti-capitalist, predatory and, at this point, pose a massive threat to our economy and our educational system. The SEIU is major part of problem, not a part of the solution.

Obama's "deficit reduction commission" is a travesty to begin with. He is appointing a commission - weighted towards Democrats - in order to shift his and the Congress's Constitutional responsibilities for the hard questions America faces. It is the opposite of leadership. This is not like the 9-11 Commission where the major issue was findings of fact in a small, discrete area. We are talking here about the government spending and taxation - the most fundamental duties of Congress and the President. And now he is not only shifting the responsibilities, he is giving a major say on the future of our economy to radical union leader Andy Stern. This is utterly beyond belief.

What Republicans should do is explain in detail how this "deficit reduction commission" is a fundamental shirking of the responsibilities of Congress, they should highlight Obama's appointment of Stern, and they should refuse to participate in the Commission.

Virtually everything Obama does leaves my jaw hanging. He is President at a critical moment in history, with our economy in a shambles and major foreign dangers and challegnes staring us in the face. I worry daily that the damage he has done already with his massive spending and his mishandling of foreign policy - and all that he is poised to do - may not be able to be undone.

Read More...

Summary only...

Thuggery - & Astroturf - Up Close & Personal

Alternative Post Title:

Shabbily Dressed, Deranged, Post Menopausal Moonbat With An SEIU Printed Sign Attacks Bleached Blonde Botoxed Bimbo Republican At AstroTurf Event

Heh. This one is fun to blog.

One of my long time blog friends is the estimable blogger, Dinah Lord, pictured above (are those clothes Brooks Bros?) in the midst of an assault by an SEIU thuggette at a Denver 'meet and greet' of sorts for Nancy Pelosi. The picture, and the story of the assault on Dinah, were featured in the Denver Post, where one of the snarky left wing commentors labeled pretty Ms. Dinah a "bleached blonde botoxed bimbo republican." Heh. Dinah, already having proven her physical ability to give as good as she got in the altercation, proved herself equally up to the task in the literary realm, being moved to describe her attacker as a "shabbily dressed, deranged, post menopaual moonbat."

You can read Dinah's pugilistic tale in all of her colorful prose here and here.

There was also a very interesting second aspect to the event that one blogger, Looking At The Left, captured in excruciating detail. First, compare and contrast these four pics from the Denver event attended by Dinah:









One would expect the highly organized puppets of the insurance industry and racially motivated Republican astro-turfing efforts to be displaying similar messages. But they aren't. Indeed, their placards all sport hand drawn messages - swastikas curiously absent - each somewhat different than all others. The same was hardly true of the SEIU / pro-Obama protestors. They arrived with cookie cutter signs provided by an organization for the event. So, just who is the "astro-turf" at this event?

But you have to see the entire above post. It is truly excellent. I will leave one of the most telling scenes of it for you to find when you read the post. It involves spanish-speaking day laborers who were also found to be carrying signs for the pro-Obama crowd at the event. It is hilarious.

Read More...

Summary only...

Hayek And Will On Socialist Thugocracies

Speaking of the rise of the socialist state, with its forced nationalizations and growth in power of the unions in post WWII Britain, author FA Hayek wrote:

The most serious development is the growth of a measure of arbitrary administrative coercion and the progressive destruction of the cherished foundations of British liberty, the Rule of Law . . . [T]he attempts at economic planning under the Labour government carried it to the point where it is doubtful whether it can be said that the Rule of Law prevails in Britain. . . . It is a despotism exercised by a thoroughly honest and conscientious bureaucracy for what they sincerely believe is the good of the country. . . .

Our modern day Mr. Hayek may well be George Will, who is emerging as the most cogent of observers of the Obama regime and its emerging practice of heavy handed tactics that mirror those which occurred in post WWII Britain. As Mr. Will observes, our new President is ruling this country with "a tincture of lawlessness."

This from Geoge Will, writing at the Washington Post:

. . . In February, California's Democratic-controlled Legislature, faced with a $42 billion budget deficit, trimmed $74 million (1.4 percent) from one of the state's fastest-growing programs, which provides care for low-income and incapacitated elderly people and which cost the state $5.42 billion last year. The Los Angeles Times reports that "loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester."

But the Service Employees International Union collects nearly $5 million a month from 223,000 caregivers who are members. And the Obama administration has told California that unless the $74 million in cuts are rescinded, it will deny the state $6.8 billion in stimulus money.

Such a federal ukase (the word derives from czarist Russia; how appropriate) to a state legislature is a sign of the administration's dependency agenda -- maximizing the number of people and institutions dependent on the federal government. For the first time, neither sales nor property nor income taxes are the largest source of money for state and local governments. The federal government is.

The SEIU says the cuts violate contracts negotiated with counties. California officials say the state required the contracts to contain clauses allowing pay to be reduced if state funding is.

Anyway, the Obama administration, judging by its cavalier disregard of contracts between Chrysler and some of the lenders it sought money from, thinks contracts are written on water. The administration proposes that Chrysler's secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims -- and 55 percent of the company. This, even though the secured creditors' contracts supposedly guaranteed them better standing than the union.

Among Chrysler's lenders, some servile banks that are now dependent on the administration for capital infusions tugged their forelocks and agreed. Some hedge funds among Chrysler's lenders that are not dependent were vilified by the president because they dared to resist his demand that they violate their fiduciary duties to their investors, who include individuals and institutional pension funds.

The Economist says the administration has "ridden roughshod over [creditors'] legitimate claims over the [automobile companies'] assets. . . . Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed." Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing hedge fund people trashed by the president as the cause of Chrysler's bankruptcy, asked that his clients' names not be published for fear of violence threatened in e-mails to them.

The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which has not yet been used for its supposed purpose (to purchase such assets from banks), has been the instrument of the administration's adventure in the automobile industry. TARP's $700 billion, like much of the supposed "stimulus" money, is a slush fund the executive branch can use as it pleases. This is as lawless as it would be for Congress to say to the IRS: We need $3.5 trillion to run the government next year, so raise it however you wish -- from whomever, at whatever rates you think suitable. Don't bother us with details.

. . . The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Read the entire article. I could not agree more. Not only is the Obama administration displaying overt corruption, but it is of a kind that will have long term ramifications. Those industries in which Obama has inserted his malign influence may well find the cure more toxic than their original economic problems, particularly when they try to raise capital and lure private investment.

Read More...

Summary only...

"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."

Read More...

Summary only...