Obama And The Unions Haven’t Been Very Good To Detroit (Largest Bankruptcy In American History), Have They?

How do you kill a major American city – particularly one where three of the biggest manufacturers in the WORLD are located?

Ask a Democrat.  Because they’re the ones who just succeeded in doing it.

Detroit just went belly up.  And I can smell the rotting carcass of a city that had everything until idiotic liberalism killed the golden goose.

Has Obama been good for Detroit?  Not so much.

Detroit is a city that literally did everything – absolutely EVERYTHING – Obama and the radical leftists demoniacs said we need to do everywhere.  And it was the kind of cancer in Detroit that it will be spreading throughout the rest of America.

That said, we can’t lay all this at Obama’s feet.  Because in spite of the fact that it had the big three auto manufacturers located there, the unions and the union mentality have been poisoning the city for going on sixty years.

Detroit files for bankruptcy protection
Nancy Kaffer, Stephen Henderson and Matt Helms, Detroit Free Press 5:22 p.m. EDT July 18, 2013

DETROIT — The city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in federal court Thursday, laying the groundwork for a historic effort to bail out a city that is sinking under billions of dollars in debt and decades of mismanagement, population flight and loss of tax revenue.

The bankruptcy filing makes Detroit the largest city in U.S. history to do so.

The filing begins a 30- to 90-day period that will determine whether the city is eligible for Chapter 9 protection and define how many claimants might compete for the limited settlement resources that Detroit has to offer. The bankruptcy petition would seek protection from creditors and unions who are renegotiating $18.5 billion in debt and other liabilities.

FULL COVERAGE: Detroit’s financial crisis STORY: Financial manager: Detroit ‘dysfunctional, wasteful’

“The fiscal realities confronting Detroit have been ignored for too long. I’m making this tough decision so the people of Detroit will have the basic services they deserve and so we can start to put Detroit on a solid financial footing that will allow it to grow and prosper in the future,” said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. “This is a difficult step, but the only viable option to address a problem that has been six decades in the making.”

Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who in June released a plan to restructure the city’s debt and obligations that would leave many creditors with much less than they are owed, has warned consistently that if negotiations hit an impasse, he would move quickly to seek bankruptcy protection.

Snyder signed off on the filing in a letter attached to court documents filed Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Michigan. A spokeswoman for Snyder did not immediately return telephone calls Thursday.

“It is clear that the financial emergency in Detroit cannot be successfully addressed outside of such a filing, and it is the only reasonable alternative that is available,” Snyder said in the letter granting his state-required approval. “In other words, the City’s financial emergency cannot be satisfactorily rectified in a reasonable period of time absent this filing.”

Snyder continued: “I have reached the conclusion that this step is necessary after a thorough review of all the available alternatives, and I authorize this necessary step as a last resort to return this great City to financial and civic health for its residents and taxpayers. This decision comes in the wake of 60 years of decline for the city, a period in which reality was often ignored.”

Orr’s spokesman Bill Nowling said, “Pension boards, insurers, it’s clear that if you’re suing us, your response is ‘no.’ We still have other creditors we continue to have meetings with, other stakeholders who are trying to find a solution here, because they recognize that, at the end of the day, we have to have a city that can provide basic services to its 700,000 residents.”

This week, the city’s two pension funds (which have claims to $9.2 billion in unfunded pension and retiree health care liabilities) filed suit in state court to prevent Orr from slashing retiree benefits as part of a bankruptcy restructuring.

Ambac Assurance Guaranty, which insures some of the city’s general obligation bonds, has also objected to Orr’s plan to treat those bonds as “unsecured,” meaning they’re not tied directly to a revenue stream and would receive pennies on the dollar of their value. Ambac, and other creditors, have threatened to file suit.

Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr, shown during a news conference Thursday, March 14, 2013, hopes his report helps residents better understand the city’s problems.(Photo: Romain Blanquart/ Detroit Free Press)

Sources agree that Orr’s deal with creditors, widely reported to be Bank of America Corp. and UBS AG, to pay a $344-million swap with a $255-million debtor-in-possession loan, is instrumental in the timing of the bankruptcy filing.

The deal gives the city access to $11 million a month in casino tax revenues that Orr has said is key to maintaining city services while negotiations, in or out of bankruptcy court, take their course with other creditors and unions.

Plunkett Cooney bankruptcy lawyer Doug Bernstein, who is not involved in the bankruptcy and is not representing any parties related to it, said Thursday that the filing was critical for the city, given a growing number of legal challenges.

On Monday, an Ingham County Circuit Court judge was scheduled to hold a hearing on the city workers’ and retirees’ challenge to stop the city from filing for bankruptcy protection. The employee groups, and separately the city’s two pension funds in another lawsuit, argue that the governor — who must and has authorized the bankruptcy filing — cannot do so if the filings include plans to reduce pension benefits, because the state’s constitution explicitly protects public pensions. If the state has such plans, it wasn’t immediately presented in the court filing.

Bernstein said preventing the court hearing Monday is probably a key part of the strategy behind a Chapter 9 petition by the city, because a ruling in favor of the employees could put a halt, at least temporarily, to any moves by Orr and Snyder to proceed with a bankruptcy petition. A bankruptcy filing immediately stays all such court proceedings.

STORY: Detroit manager pitches debt recovery plan to creditors

“The stay kicks in as soon as the filing, whether it’s Friday or Monday,” Bernstein said before Thursday’s filing. “The key is taking advantage of the automatic stay. Because of the lawsuit filed by the pension funds and the hearings coming up Monday, it became a factor, so to the extent that (Orr) wanted to continue negotiations with creditors, now the city is forced to” file a Chapter 9 petition.

The 30- to 90-day eligibility fight could be prolonged beyond that time frame if creditors mount a significant challenge to Detroit’s eligibility for bankruptcy. In other communities that have filed for Chapter 9 protection, such fights have extended the process a year or more, including Jefferson County, Ala., and Stockton, Calif., two of the largest municipal bankruptcy filings so far in the United States.

Detroit’s bankruptcy is by far the largest of its kind in U.S. history, in terms of the city’s population of about 700,000 and the amount of its debts and liabilities, which Orr has said could be as high as $20 billion. Because of the stakes involved, and the impact on residents statewide, as well as 30,000 current and retired city workers and Detroit’s ability to stay in business, the case could be precedent setting in the federal judiciary. It also could set an important trajectory for the way troubled cities nationwide settle their financial difficulties.

Bernstein noted that Orr has said repeatedly his office would “negotiate with creditors until and unless we find that the negotiations won’t bear fruit, with the understanding that the city has a limited amount of time” for those talks.

City Council President Pro Tem Andre Spivey said he understood that negotiations Orr was having with creditors weren’t as fruitful has he’d hoped they be, and that he hopes the bankruptcy process will be relatively quick. But he stressed to residents that they needn’t worry about the impact of the filing immediately.

“City services we provide will not be shut down,” Spivey said. “We’ll still be providing services, but the challenge is where we’re going to get to as we go through the bankruptcy process.”

The city has lost more than half of its population over the last 60 years. In 1950, the city was the fifth-largest city in the country with a population of around 1.8 million. Today its population is estimated at just under 700,000.

Who is to blame for this mega-disaster? Is it the United Auto Workers labor union, which has been completely owned by the Democrat Party machine and which funds that machine? Is it the municipal government labor unions, which have been completely owned by the Democrat Party machine and which have funded that machine? Or is it all the Democrat politicians who have rubber stamped the liberal labor union agenda for decades by giving them money and benefits vastly beyond what they were “entitled” to at the expense of the taxpayers???

Detroit was the FOURTH LARGEST CITY IN AMERICA.  It was a city that had everything.

And Barack Obama is determined to impose the fate of Detroit on the rest of America.  And he is succeeding.

‘If you want to get that taxpayer money back, buy a GM product’

Heard that little slogan over the radio today.  Didn’t catch who said it, as I’d just turned the radio on.  But from the tone of the interview, it either came from a government-type or a union-type who favored the bailout-laden bankruptcy.

I immediately asked myself, “I wonder how Ford feels about that reasoning?”

Here’s another slogan for you: “Buy your car from Government Motors so Ford can enjoy going bankrupt, too.”

Obama says his auto strategy is to “level the playing field.”  What could be more “level” than the entire industry bankrupt and under government thralldom?

How would you like it if one of your primary competitors in business had been nationalized by the government, which has already pumped $50 billion into your competitor (with Canada pumping in another $10 billion), and which now had a 60% (70% counting Canada) ownership stake in your competition’s future success.

Mind you, if you’re a GM shareholder, you’re probably not real happy either.  You just got wiped out so that the UAW could get a 17.5% ownership stake.

Now, on the bright side for Ford, both Chrysler and GM will now be compelled to make pathetic little “Obamamobiles,” while Ford still has the freedom to continue building the cars people actually want.  That should help Ford continue to continue to gain in market share – at least until Obama artificially increases the price of gasoline to try to force us all into his putt-putting Obamamobiles.

What is truly sad is that, had GM simply filed for bankruptcy protection when it first became obvious that it didn’t have the wherewithal to meet its obligations, it would have been able to enter into a government-free structured re-organization.  Instead, George Bush punted the company to the Obama administration.  And then Barack Obama caught it, and began sprinting down the field with it – in the wrong direction.

The reason Obama pumped all this taxpayer money into GM and Chrysler was so he could control the bankruptcy outcome.  Obama now gets to reward his union base even as he imposes his radical leftwing environmental agenda on two of America’s largest manufacturers.  Which will in turn create a precedent to demand even more control from more manufacturers whether they needed bailouts or not.

Once the liberal political class gets the taste for using American industrial financial capital as a slush fund to purchase political power and advantage, it will never give it up until all the meat has been devoured.

Someone has to sacrifice to pay for that.

Obama said:

It’s “a sacrifice you may not have chose to make, but a sacrifice you are nevertheless called to make so that your children and all of our children can grow up in an America that still makes things, that still builds cars, that still strives for a better future.”

The only problem  with that is that the man who is calling upon Americans to sacrifice for all our children is the very same guy who stole our children’s money in the first place.  Obama has been engaging in generational theft since the day he took the oath of office – which includes the oath he took as a state senator as part of the corrupt Chicago political machine.

And by no means is that sacrificing over yet.

You might look at the fact that GM just lost its spot on the Dow Jones industrial average which it had held since 1925 and say, “Thank God I didn’t buy any stock in GM.”

But you DID buy stock in GM.  And you’re going to be buying a lot more before it’s all said and done.

GM says it owes $172.8 billion, with $82.3 billion in assets.  That means, on top of the extra $30 billion Obama is making taxpayers fork over right now, we’re going to be on the hook for more than $60 billion more down the road.

That is an awful lot of taxpayer sacrificing so that Obama and his liberal lackeys can maintain control over their new political slush fund.

Is this what Americans want?  Not according to Rasmussen, it isn’t:

Only 21% of voters nationwide support a plan for the government to bail out General Motors as part of a structured bankruptcy plan to keep the troubled auto giant in business.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% are opposed to a plan that would provide GM with $50 billion in funding and give the government a 70% ownership interest in the company.

Even when presented with the stark choice between providing government funding or letting GM go out of business, only 32% of voters support the bailout. Most voters (56%) say it would be better to let GM go out of business.

As on many issues, there is a huge gap between the views of the Political Class and the rest of the nation. By a two-to-one margin, the Political Class says it is better to provide the bailout funding than to let GM fail.

The people don’t matter any more.  And what is ironic is that we voted not to matter.  We the Sheeple voted to allow ourselves to be rushed down the roadway to Marxism or fascism.

We learn – from the Russian source Pravda, no less – that:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. […]

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters. […]

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. […]

The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

If you want to enjoy the full flavor of having a Russian who has learned from his own history that what we are doing will lead to our doom – and who is gleefully relishing the prospect of the United States plunging off the same socialist cliff his country plunged down – read the full article.

And what Obama is doing to Government Motors and the auto industry he wants to do to the entire nation.

You say you’re not going to buy an Obamamobile?  By the year 2016 he has ensured that you won’t have any choice: his cafe standards will guarantee that every single car sold in the United States is an Obamamobile.

You’re also going to have Obamacare for your health care system and Obamapower for your energy.

The “new GM” represents the death of America.  The symbol of American prestige, economic power, and military supremacy has bit the dust.  It continues on only as a Marxist mockery of its former glory.  In that sense, it is rather like the crappy cars of recent times that were badged with the names and logos of the fabulous muscle cars of the past by some cynical marketing department.

If I may end by paraphrasing the final stanza of T.S. Elliot’s The Hollow Men:

This is the way America ends

This is the way America ends

This is the way America ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Bizarro Obama’s Credit Bill Subsidizes Stupidity By Penalizing Prudence

Elaine and Jerry have the following dialogue in a famous Seinfeld episode titled, “Bizarro Jerry”:

“He’s reliable. He’s considerate. He’s like your exact opposite.”

“So he’s Bizarro Jerry.”

“Bizarro Jerry?”

“Yeah, like Bizarro Superman, Superman’s exact opposite, who lives in the backwards Bizarro world. Up is down, down is up, he says hello when he leaves, goodbye when he arrives.”

“Shouldn’t he say badbye? Isn’t that the opposite of goodbye?”

“No, it’s still goodbye.”

“Does he live underwater?”

“No.”

“Is he black?”

“Look, just forget the whole thing.”

– Elaine and Jerry, in “The Bizarro Jerry”

Well, let’s not forget the whole thing, Jerry.  Because Bizarro Superman is now among us.  Art, imitation, and boob-tube television have come to life: Barack Obama is our Bizarro Superman.

Bizarro Superman is the sort of Superman who saves the guilty by beating the snot out of the innocent.

Did you buy a house you could afford?  Bizzaro Superman flew in and established a system whereby you subsidized those who foolishly overextended themselves.  After bailing out these fools who received assistance primarily by belonging to traditional liberal voting blocs, three out of five of them are already defaulting again (necessitating yet another bailout from you).

Do you have an account with a bank that took (in many cases was forced to take) TARP money?  Bizarro Superman wants to impose his political agenda on banks, so he won’t allow them to repay their loans.

Did you hope to be able to improve your lot in life with the gigantic stimulus package?  Sorry, Bizarro Superman’s stimulus turned out to be the porkulus that conservatives said it would be, with far more money going to 40 years’ worth of liberal pet projects than to job creation.  We’ve also recently learned that due to massive structural flaws the stimulus is bypassing all of the counties that most desperately needed help.  It might have helped if someone had actually been allowed to read the bill first, but Bizarro Superman didn’t want to take any chances that someone would see what a socialist power grab it truly was.

Did you invest in secured debt from Chrysler and GM?  Sorry, buddy: Superman has flown in and given your safe and secured investment dollars to his UAW cronies.  When the secured investors – who by law were entitled to be at the head of the line in any bankruptcy – balked at being paid pennies on the dollar while the UAW was given the farm – Bizarro Superman demonized them as “greedy hedge funds” and threatened them with public propaganda attacks.

Bizarro Superman has flown in and promised that 95% of Americans will get a tax cut under his plan (which actually just means more welfare for the 43.4 percent who already don’t pay any federal income tax at all even as our small business owners who employ most American workers are increasingly taxed into oblivion).  Will people pay less in taxes under Bizarro Superman?  Just for your information, the average 30 year old will pay $136,932.75 just for the interest of just Obama’s 2010 budget over the course of his or her working lifetime. Americans will be paying FAR more of their money to the government – and they will have Bizarro Superman to thank for it.

Only in Bizarro world does an administration say it’s “the patriotic duty” for some to pay a an even more massive tax burden imposed on them even as it promises that the other 95% should be LESS patriotic by paying less in taxes.

Are you one of the 100% of Americans who use energy?  Get ready for the price of it to skyrocket (“necessarily skyrocket,” to quote Bizarro Superman).  Even the Obama administration admits that Bizarro Superman’s energy plan will increase the average American’s electric bill by $1,800 a year.  Which means it will very likely be a hell of a lot worse than that.

Only in Bizarro world does Congress actually hire a speed reader to read really fast a terrible energy bill that Representatives and Senators won’t bother to read at normal speed.

Now Bizarro Superman has flown in and saved risky credit-card borrowers by establishing a system that will penalize those who have always paid their bills on time and in full.  From the New York Times:

Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

Again and again, on issue after issue, our Bizarro Superman, Barack Hussein Obama, has come to the rescue of the irresponsible by punishing the responsible.

Our economy became the greatest in the history of the world by policies that rewarded sound and prudent investment while punishing foolish behaviors.  Those days are long gone.  We’re in Bizarro world now.

I pulled out of the stock market following the Democratic National Convention when I had that first moment of genuine fear that Obama would probably win, and put my nest egg into gold and silver.  Betting that Obama would be a disaster for the economy has been the best financial move I’ve ever made: I’ve made a 15% return on precious metals even as investors in the stock market lost about 30%.

I still remember the day I came across the following poll results from the September/October issue of CEO Magazine:

According to the poll, which is featured on the cover of Chief Executive’s most recent issue, by a four-to-one margin, CEOs support Senator John McCain over Senator Barack Obama. Moreover, 74 percent of the executives say they fear that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for the country.[…]

In expressing their rejection of Senator Obama, some CEOs who responded to the survey went as far as to say that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.” In fact, the poll highlights that Obama’s tax policies, which scored the lowest grade in the poll, are particularly unpopular among CEOs.

I’ve pulled out of the US economy due to Bizzaro Superman and his Bizarro economic policies.  No investments in stocks, no purchases of US bonds.  Not with Obama’s mind-boggling deficit spending acting like a 10 ton anvil hovering over the economy due to debt as a percentage of GDP rising like a rocket ship.  I’m making as few purchases as possible.  And I’m not coming back to investment in America as long as Bizarro Superman is our president.

And I’m going to pull out of credit cards now, too.  If I see one fee, or if I see my interest rate go up so much as 1 point due to my cards’ charging interest from the moment of purchase, I’m cutting them up and going back to the tried and true checkbook.

The only question I have is this: at some point Obama’s and the Democrat’s policies of subsidizing stupidity by penalizing prudence are going to implode the economy.  In the aftermath of that disaster, will there even BE a U.S. economy worthy of investing in?

I’m not betting on it.

Obama Abusing Stimulus To Intimidate All Opposition

If you don’t live under a rock (and frankly a rock wouldn’t be a bad place to live under these days), you’ve no doubt heard that Obama has fired CEOs, picked board members, altered bankruptcy proceedings, and has refused to allow banks to repay their loans without ridiculous conditions being imposed.  He is also moving toward regulating the pay of executives even if their companies didn’t take bailout money.  You might have heard how Obama has bullied and threatened hedge funds that demanded that their legal rights as secured Chrysler debtholders be recognized and respected as their money is given to unions in a clear case of political payback.

And if you have any understanding of American history at all, you should realize what a massive abuse of power all of this is.

Obama can say whatever he wants about not wanting to control the economy.  But actions in this case scream far louder than words.  On front after front (e.g., industry, banking, health care, energy, education) his administration is engaging in a naked grab for unprecedented power and control.

FDR doesn’t even come close: the New Deal in inflation adjusted dollars cost an estimated $500 billion; Obama has spent or committed $12.8 TRILLION so far.

There is so much federal government money going to who-only-knows that it boggles the mind.

And Obama – who has already demonstrated that he is perfectly willing to abuse his power – is at it again.

The People’s Republic of California – like many other failed liberal utopias – is on the fast track to insolvency.  And you can bet that that outcome is going to be significantly expedited if the Obama administration follows through on its threat to cut off stimulus funding unless California does things the way Obama wants.

The state of California enacted measures in order to save $74 million, but state governments have apparently forfeited all sovereignty under Obama rule.

Reporting from Sacramento — The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.

Schwarzenegger’s office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus money, according to state officials.

The news comes as state lawmakers are already facing a severe cash crisis, with the state at risk of running out of money in July.

The wages at issue involve workers who care for some 440,000 low-income disabled and elderly Californians. The workers, who collectively contribute millions of dollars in dues each month to the influential Service Employees International Union and the United Domestic Workers, will see the state’s contribution to their wages cut from a maximum of $12.10 per hour to a maximum of $10.10.

The SEIU said in a statement that it had asked the Obama administration for the ruling.

Now, the person with brain wave patterns above those of a corpse have to recognize that Obama – who has already literally given the previously privately-owned farm to UAW union members is imposing his will on California in order to reward the big labor movement that so rabidly supported him.

As a Senator Obama got on his moral high horse and preached one sermon after another about how Bush had violated executive power, and how he would be a president who “respected the law.” And he has already revealed that he is cut from the same cloth as Stalin: all he needed to show his true colors was the opportunity to seize control.

I’ve written about this before.  Just over one year ago I wrote on the subject of how postmodernism leads to fascism.  I said in part:

Already some postmodernist sects explicitly advocate and demand such measures; all they lack is the power to impose their will.

And now they are accumulating that power.

Democrats and liberals are postmodernists; and postmodernism contains all the underlying philosophical presuppositions essential for fascism to rear its monstrous head yet again.

Liberals are becoming flat-out fascists now, and that is “change” that you should always have “believed” would come if they accumulated enough power.

Just keep sitting around doing nothing, and keep watching your boob tube while your new Fuhrer takes away one thing after another that this nation always intended for the people to be able to choose for themselves.

Liberal Blackshirts: Card Check and Carrie Prejean

At the core of representative democracy is the idea of the secret ballot: when you go into the booth to vote, you vote YOUR values and YOUR will; not the values and will of someone who is out to intimidate you into voting any other way.

But Democrats and unions think that kind of individual freedom is dangerous and unfair: better that everyone be forced to vote openly and publicly, so that their version of the fascist blackshirts can pay a visit to their home and “persuade” them to vote their way.

‘Card Check’ in Action
Matt Milner works as a “tracker” for the Colorado Republican Party: He follows Sen. Michael Bennet, a newly appointed Democrat, around and videotapes his public appearances. The Denver Post reports what happened when he went to an AFL-CIO meeting where Bennet was speaking Saturday:

Milner, with his tripod and video camera, garnered the attention of event organizers just as Bennet bid his adieu to hundreds of audience members, some of whom had grown passionate over politically tricky labor issues, such as the Employee Free Choice Act. . . .

The 5-foot-6-inch Milner found himself surrounded as the event wound down, he said.

“This hulking guy comes flying at me, and he’s yelling ‘Who are you with?’ There’s a flurry of F-words,” Milner said. “They circled around me. I’d try to move, and they’d move to block my path.”

[Mike] Cerbo [executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO], one of the five men who spoke to Milner after Bennet’s speech, disputed that version of events Sunday. He said the young interloper was aggressive and tried to provoke a confrontation, though he declined to say how.

“He came in uninvited. . . . I’d call him a trespasser,” Cerbo said. “He didn’t get the incident he wanted, so he’s clearly lying about what happened.”

Milner says the men demanded that he erase his recording, and one of them took his camera, while Cerbo claims, in the Post’s words, that he “offered to erase his tape because he hadn’t been invited to the event.” No one disputes that Milner was outnumbered, or that it was he who called 911.

If this is what happens to a man at a public event, what do you expect a woman to do when these guys show up at her house with a card to sign?

That WOULD be an excellent question: “What DO you expect a woman to do when these guys show up at her house with a card to sign?”  Except we ALREADY have our answer, thanks to UAW card check thuggery.

A working mom was repeatedly intimidated by union organizers.  They approached her going to work, leaving work, at breaks, at lunches, saying, “You’ve got to sign this card.  We’ve got to have your information.”  Telling them “NO” meant nothing to them.  They came to her house.  They waited outside.  She had two small children in the house.  She said, “We have a secure vote to elect the president; why can’t we have one when it comes to our paycheck and our home and everything else?”  She also said, “If this is my livelihood we should be able to have a choice – and card check isn’t a choice.”

The same intimidation happened to workers at Dana Corp. in Albion, Indiana when UAW organizers came to harass and intimidate them.

‘Card Check’ is flagrantly undemocratic and unAmerican – and so are the liberals who are trying to push it onto working people.

Meanwhile, we are learning that our new president is just as much of a union thug as the union thugs.  He’s refusing to allow banks to repay loans that many of them were pressured to accept in the first place.  The Obama administration is literally threatening investors who hold secured Chrysler bonds.  La Cosa Nostra has moved into the White House.

You might find the following unrelated.  I personally believe it is just another example of the same sort of ‘Card Check”-like crap that the left is trying to shove down our throats in the name of warped and redefined “fairness” and “tolerance.”

This kind of ruthless assault on people’s private beliefs being “outed” – and attacked if it doesn’t measure up to the left’s agenda – goes on all the time.

The campaign against Miss California Carrie Prejean is an example of this liberal pressure by intimidation.  Similar to what liberals want to do through Card Check, Carrie Prejean was forced to answer a question by a liberal that she clearly would never have wanted to publicly answer while running for the crown in a beauty pageant.  For a liberal, Perez Hilton’s question was a chance to shine with the politically correct answer that beauty pageants thrive upon; for a conservative, it amounted to being forced to answer the McCarthyesque question, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a Christian?”

Prejean gave her honest answer.  And you would have thought she had said she liked eating babies (when we all know it’s liberals who favor baby meat).  And thus the left pounced, following the lead of the homosexual activist who forced this issue by demanding Prejean answer his question (only to call her “a stupid bitch” because he didn’t like her answer).

Media Matters called Prejean “dishonest” because she said, “Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage.”  On their view, every state that doesn’t allow homosexual marriage doesn’t allow their citizens to choose.  But in fact, THEY are the ones who are throwing out falsehoods: Carrie Prejean – as Miss California – represents a state where citizens CHOSE to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Then came the beauty pageant blackshirts to get Prejean to “reconsider” her answer:

Miss California Carrie Prejean, who became the bombshell of the Miss USA pageant by saying gay couples should not be allowed to marry, said her state sponsors urged her to apologies afterward but she rejected the advice.

Ms Prejean, 21, said officials from the Miss California USA pageant were worried that her comments would cost their contest financial backing and tried to prepare her for a string of post-pageant media interviews by discouraging her from discussing her religious beliefs.

“You need to apologize to the gay community. You need to not talk about your faith. This has everything to do with you representing California and saving the brand,” Ms Prejean recalled being told.

Prejean has since had her private medical records exposed and “outed” for having had breast implant surgery.  There was nothing improper with this; pageant officials actually paid for the procedure.  It was nothing more than harassment.

And listen to how MSNBC went after her – and realize – for nothing more than providing her honest answer to a question that was forced on her:

OLBERMANN: There it is here, Miss California is opposed to same-sex marriage, which is at least marriage between two human beings, but she has fully endorsed now marriage between a man and a woman who is partially made out of plastic.

MUSTO: Well, she’s dumb and twisted. She’s sort of like a human Klaus Barbie Doll. I mean, you tell Perez Hilton you’re against gay marriage? That’s like telling Simon Cowell you’re against screeching a show tune. This is the kind of girl who sits on the TV and watches the sofa. You know, she thinks innuendo is a Italian suppository.

Can I keep going? On the pageants now, they really should have easier questions, like what’s your middle name or what show was Seinfeld on. I mean, this girl’s a ding-dong. I didn’t even like her earrings.

OLBERMANN: The cruelest cut of all. The outcomes here, too. Perez Hilton looks like an intellectual titan and some sort of civil rights leader. And the new poster girl against same-sex marriage is not just a boob, but a fake boob. This is a real win for this cause, is it not?

MUSTO: Well, Perez is the new me, let’s leave him alone. And using the C word is something I wouldn’t do. But yes, Carrie Prejean, however you say it, she’s getting something off her chest. But what she really needs to get off is the price tag there.

The “girl” was dumb and a ding-dong, Michael Musto explained, as he struggled with her last name. (Olbermann fake-mispronounced her name too, right at the start of the segment. He added the fact that the girl is a boob.) Did we mention that Prejean’s position on the issue at hand resembles that of almost all major Dems? Resembles that of President Obama, to cite just one example?

At any rate, the boys went on and on—and on—with their clever boob jokes. Musto proved he was a progressive when he announced that he wouldn’t call Prejean a “c*nt” (or even a “b*tch,” one might assume), as Perez Hilton has done. Because the gentlemen were so clever, we offer you more of their minstrelsy:

OLBERMANN: Now, the moral in this is what? Never cross a beauty pageant official who knows you’ve had implants?

MUSTO: Yes, exactly, that’s it. This has escalated to a public shaving. I mean, and what Moakler has left out, Keith, is they also paid for Carrie to cut off her penis, and sand her Adam’s Apple and get a head-to-toe waxing. I know for a fact that Carrie Prejean was Harry Prejean, a homophobic man, who liked marriage so much he did it three times. Now he’s a babe who needs a brain implant. Maybe they could inject some fat from her butt. Oh, they have?

How could Keith Olbermann or Musto have been more vicious or more vile?  If this isn’t the kind of propaganda attack that would have made Nazi Joseph Goebbels proud, I don’t know what is.  They certainly have been doing everything they could to dehumanize her and make her an object of mockery and hate.

One might ask where the feminists were to defend this strong, independent, successful woman who is being so attacked just for having the courage to stand up for her convictions.  But feminist Gloria Feldt actually used the same reasoning in attacking Carrie Prejean as a fake person with breast implants when she came on the O’Reilly Factor.

Even as activists who could care less about the intent of the voters immediately went to work nullifying the will of Californians so they could impose their own will.

They immediately flooded the courts so that a few judges could throw out the will of Californians.  It’s not about the will of the people.  Liberals don’t give a damn about the will of the people.  All they care about is power, and their ability to impose their will upon the people by any means necessary.

But even more to the point: they used vile intimidation tactics to punish people for their “Yes” vote on Prop 8.  Threats, harassment, intimidation, vandalism.  Homosexual blackshirts did to thousands of voters exactly what they would do to millions of workers if Card Check were to pass.

The left loves to call conservatives “fascists,” and have been shouting the label for years.  It is time they look at the mirror and recognize that THEY are the fascists, and always have been.

Fascism comes from the left, being a form of socialism.  “Nazi” was an abbreviation for “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,” which means, “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”  If we had a “National Socialist American Workers’ Party,” would it be filled with conservatives or liberals?  The Nazi Party’s platform and its underlying philosophy were decidedly leftwing.

And the point is that the big labor “workers’ parties” in America are every bit as fascist as the German “workers’ party” that gave fascism such a horrible reputation in the first place.

And homosexuals themselves – who ultimately ended up being persecuted by the Nazis – were themselves instrumental in bringing about Nazi power.  It was they who filled the ranks of Ernst Roehm’s SA (also known as the stormtroopers or the Brownshirts) and brought Hitler to power.  The fact that Hitler later turned on them does nothing to mitigate that role.

The same players, playing the same fascist games, yesterday and today.  The left constantly scream and whine about being victimized, when THEY are the victimizers.  THEY are the attackers.  THEY are the sick, twisted freaks who continually harass and intimidate the innocent and the helpless to impose their will upon society whether that society be the majority or not.

Liberals and Democrats have become fascists.  If they don’t like being called “fascists,” they should quit acting like fascists and let people express their consciences in their opinions and their votes.

Obama: Fool Or Tool, Either Way He is Dangerous

I came across an interesting article via Atlas Shrugs.  I don’t know who Dr. Wheeler is – or if he is actually interacting with an actual French intelligence source (or if that source is being honest if he is) – but the read is interesting and illuminating.

A LAUGHINGSTOCK IN PARIS

Dr. Wheeler has interesting friends in faraway places. He is inside, and always has a fresh skinny inside the beltway and outside — this time, outside the Left Bank. Every once in a while I will run an entire piece of Jack’s, because it’s too juicy not share. But subscribe to his newsletter — worth every penny.

100 DAYS OF BEING A LAUGHINGSTOCK IN PARIS

Paris, France. It is very cool to be a French intel guy. A spectacular meal at a Parisian bistro with $90 entrées and a $200 bottle of Bordeaux? No problem. I’d known this fellow since he got me out of a jam in Sudan years ago. His James Bond days are over, but still, riding a desk for the DGSE — Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (General Directorate for External Security), France’s military intel agency – in Paris has its decided benefits.

One of them is not being infected with Obamamania. “My agency considers him a joke,” he confides. “Every day there is some fresh lunacy that we cannot believe. Mr. Bush would often make us angry. But at this man we just laugh.”

“In truth, it also makes us sad,” he continued. “French resentment towards America is strong, so being able to laugh at your country feels good. But it is such a sad and strange thing to see America – America The Great! – do something so crazy as to elect this ridiculous man.”

“There are many people in America who think he isn’t a legitimate president as he wasn’t born in the US and isn’t a natural citizen. What do you think?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had reason to make an inquiry.”

“There are a lot of people convinced he is a traitor who hates America and is actively determined to destroy it. Any opinion on that?”

He didn’t shrug at this. After a long slow sip of wine, he mused, “I would not go that far. Many of his actions, however, are very puzzling because they are so counter-productive regarding America’s best interests. There seems to be a consistent pattern in that direction.”

“What does Sarkozy think of him?”

“Nothing but contempt.”

After a pause he asked, “And Langley?”

“Well, if you thought the war they waged against Bush was intense, it was nothing compared to how they’re going to screw Obama. He has tried to gut them with the ‘torture memo’ release and slashing their budgets. The morale is depressed, sullen, and enraged. You know what a left-wing outfit Langley is. They thought he was their boy and they feel betrayed. All kinds of damaging stuff on him will be appearing via their media friends.”

He nodded. “And in Tel Aviv City?”

He was referring to the huge underground city complex of Langley’s underneath the US Embassy in the Israeli capital. “That’s an interesting question. You know how vast and deep the relationship is there. Langley is making every effort to overcome the total and massive distrust their Israeli colleagues have for Obama, whom they know is selling them down the Jordan River. So far though this effort is in words. The Israelis are waiting to see what Langley does.”

He said nothing. I smiled. “You guys wouldn’t be Langley’s cutout for thwarting BO regarding Israel, would you? I’d never suspect that…”

He continued to say nothing, gave me only a slight smile in return, and poured me another glass of wine. “The Bordeaux is good, yes?” I nodded.

“You know, the French media worships this man the same as yours in the US. All of this ‘100 days’ talk, it is impossibly stupid. Most anyone in the French elite, the business leaders, Sarko’s people, they all know this. They all think this is some crazy joke of the Americans. But it is a very, very dangerous joke. For 100 days your president has been a laughingstock among the tout le monde No one may be laughing 100 days or 10 months from now.”

He leaned forward. “The world can go – how do you say – sideways with this man very quickly. No one he has working for him knows what they are doing – possibly excepting Mrs. Clinton – and he certainly does not. All of us in our little community are worried – us, our friends in Berlin, London, Tel Aviv, and Langley too as you say. It is not like the barbarians at the gates. It is everythere are no gates. The Somalis, Chavez, Iran, Putin, Beijing, the ‘Norks” as you call them, the list is long and it is growing. We are not sure what to do.”

It took me a moment to respond. “The best thing that has happened now is Obama making Langley his enemy. They will be cooperating with you more, be more a part of your worried community. Working together, you can undermine his efforts more effectively, block and maybe even repair the damage.”

It was my turn to lean forward. “Then again, all together you could be more pro-active. The man is a mystery. Nobody can make public his actual birth certificate, or even the particular hospital he was born in, or his college grades, or how he got into Harvard, or how he made editor of the Harvard Law Review and never wrote a single article for it. It goes on and on. He really is a Zero. I think all of you guys should find all of this out and make it known.”

I added, “The quicker the better, before the laughing stops and the real dangers begin.”

“What is that phrase you use?” he asked. “Something to consider?”

I laughed. “Yes, there is much to consider – and much that you can do. I mean, really, if the Soviet Union could be dismantled, so can this presidency.”

It was a beautiful April afternoon in Paris. He walked me back to my hotel. It could be that the times we live in may get even more interesting.

I added the links to the article.  Whether the French intelligence agent sipping his Bordeaux and disclosing his insider knowledge is genuine or a literary device, the facts and fears presented are nevertheless legitimate facts and fears.

Barack Obama is pursuing so many dangerous and foolish policies at once that it is simply unreal.  The U.S. is on the hook for $12.8 trillion dollars – and counting.  He is taking over the auto industry by way of a foolhardy government-UAW partnership that will produce political correctness at the expense of profits.  He is seeking to nationalize one-sixth of the American economy by taking over health care, which is guaranteed to become a massive boondoggle and a massive failure.  He is attempting to impose cap-and-trade on the energy industry in yet another takeover, which will (in Obama’s own words) necessarily send energy prices skyrocketing.  And he has all but decided to surrender on a war on terror that he refused to even call a war on terror any longer.  And his bowing down before the king of Saudi Arabia and shaking the hand of an America-hating Venezuelan dictator only underscore the massive changes in our foreign policy.

Any one of these policies by themselves would undermine America; Obama is pursuing all of them very nearly at once.  Fear – and the desire of many Americans to feel like the government is “doing something” – have created the perfect storm of imposing radical action in the name of averting the “crisis.”

Is Obama a laughingstock among those in the know?  I’m sure not laughing.  Whether he’s a fool or a tool, Obama is the most dangerous man in the world.

Joe The Plumber Right On Socialism, Soaring Taxes On Small Businesses Under Obama

It’s not like Barrack Obama didn’t promise the American people that he would lead them into socialism.  You might remember the famous encounter with Joe “the plumber”:

Wurzelbacher said he planned to become the owner of a small plumbing business that will take in more than the $250,000 amount at which Obama plans to begin raising tax rates.

“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” the blue-collar worker asked.

After Obama responded that it would, Wurzelbacher continued: “I’ve worked hard . . . I work 10 to 12 hours a day and I’m buying this company and I’m going to continue working that way. I’m getting taxed more and more while fulfilling the American Dream.”

“It’s not that I want to punish your success,” Obama told him. “I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success, too.

Then, Obama explained his trickle-up theory of economics.

“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

“Spread the wealth around,” Obama said.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Joe the Plumber famously answered, “That sounds like socialism.”

And how the liberals howled.  Pieces like Mc Clatchey Newspapers’ “Obama plan isn’t ‘socialism’; it’s traditional progressive taxation” by David Lightman and William Douglas abounded:

“It wouldn’t qualify as socialism.

“The answer is clearly no, Senator Obama is not a socialist,” said Paul Beck, a professor of political science at Ohio State University. “We’ve had a progressive tax system for some time, and both Republicans and Democrats have bought into it.”

Socialism involves state ownership of the means of economic production and state-directed sharing of the wealth. America’s democratic capitalist system is neither socialist nor pure free market; rather, it mixes the two, and it has at least since the progressive income tax was introduced 95 years ago. Under it, the wealthy pay higher income tax rates than those who are less fortunate do. It’s a form of sharing the wealth.”

Now, of course, I read that last paragraph and I’m just rolling on the floor laughing at how ignorant and dishonest these liberals were – and are.

Let me just say two words:  “Auto industry.”  Let me say two more: “banking industry.”  Let me add a few others: “Obama fires GM CEO.”  And, “Government forcing GM board out,” And, “Obama won’t allow banks to repay bailout loans.”  And, “Government, UAW Own 89% of GM In Restructuring.”  And, “Government Power and Control: The One Trillion Dollar Takeover Of Health Care.”  And, “Obama’s cap-and-trade plan a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”  And, most frightening and revealing of all: “Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion.”

“Let’s move it along, folks.  Move it along.  No socialists to see here.”

Sorry, mainstream media: Obama is as socialist as the sun is hot.  The fact that you were too blatantly dishonest and corrupt and incompetent to do your job during the campaign is just one more case in point that we are now under the thrall of totalitarian propaganda.

As the February 16, 2009 issue of Newseek gleefully trumpeted:

That pretty much makes it official: Obama and the Democratic Party lied to us: they were socialists all along, and too dishonest and too corrupt to honestly and legitimately represent themselves.

I also have to point out the fact that the VERY WORST ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM – right out of the playbook of the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” or the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” – were used to attack Joe Wurzelbacher simply for asking a candidate for president a couple of questions right outside his house.  The media and the Democrat machine went after him with everything they had, including snooping through his private records in a very KGB-like manner in hopes of dredging up dirt on him.

You know, kind of like what Obama and his Democrat lynch mob are doing to Bush administration officials even as we speak in 1) releasing memos selectively targeted to make Bush look like a torturer while refusing to release any memos that would show how Bush’s actions kept America safe; and 2) threatening to prosecute Bush officials for their part in 1) in what would amount to a show trial.  How quintessentially totalitarian of them.

All this said, our socialist – and frankly fascist – president is now about to come after small business owners EXACTLY as Joe Wurzelbacher feared he would to pay for his socialist Statist agenda:

Small Businesses Brace for Tax Battle
Under Obama Plan, Some Entrepreneurs’ Bills Would Soar
By Lori Montgomery and V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 27, 2009

Gail Johnson doesn’t think of herself as wealthy. The former pediatric nurse has spent 20 years building a chain of preschools and after-school programs that accommodate sick children so working parents can keep their jobs.

But, like most small-business owners, Johnson reports her profit on her personal tax return. In a typical year, she and her husband make more than $500,000, according to her accountant, a figure that throws them squarely into the ranks of the richest Americans — and makes them a prime target for the Obama administration’s tax policy.

Since last year’s campaign, President Obama has vowed repeatedly not to increase taxes for families making less than $250,000 a year. That pledge, while politically popular, has left him with just two primary sources of funding for his ambitious social agenda: about 3 million high-earning families and the nation’s businesses.

Johnson, with her company, falls into both categories. If Obama’s tax plans are enacted, her accountant estimates that her federal tax bill — typically, around $120,000 a year — would rise by at least $23,000, a 19 percent increase.

“You hear ‘tax the rich,’ and you think, ‘I don’t make that much money,’ ” said Johnson, whose Rainbow Station programs are headquartered near Richmond. “But then you realize: ‘Oh, if I put my business income with my wages, then, suddenly, I’m there.’ ”

Across the nation, many business owners are watching anxiously as the president undertakes expensive initiatives to overhaul health care and expand educational opportunities, while also reining in runaway budget deficits. Already, Obama has proposed an extra $1.3 trillion in taxes for business and high earners over the next decade. They include new limits on the ability of corporations to automatically defer U.S. taxes on income earned overseas, repeal of a form of inventory accounting that tends to reduce business taxes, and a mandate that investment partnerships pay the regular income tax rate instead of the lower capital gains rate.

‘A Permanent Target’
Business groups say they’re bracing for even more battles with the administration.

“They’re desperate for revenue. And therein lies the concern of the broader business community,” said R. Bruce Josten, chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We’re going to be a permanent target, and we understand that,” added Catherine Schultz, vice president for tax policy at the National Foreign Trade Council. “The way they see it, corporations don’t vote.”

[Read the rest of the article]

Many small business owners file individual income tax returns.  Their “incomes” do not merely go into their pockets; rather, they use their profits to pay their employees and reinvest in their businesses:

Johnson declined to say whether she voted for Obama. But she said she ignored his tax plans until her husband, who handles real estate and construction for the schools, mentioned it one day. “I’ve since talked to my accountant,” she said. “And, oh, my gosh!”

The accountant, Carroll Hurst, said Johnson is unlikely to owe any federal taxes this year due to accounting changes that confer a one-time tax benefit. But in a typical year, he said, Johnson and her husband earn about $515,000 from various entities related to the schools. They claim around $90,000 in deductions — much of it contributions to charity — reducing their taxable income to around $425,000. Johnson said the sum they take home in wages is “substantially less.”

In a typical year, Johnson’s federal tax bill would be about $120,000. But starting in 2011, the higher marginal rates would add about $13,000 a year, Hurst said. Capping the value of itemized deductions at 28 percent would add another $10,000, for a total increase of $23,000.

And Johnson’s tax bill stands to grow dramatically if Obama were to revive a plan to apply Social Security tax to income over $250,000 instead of capping it at the current $106,800. Because Johnson is an employee and an employer, she would have to pay both portions of the tax, Hurst said, tacking another $30,000 onto her bill.

Johnson said such an increase would force her to consider scaling back operations.

“You can try to pass it on to consumers. But if you raise tuition, you put pressure on family budgets,” she said. “For us, we’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

Other business owners are also nervous. Jim Murphy, president of EST Analytical in Fairfield, Ohio, which sells analytical instruments to environmental testing labs and pharmaceuticals, said his company is struggling in the sluggish economy. But if profit returns to pre-recession levels — about $455,000 — Murphy said his accountant estimates that Obama’s proposals could add $60,000 to his $120,000 tax bill.

“The misconception is that guys like me take [our profits] and put it into our pockets,” said Murphy, who employs 47 people. “But the money the company earns in a given year is used to buy additional inventory so we can grow and hire.” A 50 percent tax increase, he said, would be “really painful.”

So let’s review the basic facts: Barack Obama IS a socialist, just as Joe the Plumber intuitively understood even as liberal “intellectuals” loudly howled with all the outrage they could muster.  There’s no question of that fact any longer.  In fact, he is essentially a fascist, just as progressives such as Woodrow Wilson and even FDR were before him.  And Obama IS coming after small businesses and their owners, just as Joe the Plumber rightly feared.  And, furthermore, the Obama White House and the mainstream media alike will apply any tactic to attack and demonize their opponents for political purposes just like the worst socialist regimes in world history.

Government, UAW To Own 89% Of GM In Restructuring

Game, set, and match to the Statists and the big labor agenda.  From this point forward, the government will be deciding what cars are made, and the unions will literally be negotiating with themselves to determine how much they’ll earn making them.

The government was able to buy it’s way into total control of the auto industry for only a few billion dollars.  A tremendous day for Statism, a dark day indeed for the free market and for individual liberty.

From the Associated Press:

DETROIT – General Motors Corp. could be majority owned by the federal government under a massive restructuring plan laid out Monday that will cut 21,000 U.S. factory jobs by next year and phase out the storied Pontiac brand.

The plan, which includes an offer to swap roughly $27 billion in bond debt for GM stock, would leave current shareholders holding just 1 percent of the century-old company, which is fighting for its life in the worst auto sales climate in 27 years.

GM is living on $15.4 billion in government loans and said Monday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it envisions receiving an additional $11.6 billion.…

GM said that it will ask the government to take more than 50 percent of its common stock in exchange for canceling half the government loans to the company as of June 1. The swap would cancel about $10 billion in government debt.

In addition, GM is offering stock to the United Auto Workers for at least 50 percent of the $20 billion the company must pay into a union run trust that will take over retiree health care expenses starting next year.

If both are successful, the government and UAW health care trust would own 89 percent of GM stock, with the government holding more than a 50 percent stake, CEO Fritz Henderson said in a news conference at GM’s Detroit headquarters.

Henderson said that although the government would own a majority of GM’s outstanding common shares, the Treasury “hasn’t demonstrated interest in running the company,” but would have someone on the board looking out for the taxpayers’ interest. The task force has directed current board chairman Kent Kresa to replace several board members.

This is about as blatant of a case of simultaneously talking out of both sides of one’s mouth as there is.  The government has no interest in running GM; they just want to be able to fire the company’s GM and have the power to decide who is on the board of directors.  You’ve got to give the Obama administration points for sheer chutzpah.  And millions of political cuckolds are literally choosing to believe him rather than trusting their own lying eyes.

There’s a story entitled, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” that describes what can happen when one foolishly makes a deal with the devil.  Unfortunately, the Jabez Stone stand-in (GM) won’t have any Daniel Websters to confound Mr Scratch (brilliantly depicted by Barrack Hussein).  The lesson of this story is that it’s bad enough to do a deal with the devil; but never, NEVER, NEVER do a deal with the government.  You can’t win, and you won’t even be able to lose with dignity.

“The shareholders, the VEBA (health care trust) and the government would want to have a someone on the board of directors,” he said.

Deals with the UAW and the Treasury have yet to be finalized, he said.

The struggling automaker said it will offer 225 shares of common stock for every $1,000 in notes held by bondholders as part of a debt-for-equity swap. Henderson said the objective is to reduce GM’s $27 billion of outstanding public debt by about $24 billion. The company estimates that after the exchange, bondholders would own 10 percent of the company.

That would leave current common stockholders with only 1 percent, GM said. Still, GM shares rose 34 cents, or 21 percent, to $2.03 in midday trading.

The plans, if successful, would reduce GM’s debt by $44 billion from the present figure of about $62.4 billion.

“We would be substantially less-leveraged as a company,” Henderson said.

Kip Penniman Jr., an analyst with KDP Investment Advisors Inc., predicted the exchange offer would fail and GM will file for bankruptcy….

The company also said it plans to reduce its dealership ranks by 42 percent from 2008 to 2010, cutting them from 6,246 to 3,605. When asked how GM would accomplish that, Henderson would say only that the company would be making offers to the dealers in the coming weeks.

Mark LaNeve, vice president of North American sales and marketing, said a big chunk of the dealership reduction — about 450 — would come with the elimination or sale of Saturn, Hummer and Saab. GM would then look to end relationships with dealers that do only a small volume of business with GM, and then move on to other dealers, he said….

The dealer closings are not included in the job loss numbers sited at the beginning of this article, which will easily add well over one hundred thousand more jobs to the low-ball total cited at the beginning of the article.

The same government that couldn’t run a cafeteria without going millions of dollars into the red; the same government that still can’t run a successful post office in spite of the numerous successful businesses that have sprung up all around it; the same government whose model for successful customer service is the Department of Motor Vehicles, is going to be teaming up with the very unions who ran the auto manufacturing industry out of business in the first place to build cars.

The auto industry today; the oil industry tomorrow.  We don’t need oil anyway.  Just ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: It’s devil-juice, for sure.

I wrote an article around a youtube video entitled, “The Car That Will Save The Auto Industry (And The Planet!).”  It’s not a joke any more, given that we elected a bunch of totalitarian Statists to run our country.

Ever heard of the Soviet government-produced Lada?  You haven’t?  Don’t worry; you’ll be getting a chance to own its American equivalent in just a few years.

Obama Imposes Suicide-Pact Bankruptcy On Chrysler

The government is preparing the way for a “Dr. Kevorkian”-style bankruptcy for Chrysler.  A couple of paragraphs from the New York Times story should suffice:

U.S. Is Said to Push Chrysler to Prepare for Chapter 11

DETROIT — The Treasury Department is directing Chrysler to prepare a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that could come as soon as next week, people with direct knowledge of the action said Thursday.

The Treasury has an agreement in principle with the United Automobile Workers union, whose members’ pensions and retiree health care benefits would be protected as a condition of the bankruptcy filing, said these people, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

You know, I’m old enough to remember a time way, way back when businesses were actually allowed to attend to their own financial affairs.

And they’ve got a guy who was either too dishonest or too stupid to pay his own tax bill organizing the thing: “Turbo Tax Tim” Geithner.

That’s bad enough, but then the snowball starts rolling straight to hell.

The government isn’t making its arrangements with Chrysler; it is rather making them with the United Auto Workers, and then imposing the conditions onto Chrysler.

This is tantamount to saying that Chrysler will never come out of bankruptcy, given the fact that the company needs to be able to escape its legacy costs if it is to ever have any chance of ever being viable.

Would Italian Fiat want this gold-plated turd?  Not very likely.  The Obama administration’s kissy-kiss with the UAW on a bankruptcy deal (and who ever would have seen THAT coming) is frankly akin to a bridal consultant pushing a bride-to-be to gain 500 pounds and have her face chewed off by a deranged chimpanzee in order to prepare her for her nuptials.  The bridal consultant, the chimp, and the bride; the Obama administration, the UAW, and the company: neither situation is going to end well.

Realize this: Obams imposing a suicide pack onto Chrysler.  There is no way the company will be able to attract private investment as long as the unions get to dictate terms.  And realize this: the green cars that the Obama administration wants to impose on the American auto industry aren’t profitable.  Which is why no American money wants anything to do with Barack Hussein’s GM or Chrysler (and very soon Ford).  That leaves us hoping that some foreign country’s investors are more stupid than ours are.

This is nothing less than a suicide pact.  There’s a spaceship hidden behind big labor’s version of the Hale-Bopp comet, and the Obama administration wants Chrysler and GM to prepare to board.

The NY Times article continues:

The only major question that remains unresolved is what happens to Chrysler’s lenders, who hold $6.9 billion in company debt. The government’s most recent offer, presented Wednesday, would give the company’s lenders about 22 cents on the dollar, or $1.5 billion, and a 5 percent equity stake in a reorganized Chrysler. Earlier this week, a steering committee of the lenders proposed that they receive 65 cents on the dollar, or $4.5 billion, and a 40 percent equity stake.

If no agreement is reached between the government and Chrysler’s lenders, a nasty legal fight could emerge in bankruptcy. The creditors’ claims are backed by most of the company’s collateral, including plants, brands and equipment, and the senior lenders will argue that they have first claim on those assets — even over and above the government’s debt….

Some analysts questioned whether the Treasury’s steps to prepare a bankruptcy case were an effort to put more pressure on lenders, with which it has exchanged proposals meant to reduce Chrysler’s debt. Chrysler faces an April 30 deadline from the Treasury, while G.M. faces a June 1 deadline in its own efforts to draft a new restructuring plan.

Let me put the first sentence of the last paragraph another way: “Some analysts questioned whether the father-in-law’s steps to prepare a shotgun wedding was an effort to put more pressure on the boyfriend…”

This is an administration that is clearly hungry for power, and which clearly intends to use that power for political purposes.  Why won’t they allow banks to repay bailout money?  They want to be able to control the banks, and thereby control the banks lending policies.

As the Wall Street Journal’s Stuart Varney puts it:

Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can’t a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can’t special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit — until now.

Obama is paying unions back for supporting his presidency by putting the UAW at the head of the line in bankruptcy negotiations.  It is nothing short of political patronage.  Do you seriously think there’s even a chance that he won’t similarly use his power over the banking industry to impose liberal policies and reward liberal constituents?

Obama shares a number of the underlying characteristics that would tend to define one as a fascist, as Jonah Goldberg saw at least as far back as February of 2008.  But we’re not talking about mere “underlying characteristics” or tendencies anymore.  We’re talking about overt fascism.  Sheldon Richman defined fascism as follows:

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”–that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.

What the hell else are you going to call what Obama is doing but fascism?

Fascism came out of the political left; and liberals are leading us right back into a fascist hell all over again.

Which leads to the last observation: the suicide-pact that the Obama adminstration is forcing onto Chrysler is a microcosm for the suicide-pact that our society and our country are going to experience.  This government takeover of the American way of life won’t just result in a fascistic redefinition of America.  The federal government and federal reserve have committed over $12.8 TRILLION so far in bailouts and stimulus.  And we’re nowhere near done with this madness, because our leaders believe they can sepnd their way out of debt.  Massive inflation – and a death spiral – will necessarily follow.