The Coming Liberal Thugocracy - Part 4

It seems like President Obama and the White House are much to busy attacking their oponents in silly attacks. If they feel they need to attack their supposed "enemies" they should let their psychopathic supporters in the media do it. They have issues like Afghanistan and health care theat they should be spending time on. This following article does a good job of showing how combative and paranoid they are becoming.

Alexander to White House: Don't Create 'Enemies List' Oct. 21, 2009, 9:31 a.m. By Keith Koffler Roll Call Staff

Roll Call Magazine

Updated: 10:59 a.m. A top Senate Republican took to the Senate floor Wednesday morning to suggest that the Obama White House is plotting a political strategy similar to that of ex-President Richard Nixon and may be on the verge of preparing its own “enemies list.”

Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), who served in the Nixon White House, offered what he said was a “friendly suggestion” to the White House not to repeat the errors he saw committed by the staff of the disgraced former president. “Based upon that experience and my 40 years since then in and out of public life, I want to make what I hope will be taken as a friendly suggestion to President Obama and his White House: Don’t create an enemies list,” Alexander said. Describing the actions of Vice President Spiro Agnew and Nixon operative Chuck Colson, Alexander said he sees “symptoms of this same kind of animus developing in the Obama administration.”

Alexander read off a list of examples he says support his contention, including: a reported effort by the White House to marginalize the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a supposed effort by the Health and Human Services Department to put a “gag order” on the insurer Humana, the White House move to take on Fox News, Obama’s repeated criticisms of banks and investment houses, his alleged “taking names” of “bondholders who resisted the GM and Chrysler bailouts,” and the president’s move to make insurers the bogeyman of the health care debate.

Alexander claimed that the incipient White House “enemies” campaign extends even to Congress. He suggested that Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) was the victim of a sort of payback, saying that after Kyl suggested the stimulus plan wasn’t working, the White house subsequently wrote the governor of Arizona that, “If you don’t want the money, we won’t send it.”

He said that after he and Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) questioned the power of White House “czars,” they both were “called out” on the White House blog. “This behavior is typical of street brawls and political campaign consultants,” Alexander said. “If the president and his top aides treat people with different views as enemies instead of listening to what they have to say, they’re likely to end up with a narrow view and a feeling that the whole world is out to get them. And as those of us who served in the Nixon White House know, that can get you into a lot of trouble.”

After Alexander’s remarks, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) rose to speak on a different topic, but he first commented that it appeared Alexander was accusing the administration of “Nixifying” the White House — adding that he hoped the term would enter into “the lexicon.” Alexander replied that he was “seeing some signs” in the Obama White House that he had seen “at the early stages of Nixon.” http://www.rollcall.com/news/39733-1.html?type=printer_friendly

The Coming Liberal Thugocracy - 3

The proposed American Health Care Reform legislation is very controversial and nobody knows what will happen. Opponents to the proposal are organizing against it. And it appears that President Barack Obama and his White House staff are blatantly going out and creating an enemies list and asking citizens to help fill the list in?

Wasn't President Obama one of those complaining about the Bush Administration asking citizens to report suspicious behavior of individuals after 9/11? At least that was for national security reasons, not political ones. And what about the Democrats, liberals and academics who complained loud and long about President Nixon's enemies list.

On top of this laws have been passed that specifically bar this kind of activity by the White House. I wonder if we will hear the ACLU whining about this?

From the August 4, 2009 White House Blog

"Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President's health insurance reform positions......

..There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

Why Obama's Stimulus Package is Failing

It is early July 2009 and the American economy continues to decline. Unemployment is now 9.5% and rising while the Obama administration said it would top out at 8.5%. The stock market is starting to go back into a decline. Loan defaults ( housing, commercial property and consumer credit) are rising. There is no good economic news on the horizon.

And this is after the Democrats and Obama have spent 787 billion on their so called stimulus package. The Congressional Budget Office reports that only 21 billion of the package has resulted in contracts being let. Other smaller stimulus packages have worked much better. So what is wrong with this one?

The problem with the stimulus package is that it really isn't a stimulus package. It was a package of items the Democrats had wanted for a long time that they dressed up as a stimulus package to get it passed. It is that old "lipstick on a pig" thing again.

Much of the stimulus money is going to "green energy" projects. That money will result in very few jobs for the first year, if not years. And the multiplier effect of the funds allocated for green energy will be minimal.

Another big portion of the money is going for transportation. The Obama Administration and the Congressional Democrats told people the transportation projects would be "shovel ready"... well, in many if not most of the cases those "shovel ready" project's are anything but. Take the "Hot Lanes" projects in Santa Clara County of California. The money is allocated but the California Dept. of Transportation has not approved these projects. And then the contracts will need to get let and the designing completed. It could easily be early 2011 before these "shovel ready" projects get going.

The truth is that infrastructure projects take years to get going in today's regulatory environment. It is not like during the depression. When Roosevelt became president he was able to get the "Blue Ridge Parkway" started, at twelve different location, within 4 months. And they built the Hoover Dam at breakneck speed.

So allot of these stimulus monies are being wasted. Not that we don't need a lot of these projects they will fund, but we need true stimulus projects even more.

If the federal government really wanted to stimulate the economy with infrastructure projects they should have gone about it completely differently. They should have put out money to patch every pothole in the country. And how about every road project in the country under $1,000,000. These are small with few regulatory issues. The feds should also approve 2 or 3 times as many projects as there is money for and then only award the money to the projects that are truly shovel ready on a "first come first serve" basis. The ones that are late would be left out.

And what about tax breaks and tax refunds. Refunds have had a questionable track record in the last 10 years but there is no doubt about target tax breaks. They can work fast.

All and all, Obama and the Congressional Democrats have completely dropped the ball on getting the economy moving again.

The Coming Liberal Thugocracy - 2

Written by Jack Kelly, Thursday, 07 May 2009

President Hussein Obama's "car czar" has no experience in the automobile industry, and is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly paying kickbacks to obtain New York state pension business. A former journalist turned investment banker and Democrat party fund-raiser, Steven Rattner also was involved in a deal with Cerebrus Capital Management, the hedge fund which owns most of Chrysler, which made other Chrysler investors wonder if Mr. Rattner could decide without bias how the government should aid the auto firm.

They need wonder no longer. Mr. Rattner proposed a deal that would reward the United Auto Workers at the expense of the people who loaned Chrysler money, and attempted to bully bondholders into accepting it. The deal would have given bondholders about 30 cents on the dollar for their secured debts while giving UAW retirees about 50 cents on their unsecured debts.

"This of course is a violation of one of the basic principles of bankruptcy law, which is that secured creditors -- those who have lent money only on the contractual promise that if the debt was unpaid they'd get specific property back -- get paid off before unsecured creditors get anything," noted columnist Michael Barone.

In a radio interview, Tom Lauria, an attorney for several of the bondholders said: "One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House, and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight."

The White House denied it had made threats, but two other participants in the negotiations told the Business Insider that "conversations with administration officials left them expecting that they would be politically targeted."

Both told the Business Insider they'd voted for Mr. Obama. The client of Mr. Lauria's that was bullied into submission was Perella Weinberg, the firm that made White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel rich.

All of Chrysler's creditors who'd accepted TARP funds accepted the deal, but several firms which hadn't taken government money rejected it, forcing Chrysler to file for bankruptcy protection April 30. President Obama and other Democrats ascribed the rejection to "greed." But they have that exactly backward.

"Think carefully about what's happening here," Mr. Barone said. "The White House...is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democrat Party."

Why should the UAW, which shares responsibility with Chrysler's management for running the company into the ground, be rewarded at the expense of the bondholders, without whose funds the doors at Chrysler would have been shut long ago? The bondholders represent pension funds on which workers who are not responsible for bankrupting Chrysler depend for their retirement.

Bailing out the UAW at the expense of the law may not be such a good deal for unions in the long run. Businesses need to borrow money. But, Mr. Barone asked, "Who is going to buy bonds from unionized companies if the government is going to take their money away and give it to the union?"

The shakedown of Chrysler bonholders is "an episode of Gangster Government," says Mr. Barone. It isn't just unionized companies that could suffer from the Obama administration's cavalier attitude toward the rights of bondholders. The Treasury department has to sell several trillion dollars worth of bonds to fund the president's massive spending.

"Will the White House treat Treasury bondholders better than they've treated Chrysler bondholders?" asks law professor Glenn Reynolds. The Chinese government, the largest foreign purchaser of Treasury securities, evidently doesn't think so. Treasury data for January and February indicate the Chinese have cut back substantially on their purchase of bonds. If those bonds go unsold, it isn't only Chrysler and General Motors who face bankruptcy.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Questions for Barack Obama

June 2, 2009 - Why aren't you going to church? Before you ran for the presidency you went to church pretty regularly. You almost always went to your home church, the Trinity Church of Christ which was pastored by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. But the Reverend Wright was shown to be a black racist and you and your family left the church. Too bad, considering you called him your mentor and he was definitely a father figure for you.

That unfortunate episode is in the past and I don't think you and your family have attended church much since then. Can't you find another pastor you like and think the same way you do? If there was ever a time that you need a strong relationship with God it is now.

May 20, 2009 - You often say that abortion should be legal and infrequent. If abortion is not immoral and nothing is wrong with it why should it be infrequent? With your reasoning there is no reason why there shouldn't be frequent abortions. It could be the preferred form of birth control.

April 20, 2009 - What were you thinking of when you ordered the Federal Cabinet Agencies to find 100 million in cost savings over the next 90 days? This amount is so small that it is meaningless. It amounts to 1/4 of the increase in budget Congress awarded itself. Did you really think you would get positive publicity for it? I think we have a great example of form over substance.

March 30,2009 - How can the Federal Government guarantee the warranties of autos? If an auto company goes bankrupt and disappears how can you guarantee there will be all of the parts needed for those cars? How can you guarantee there is a dealer garage to service those vehicles? How can you guarantee that the owners of the vehicles with the warranties won't be severely inconvenienced? I don't see any possible way without spending billions of dollars and still severely inconveniencing the auto owners.

March 19, 2009 - Do you really expect us to believe you didn't know about the AIG retention bonuses until a week before they were announced? You are a micromanager. You were the second biggest AIG campaign fund contributor in the last few years. You have people in the White House who do nothing but deal with what the political fallout will be for different administration actions. I think you timed this relatively minor issue to hide the billions AIG is giving out in the last 30 billion bailout - which went through during your presidency - to foreign banks.

I Wish Obama Good Luck

11/9/08 Like most people I want to be right. Right about my personal choices. Right abut my politics. Right about everything. Some people are obsessed about being right, especially in relationships.

For at least the last 25 years my politics have been to the right and, living in Northern California, that means I almost always vote differently than most others. And, when people do vote to the right in California they are usually voting as a reaction to something else, and I am not necessarily in line with them about those items. One example is California term limits which I thought was too strict and would have negative unintended consequences. Unfortunately I was right.

Sometimes people appear to be right about something, but it is not for the reason they state. I always say I would rather be lucky than good. One example of this is Bill Clinton. He made a lot of bad choices at the beginning of his presidency (raising taxes and health care) and was going nowhere. The economy wasn't growing much if at all. The stock market was in the doldrums. Most individuals were very unhappy with Bill, Hillary and their proposed takeover of the American health care system. Then the Republicans took control of the House and Senate, and the stock market started strengthening. Also, PC's were becoming more prevalent and real efficiency gains were starting to be seen from them that positively affected the economy. Also, in Clinton's second term, the dotcom bubble started and international trade started booming. Both of these really drove the economy up. In all of these positive events (at least they were positive in Clinton's presidency) there is little that Clinton had to do with but he could crow about how his policies early in his presidency (like raising taxes ~ which was really a strain on the economy) was creating all the prosperity being seen. I have always called him "Lucky Bill".

This brings me to our new President Obama. I was against him for may reasons. He has no real executive experience, except for shaking down banks for money to fund the loans now part of or subprime mess. He was wrong about Iraq. He has not real understanding of international events - he speaks very naively. He will probably stop work on the US Mexico border fence which has proved to be successful. He will want to give illegals drivers licenses. He will try to kill off nuclear energy and offshore oil drilling - our only real short term hopes for energy relief. He wants to tax, tax, tax. And don't believe that it is only the rich he will tax.

But the fact remains that he is very popular internationally and has charisma ~ these are worth a lot. And, I would rather have a lucky president than not.

So, I wish Obama good luck. He and us need it. No matter where you live.