Table of Contents
Nire hartzatxuentzat:
Ez nekeak, ez da bide txarra.
FOREWORD
BY MICHAEL BARONE
We have just seen an episode, I wrote in a May 5, 2009, column in the Washington Examiner, of Gangster Government. The subject of the column was the Chrysler bankruptcy package that was being hammered out by White House advisers Steven Rattner and Ron Bloom. Ordinarily in bankruptcy secured creditorsthose who lent money only on the contractual promise that if the debt was unpaid theyd get specific property backare paid off in full before any payment goes to unsecured creditors.
But in the case of Chrysler, the Obama administration insisted that Chryslers bondholders, who were secured creditors, would get only about 29 cents on the dollar, while United Auto Workers retirees, who were unsecured creditors, would get about 50 cents on the dollar. More than that, Barack Obama made a point of referring to the bondholders as speculators. And one of the bondholders lawyers claimed that his client was directly threatened by the White House 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. An odd threatexcept that Rattner is widely known to be one of the best friends of the publisher of the New York Times.
This was a case of the White House transferring the property of one group of people to another group to which it owed political debts. The UAW has long been one of the Democratic partys strongest supporters, and labor unions contributed $400 million to Democratic campaigns in the 2008 cycle. Those contributions apparently paid off.
Some may consider this an isolated episode. Others may point out that its possible to identify episodes of gangster government in previous administrations of both political parties. But, as I predicted at the end of my May 2009 column, this was part of a continuing series, for two reasons.
First, under the Obama administration, the federal government became intertwined with the private sector in unprecedented ways. It owns large shares of two large auto companies and what was one of the nations largest insurance companies. It extended enormous loans to the nations largest banks. The administrations defenders can point out, accurately, that some of these measures were initially taken in circumstances of financial emergency during the Bush administration. But that administration was not responsible for actions taken after January 20, 2009.
The second reason that this administration seems unusually inclined toward gangster government is the philosophy of its leader. When asked what he looked for when choosing a nominee for the Supreme Court, Barack Obama said he wanted someone who understands justice is not just about some abstract legal theory, but someone who has empathy. In other words, judges should decide cases so that the right people win, not according to the rule of law. The president himself taught law at the University of Chicago. But his principles seem to be conducive to the kind of gangster government the city of Chicago has from time to time experienced.
But let the facts speak for themselves, as assembled and presented by my Washington Examiner colleague David Freddoso. As in his 2008 book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Medias Favorite Candidate, Freddoso is self-confessedly not a partisan of the president. But he is also a fine reporter who respects the facts and refuses to draw unwarranted conclusions. He understands that people sometimes have good motives to do bad things.
Gangster government is always a danger, whoever is in power. It is a greater danger the more government is deeply enmeshed with the private sector and when its leaders believe that rules should be bent or ignored in order to benefit favored constituencies. So thanks to David Freddoso for providing a report that enables citizens to decide just how far gangster government has gone in this administration.
Michael Barone is senior political analyst for theWashington Examiner,
resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and co-author of
The Almanac of American Politics.
CHAPTER ONE
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT
Were these acts committed on a petty scale and detected, they would be severely punishedthe perpetrator suffering great disgrace. Those who commit such petty crimes are called temple robbers, kidnappers, burglars, con-men and thieves. But if only a man will go to the additional trouble of relieving his victims of their freedom, along with the contents of their pocketbooksif only he turns them from citizens into slaveswhy, then, instead of suffering insults and accusations, he is deemed happy and blessed, not only by his victims, but by all who hear that he has ascended to the very pinnacle of perfect injustice.
Thrasymachus in PlatosRepublic.
To his admirers, President Barack Obama is a philosopher kingor a philosopher presidentas this snippet from the
New York Times suggests:
In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition, [Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg] explained that he sees Mr. Obama as a kind of philosopher president, a rare breed that can be found only a handful of times in American history.
Theres John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln and in the 20th century just Woodrow Wilson, he said.
His vice president, Joseph Biden, informs us that Obama only comes off as aloof because hes so brilliant. He is an intellectual.
His longtime friend and White House advisor, Valerie Jarrett, reminds us, through author David Remnick, that Obama is like no ordinary man:
I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is.He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the abilitythe extraordinary, uncanny abilityto take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually.So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. Hes been bored to death his whole life. Hes just too talented to do what ordinary people do.
Newsweeks Evan Thomas says Obamas greater than any small idea like America. He compares him to another recent presidentand to the Almighty:
Reagan was all about America....Obama is We are above that now. Were not just parochial, were not just chauvinistic, were not just provincial. We stand for somethingI mean in a way Obamas standing above the country, aboveabove the world, hes sort of God....
Sort of God. The One. The Light-Worker. The Philosopher President.
