It’s fashionable for folks on the right to compare the Obama administration to the hapless, hopeless Carter years. The more we go on, though, the more it’s looking like the Obamessiah is kicking it Nixon-style.
One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.
Here’s my question. Why is the White House so very confident that the media will do its bidding? I know that’s a rhetorical question these days, but doesn’t it bother you that this administration is absolutely certain that the national media will put the hit on Americans citizens who have broken no law if the administration orders it?
Any administration should be concerned that at least a couple journalists won’t leap to do the President’s bidding. What makes the administration think that the “full force” of the corps will come to bear here without any serious blowback at all?
That is straight-up brownshirt territory and it worries the hell out of me.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds asks, “How does the supposedly independent White House Press Corps feel to know that it’s being wielded as a weapon by Obama’s operatives? Might it at least be interested in looking into these allegations?”
Ed Driscoll gives the MSM an A for Activism.
UPDATE 2: Speak softly and carry a Luca Brasi.
Tags: Corruption, Government Bailouts, Media Bias, President Barack Obama
[...] Welcome readers from Michelle Malkin.com (via her rotating sidebar links) and The Sundries Shack. Filed under: Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, Liberal Fascism, Oh, That Liberal Media!, The Future [...]
I’ve been trying to figure out which goes better with my brown shirt and jack boots, a swastika or hammer and sickle armband? Decisions, decisions.
I’m just sayin’.
Its so much fun to see the administration expecting people to just roll over when it says stuff. Sure, the weaker-willed people among those they abuse will do so, but some will get the word out that they’re doing such abominable acts.
There’s a name for the fascist fools in the media who act as thug on behalf of their Messiah: Quislings.
Well, bullies, too. And, possibly, frustrated despots.
[...] Daily, Gateway Pundit, Reason, Clayton Cramer’s BLOG, NewsBusters.org, Pajamas Media, The Sundries Shack, The Rhetorican, Founding Bloggers and Nice [...]
[...] The Sundries Shack and The Other McCain (on their headlines sidebar) link. Thanks! Possibly related posts: [...]
Obama isn’t another Nixon. Nixon didn’t have the Internet.
This is a tempest in a small, cracked Republican teapot. I notice that the blog that started this “thuggery” accusation has now stopped allowing comments. It based its accusation on the words of an interested party — Perella Whineberg’s lawyer — without ever noting the party’s interest, and without ever even bothering to examine how bankruptcy law is structured and applied.
The issue here is Perella Whineberg’s desire to be paid 50 cents on the dollar for its bonds, rather than 29 cents on the dollar offered by the Treasury. The reason Treasury is involved is because Chrysler can’t obtain private “debtor in possession” financing for its bankruptcy. Treasury is playing that role, and he who provides DIP financing always has a big role in bankruptcy proceedings.
Virtually every bankruptcy features some fighting among creditors over pieces of a pie that, by definition, isn’t big enough to give everyone a full slice. The biggest fights are often between different classes of creditors, and in those fights you will often see “senior” creditors howling over not being paid as much as they think they deserve relative to “junior” creditors.
That was the case here. In addition to Perella Whineberg, two other senior creditors (Oppenheimer and Stairstep) were so-called “holdouts” from a settlement agreed to be scores of other creditors. In bankruptcies, holdouts usually don’t do very well. The judge sometimes tosses them an extra crust of bread, but not always.
As the DIP financing provider, the Treasury wants Chrysler to remain an ongoing entity. Its interest is to produce agreement among the creditors so there won’t be a prolonged court fight that might endanger the entity’s ability to repay the DIP financing. So, it wants to corral the holdouts.
Perella Whineberg was corralled last Friday; it issued a press release to that effect. But it also trotted out its lawyer to claim that the White House had forced it into agreement by threatening to ruin the firm’s reputation. The White House categorically denied that version, something that the blog you quoted never mentioned before abruptly closing its comment section on Sunday morning.
We don’t know what was said by the White House to Perella Whineberg. It’s unlikely that anyone threatened Whineberg with the White House press corps, but it’s not beyond imagining that the White House pointed to President Obama’s statements and told Whineberg that they were only the beginning of what they’d face if the holdouts continued to hold out and jeopardized the ongoing operations of Chrysler. After all, the taxpayers are now on the hook for $4 billion in DIP financing, and it’s the government’s job to protect that investment against greedy graspers like Whineberg.
In any case, the idea that “the rule of law” was ignored is outrageous. The Chrysler bankruptcy, and the recent machinations, is par for the course. Perella Whineberg was trying to get a better deal, and failed. What really sticks out here is Perella Whineberg’s utter lack of class and professionalism. They are the personification of the kind of sore losers and manipulative squirrels that the Republican Party has become.
Yeah, keep thinking that everything’s perfectly fine.
See, the thing about using the media as your own personal attack dogs is that at some point, they turn on you.
Wanting 50 cents back for every dollar he loaned makes you think he’s greedy?
So…grinder…
Is this a problem because we don’t know for a fact that a threat was made, or does it just not make any difference to you if a threat _was_ made?
Point of fact, grinder. Firms like Perella Wineberg generally get more of their investment back in bankruptcy hearings than, say, the labor unions because of what sort of creditor they are. The very simple fact is that the administration is cutting the people who have a legitimate claim to being repaid what they are lawfully owed in order to give a much larger cut to valued campaign contributors. It’s not complicated, bankruptcy hearings. You just have to read a little bit, and I don’t mean left-wing blogs.