All the king’s men…and women

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It must have been by a perceived divine right that Obama named Steve Rattner to be car czar to oversee the government takeover of Chrysler and General Motors; there is certainly no authority in the Constitution for the President to take such action. Rattner, with the blessing of king Obama, set out to punish his king’s opponents and reward his king’s supporters. Of the 789 Chrysler dealers closed by Rattner, 788 had contributed exclusively to Republican candidates. Moreover, not one of a string of Chrysler dealerships owned by Obama supporters, Robert Johnson and Mack McClarty, was closed, but virtually all of the dealerships that competed with the Johnson-McClarty chain were closed. Chrysler president Jim Press said: “It really wasn’t Chrysler’s decision.” Rattner resigned July 13 in the face of a multi-million dollar pay-for-play scandal in New York. Another of the king’s men, Van Jones, bit the dust when the public learned that he was a self-proclaimed communist who signed a petition calling for the investigation of the Bush administration for complicity in the 9-11 tragedy. These views were perfectly alright with the king, whose chief advisor Valerie Jarrett, said “…we’ve been watching him as long as he’s been active….” Jones’ radical ideas were fine with the king, until the public expressed its dissatisfaction. Speaking of Valerie Jarrett, the king’s closest advisor, her Chicago exploits cannot go unrewarded. She was in charge of two housing projects that were among the world’s worst. While the king was only a prince in the Illinois legislature, he consistently voted to up the funding for housing projects such as those Valerie managed. Now that Valerie is the king’s salesman to the Olympic Committee, pitching Chicago for the site of the 2016 Olympics, guess who would benefit most by her success. The developers who own the land under and around Jarrett’s failed housing projects – where the proposed Olympic stadium is to be constructed. Learn more about Jarrett here, and about her politically incestuous Chicago background. It is not at all surprising that another bird in the flock wants to repeal the First Amendment. Mark Lloyd, who holds the title of Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission, is now in a position to render obsolete the whole idea of free speech. The Constitution forbids Congress from making any law that infringes the right to free speech; the Constitution does not know about the FCC or its Chief Diversity Officer, however. Lloyd has written much about his ideas on communication and democracy. He is convinced that ordinary people have no opportunity to be heard amidst the noise of giant corporate media. He believes, therefore, that the government must provide a “diversity” of voices in the media. He has proposed that privately owned media be taxed sufficiently to provide a government-dictated balance in the media. Lloyd is too smart to tackle the First Amendment head-on. Instead, he contends that there is a structural imbalance in media ownership that allows the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio hosts to have far more impact than minority voices. His cure for this situation is to levy a tax up to 100 percent of a station’s operating budget to be redistributed to minority-owned stations and to NPR. Much of Lloyd’s writing seems to suggest that he favors converting NPR to the official government media, and doing away with private media altogether. He is a big fan of Hugo Chavez, and celebrates his takeover of the media as the primary reason for his success. These are just a few of the birds that flocked to Washington at the behest of the king. This flock was raised on a diet of Marxism and in-your-face-direct-action. The nation survived a similar infusion by the Wilson administration, and by the Roosevelt administration. The nation will survive Obama, but not without suffering the consequences. One might compare the flock that has descended upon Washington to a gaggle of geese or a flock of starlings that settle in a neighborhood for a while. The noise is horrific and when they are finally run off, the mess they leave really stinks.

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