Thugocracy: America’s New Gangster Government

Recently by Samuel L. Blumenfeld: Looking Backward 123 Years Later

The essence of Gangster Government was summed by a comment President Barack Hussein Obama made in October, 2010:

We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.

That in essence is what government corruption is all about, and that is what we have had in Washington since Obama took his oath of office. We now have a government of men, not laws. That was how the Democrat Congress forced the enactment of Obama’s socialized healthcare program despite strong opposition from the American people.

His contempt for the Republican opposition was summed up when the Democrat-in-Chief said: “They can come for the ride, but they have to sit in the back.“ So now, Jim Crow has also become a philosophical tenet of the Obama regime.

All of this and much more is revealed in David Freddoso’s new book, Gangster Government, a primer on the Obama government’s corrupt practices, revealing the details of some of the worst forms of federal corruption ever visited on the American people.

Published by Regnery in 2011, the book leaves no doubt that what we are dealing with in the White House is unprecedented corruption on a scale that can only be characterized as criminal in its violations of the U.S. Constitution, violations that have all of the earmarks of gangster activity.

Well-schooled in the corrupt practices of Chicago’s Democrat political machine, Obama and his cronies have brought to Washington everything that is repugnant about the way politicians manipulate political power in the Windy City. Case in point is how the Obama administration handled the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, a story of such blatant gangsterism that it boggles the mind.

For years, General Motors had been so badly managed by its top brass that it had become deeply in debt and was headed toward bankruptcy. If allowed to be liquidated, the UAW, the United Auto Workers union, would have been the big loser. The secured creditors would have been first in line to receive whatever monies the sale of GM’s assets would have made. That’s when Obama decided to step in and bail out the company.

His union friends and their pension funds were in jeopardy. The UAW had contributed greatly to Obama’s campaign for the presidency. So they had to be saved. The solution was a bailout for the company as a reward for the union’s good deeds. Freddoso writes:

“If anyone wonders whether the automotive bailout was all about saving a union, the answer is yes. There is no other reason why two domestic automotive manufacturers – both historically significant, but neither remotely indispensable to the economy – would get the bailout they did when nearly 90,000 businesses failed in the financial crisis and received no government help.”

The method the Obama government used to bailout GM was quite creative. Most Americans believe that GM was given a bailout loan of $50 billion. However, that was not the case. The company was given a loan of $6.7 billion at 7 percent interest. The Canadian government also gave GM a loan of $1.4 billion. The bulk of the bailout money was transferred to GM through the purchase of 60.8 percent of the company’s equity. The Canadian government paid GM $8.1 billion for 11.7 percent of equity. Thus, the U.S. and Canadian governments owned 72.5 percent of the company at the time of the bailout.

The Obama administration also decided to save Chrysler, which was even closer to liquidation than GM. But the case for saving Chrysler was based more on political and social realities than on its economic factors

The UAW had everything at stake in the survival of GM and Chrysler. Freddoso writes:

“By the time of their bankruptcies, GM and Chrysler together employed 77,600 UAW members.… With so many union jobs at stake, the government rigged the companies’ bankruptcies so that the UAW would emerge stronger than any of the other stakeholders, including taxpayers.”

In other words, if the Obama administration had permitted the two auto companies to go out of business, the UAW would have lost a third of its membership.

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