Of Special Interest

Big Frick — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:57:33 +0000

I’m all for free speech as long as I can control what you’re saying.

That seems to be the message the Democrats are sending after the Supreme Court dismantled rules in place for a hundred years restricting corporate spending on political ads. The court’s edict officially reinstated the constitutional right to freedom of speech for America’s corporate voice which has been unjustly stifled for over a century.

The Democrats are crying foul and warning that this ruling will allow a huge influx of “special interest money” into the political process. I have a news flash for all the whining Dem’s who are once again attempting to mislead the American voters with deceptive and ominous sounding verbiage; all money spent on or donated to a political campaign is special interest money. Every single dollar and cent, and in the case of Barack Obama, riyal, halalah, euro and peso.

It seems unconscionable that a president who raised nearly $1 billion in campaign funds would now claim to be worried about special interest money. After making a solemn promise to fund his campaign the way every other presidential candidate has done by using matching public funds Barack Obama pulled out a little of that CHANGE he promised early and decided he could do much better without the restrictions that come with public funding. Acting as if the country has forgotten that little sleight of hand trick he now insists that expanding participation to privately owned American corporations is tantamount to vote fixing.

The problem the Democrats are now facing is that they have spent years demonizing corporate America. They have pushed, poked, slapped and slugged companies and entire industries to the point of near nationalized government takeover. The last thing Democrats want at this point is for these corporations to have a strong vocal platform from which to fight back.

A perfect example is Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who once again made the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s (CREW) 2009 list of the 15 most corrupt members of congress. She was also prominent on the list in 2005 and 2006. It was Waters who told Shell Oil president John Hofmeister that she is “all about” instituting a complete government takeover of the oil industry. Do you think Congresswoman Waters wants Shell and other oil companies to have the right to speak out against her in her next campaign?

Congresswoman Waters and a host of other Democrat House and Senate members have made a career out of inflicting corporate pain for political gain. Their leader, Barack Obama, has just recently announced his plan to unconstitutionally single out financial institutions to hit with a special tax. Under the old rules financial institutions were powerless to get their message out to the voting public during the campaign season. Do you think perhaps Democrats may now be more than a little worried about the push back to come from these and other major American corporations?

Democrats have been successful at demonizing corporations as cold, uncaring entities when in fact they are nothing more than groups of people. Successful, profitable companies grow and employ more people. But Democrats want the government, not industry, to dictate who wins and loses in the game of business. Democrats have already announced plans to override the Supreme Court decision with new laws and restrictions. They will also come to depend heavily on their friends at the major networks to do their dirty work for them, as was done by NBC and ABC’s refusal to air commercials opposing the ObamaCare debacle. The networks are already decrying the ruling as being dangerous. ABC’s Diane Sawyer echoed most of the major networks when she warned that the ruling would open the “floodgates for companies and unions to spend all the money they want attacking political candidates." Their immediate reaction certainly gives one reason to assume the networks will do everything within their power to avoid compliance.

But the Supreme Court was fairly clear in their ruling and any attempt, either by politicians, political parties or the major networks, to stifle corporate America’s newfound right to free speech should be met with immediate and vigorous legal challenges. How much the networks are willing to spend to defend themselves remains to be seen.

If corporations, unions and industry groups are afforded the same rights to free speech as individuals Democrats will have a whole new populist movement to deal with.

What scares the hell out of them is that they see how well that worked for them in Massachusetts.

Murky Waters

Big Frick — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:43:00 +0000

You remember California Democrat US Congresswoman Maxine “Murky” Waters, don’t you?

The Maxine Waters who tried to blackmail Shell Oil by telling them if they didn’t lower gas prices she would fight to get them and other American oil companies taken over by the federal government and nationalized.

The Maxine Waters who made it onto to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s list of the most corrupt lawmakers two recent years in a row.

The Maxine Waters who filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission to have the license pulled for Los Angeles television station KTLA and the Los Angeles Times newspaper after they ran a series of negative reports on her citing her corruption and nepotism, knowing that even if they were successful at defending themselves it would cost them tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

The same Maxine Waters who defended the black rioters as they looted and burned Asian and white store owners businesses in the 1992 Los Angeles riots claiming they were just some baby momma’s getting some shoes and formula and claimed their actions were understandable.

The Maxine Waters who restated her allegations that the CIA and other federal agencies are aiding and abetting drug dealers to sell crack cocaine and other drugs in the black community.

The same Maxine Waters who lambasted the CEOs from the first eight large banks to receive TARP funds and opened her comments by saying “To the captains of the universe sitting here before all of us, all of my political life I have been in disagreement with the banking industry.”

Well apparently she actually has not been in disagreement with ALL of the banking industry, only the ones owned by white people. It turns out Ms. Waters and her husband have in fact been fairly large supporters of the black owned OneUnited Bank.

At one time Ms. Waters and her betrothed had as much as $2 million invested in OneUnited Bank. Ms. Waters had used her legislative muscle to help in the formation of OneUnited out of a conglomerate of several smaller black owned banks in California. She also made sure that these black owned banks were not bought up by white owned banks prior to the OneUnited formation. Ms. Waters and her husband certainly put their money where their mouth was when they helped expand this new bank to other states including Massachusetts and Florida. Maxine’s husband even served as a director as Ms. Waters secured meetings between the bank and Treasury officials.

The conflicts of interest run even deeper as Ms. Waters helped this particular bank both as an individual lawmaker and from her seat on the House Financial Services Committee. Even her colleague and the chairman of the committee Barney Frank has asked Maxine to just “stay out of it” when it came to aid for OneUnited. But as always this Maxine Waters does not take kindly to being told what to do and boldly continued her efforts to the benefit of OneUnited and her own pocketbook.

Maxine has been quick to condemn bankers for their extravagant spending while receiving federal TARP funds. She has however been silent when it came to OneUnited, which also received TARP money, while still spending on things like a Porsche for one executive and the $6.4 million beachfront home for the chairman in Pacific Palisades, California just outside of Malibu.

As a matter of fact at a hearing Waters praised one of OneUnited’s senior execs as “typical of the young brilliant minds that have been amassed at OneUnited.”

What she didn’t mention was her personal financial stake in the bank or the fact that these young brilliant minds had invested almost all of their capital into Fannie May and Freddie Mac and now, without federal financial support, would be considered insolvent. When asked about OneUnited she simply referred to them as “just a small bank”.

Yep, just a small bank that happens to be making Ms. Waters a lot of money.

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Of Special Interest

Murky Waters