The Obama administration strong-arming continues

A few weeks ago I posted on reports that the White House had intervened with some of Chrysler’s creditors to force them to give up their rights for the benefit of the UAW, changing the rules after the fact to pay off a political debt; I got a couple responses from liberals saying, in essence, “What’s the problem here?”  I posted at greater length answering that question, though I got no comments that time.  Now, in the parallel situation with GM, even the Washington Post has been forced to take notice of the rancid favoritism being shown by the White House,

declaring,

GM’s new owner (the Obama administration) should stop bullying the company’s bondholders. . . .

While the Obama administration has been playing hardball with bondholders, it has been more than happy to play nice with the United Auto Workers. How else to explain why a retiree health-care fund controlled by the UAW is slated to get a 39 percent equity stake in GM for its remaining $10 billion in claims while bondholders are being pressured to take a 10 percent stake for their $27 billion?

I realize that liberals don’t see anything wrong with this—after all, it’s a liberal Democratic president funneling money to a liberal organization that’s practically a wing of the Democratic party—but I can just imagine the ear-splitting shrieks we’d be hearing about “the rule of law” and “undue influence” and “political thuggery” if a Republican administration had tried anything of this sort.

Nor is this the end of the administration’s blatant manipulation of the process.  Last week, I took note briefly of a case in Florida where a Dodge dealer in Florida had his dealership taken away from him without due process for no good reason whatsoever; now it comes out that there’s reason to suspect partisan manipulation in Chrysler’s dealership structure.  A blogger named Doug Ross writes,

A cursory review by that person showed that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing list were heavy Republican donors.

To quickly review the situation, I took all dealer owners whose names appeared more than once in the list. And, of those who contributed to political campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates. While this isn’t an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if it can be verified. . . .

I have thus far found only a single Obama donor (and a minor one at that: $200 from Jeffrey Hunter of Waco, Texas) on the closing list.

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal rightly notes that “Ross’s evidence is suggestive, not conclusive. It does not appear that anyone has yet conducted a complete analysis of Chrysler dealers’ political contributions “; but it’s mighty suggestive indeed, especially as it fits right in with an emerging pattern.  But then, as Taranto says, “Political intervention in private business is an invitation for the most brazen sort of corruption.”