Posted by
1 American Patriot on Tuesday, July 07, 2009 12:05:00 PM
Property Rights are the cornerstone of capitalism and a cornerstone of democracy.
Property Rights protect the owners of property from confiscation of assets.
Without property rights there is no capitalism. People wouldn't invest for fear if they showed their wealth it would be taken by the politically powerful.
The Obama administration is doing this.
Protection of property rights is also a keystone of democracy. A robust private sector is necessary for democracy to work. If government controls everything there can be no personal liberty. People will fear to oppose governmental initiatives, as we see in Russia and China today.
So what has Obama done to undermine property rights?
We saw an early example of Obama's lack of respect for contracts and property rights when bonuses were paid to AIG employees. There were bonuses required by employment contracts. The government tried to get AIG to nullify the contracts and when told that was illegal, instituted a retroactive confiscatory 90% tax.
A second example of Obama's recent Tax initiative. Obama wants to stop U.S. citizens from banking in "tax havens", by forcing them to prove they are not doing anything illegal. If they do not, they are assumed to be doing something illegal and the full power of the law abuses them. This undercuts the principle of "innocent until proven guilty", the foundation of our legal system, another pillar of democracy.
A third recent example is the auto negotiations. Property rights are being violated here as well. By contract, owners, lenders, suppliers, employees etc of private firms all have "priorities" to claims on a firms assets if they go bankrupt. Bondholders are ahead of unions. But Obama is "stealing" money from the bondholders and giving it to his favored constituency, the auto unions.
Bondholder had $27 billion in claims and were offered 10% of the auto maker in compensation. The United Auto Workers, had $20 billion in claims and were offered $10 billion in cash and 40% of the auto maker. And remember the bondholders claims by law have priority. This is blatant theft.
Members of the Obama administration have also been accused of "strong arming" bondholders to protect their allies in the auto unions.
Of course the mainstream media, completely ignores missteps by the "chosen one".