By Bryon York, Washington Examiner

Meet your new Bosses, they set your salary now

It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

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By Joseph Farrah, World Net Daily

Obama is extending his powers and taking over

After yesterday’s events, there can be only one conclusion about the goal of Barack Obama’s administration – to destroy the U.S. economy, to transform it from one based on free enterprise to one directed by government.

In the last 48 hours, we’ve witnessed a presidential pretender fire the chief executive officer of General Motors and put a gun to the head of the Chrysler Corp., demanding that this U.S. business begin the process of selling out to a foreign automaker.

What do you call it when Obama makes moves to take over the auto industry? A coupe d’etat.But it is hardly a joking matter.Do you realize what just happened?How does a president fire a CEO? If Obama can fire the head of a troubled, but legendary corporation like GM and then order its business plan to be rewritten according to his wishes, presidential power has become unlimited. We no longer live in the United States of America that is guided by a Constitution based on the limited power of government. We live in a tyranny, and we’re all subject to the whims of one man.

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By Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com 

The Rookie is making a lot of mistakes

Someone once said that, for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game. Somewhere, at some time during the season, a rookie will make a mistake that will cost you a game.

We now have a rookie President of the United States and, in the dangerous world we live in, with terrorist nations going nuclear, just one rookie mistake can bring disaster down on this generation and generations yet to come.

Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other presidents in American history have ever been. It is not just that he has never been president before. He has never had any position of major executive responsibility in any kind of organization where he was personally responsible for the outcome.

By Karen Travers & Jake Tapper, ABC News

Obama will face scepticism from Europe

When Barack Obama traveled to Europe in the summer, he was a candidate looking to shore up his foreign policy credentials and prove to the American public that he was qualified to be commander in chief.

When he travels to Europe today, he is the president and by default, the face of American capitalism that many blame for the current global economic woes.

Obama still remains popular abroad and Europeans have applauded him for reversing many of the most controversial policies of President George W. Bush, including his move to close the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, ending aggressive interrogation techniques and outlining a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq.

But Obama will encounter European leaders who are skeptical about his administration’s economic policies and who are unwilling to commit further resources in Afghanistan.

By MONICA LANGLEY and NEAL E. BOUDETTE, Wall Street Journal

Me and my guys will take it from here

Inside a windowless, ornate room Thursday just across from the Oval Office, President Barack Obama and a group of senior economic advisers began the job of remaking the American automobile industry.

The first order of business: Oust General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner. It “wasn’t the hardest decision,” said one government official.

Steven Rattner, a former investment banker who is heading the administration’s auto restructuring; chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers; and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner were among those gathered around the polished wood table of the Roosevelt Room in the White House’s West Wing. They were there to decide under what conditions the government would continue to prop up once-powerful Detroit car companies GM and Chrysler LLC.

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BY MICHAEL P. TREMOGLIE, THE BULLETIN

NYT spikes story linking Obama to ACORN

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.” 

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the committee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her. Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to “reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

Ms. Heidelbaugh then told the congressional panel: “Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, “it was a game changer.”’

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Paul Craig Roberts

Obama is destroying the middle class

Obama and his public relations team have made it appear that his trillion dollars in higher taxes will fall only on “the rich.”  Obama stresses that his tax increase is only for the richest 5 percent of Americans while the other 95 percent receive a tax cut.

The fact of the matter is that the income differences within the top 5% are far wider than the differences between the lower tax brackets and the “rich” American in the 96th percentile.

For Obama, being “rich” begins with $250,000 in annual income, the bottom rung of the top 5 percent.  Compare this “rich” income to that of, for example, Hank Paulson, President George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary when he was the head of Goldman Sachs.