Financial Times – GM to file for Chapter 11 protection
What will $50 billion buy you these days? How about 60 percent of a bankrupt car company worth less than $58 billion that provides health insurance for 1 million retirees and has a plan to lose less money by making fewer cars?
Writers Tom Braithwaite, Julie MacIntosh, Bernard Simon and John Reed provide a clear, concise and useful explanation of what’s going to happen today as failed General Motors likely becomes a shared liability for every taxpayer.
“However, the agreement is likely to draw strong objections from GM’s dealers and other creditors, who will argue that the plan is illegal, said one person close to the matter.
Opponents to the plan are likely to argue that because the bondholders are not contributing anything to the “new” GM, they should not be awarded stock in the new company as part of a sale process.
A bankruptcy judge can rule that a company’s bankruptcy plan is illegal if it is actually just a reorganisation plan disguised as a sale process. In such cases, a judge may rule that certain creditors are being inappropriately awarded stakes in the new company.”
Wall Street Journal — Potential Conflicts Abound in Government Role
General Motors will today officially be where Chrysler is – partly owned by a federal government that makes a bewildering set of often competing demands: return to profitability but quit making your most profitable cars; cut costs but stop importing cheaper parts or finished products.
Writers Neil King, Jeffrey McCracken and Mike Spector look at what could happen when the biggest shareholder is also the regulator, tax collector and customer.
“‘Once the federal government is not simply a regulator, but is all of a sudden also on the receiving end of regulations, that fundamentally alters the politics of how the government interacts with the car industry,’ said John Graham, an auto safety expert who served as President George W. Bush’s regulatory czar within the OMB.
That neutrality issue will be particularly pointed when it comes to Ford Motor Co., which alone among the Big Three has not received federal assistance. Mr. Graham and others worry that the government could find itself tilting key regulatory or purchasing decisions in favor of GM or Chrysler because of its interest in those companies.”
Kansas City Star — Political backlash expected from Tiller’s shooting
Writer David Klepper explains how the shocking murder of a provider of grisly late-term abortions has set off a political powder keg.
Pro-abortion rights groups have seized on the killing of a man in his church after decades of threats and violence (he was shot once and had his clinic bombed before) as evidence of the extremism they believe to be at the heart of the anti-abortion movement.
Meanwhile, many Americans were surprised to learn that anyone was making a living providing abortions to women more than seven months pregnant.
Kansas, where John Brown and his sons slaughtered pro-slavery settlers, is not unfamiliar with this kind of vigilantism.
“Over the years, Tiller became a lightning rod, a hero to abortion-rights groups and an archvillain for abortion opponents who first protested him two decades ago.
In March, Tiller was acquitted of charges that he violated Kansas abortion laws. Yet again, the man some labeled “Tiller the Killer” went on with his business.
And yet again, many abortion opponents felt their concerns were ignored by prosecutors and politicians.
‘There was a lot of anger when the decision went in favor of Dr. Tiller,’ said Mel Khan, a political science professor at Wichita State University.”
Washington Post — Sotomayor Was a Passionate but Civil Activist
Judge Sonia Sotomayor has always been an activist – including her 1974 work as a racial-preference enthusiast when as an undergraduate she filed a formal federal complaint against her benefactors at Princeton University for failing to implement an affirmative action program for hiring “Puerto Rican and Chicano” professors quickly enough.
But as writers Amy Goldstein and Alec MacGillis point out over and over again in a story they seemed genuinely sorry to have to write, Sotomayor has always been very civil about suing people, organizing protests and other activism, usually in the name of racial preferences. It’s clearly been the animating passion of her life.
The picture that comes through is of someone who big law firms, corporations, foundations and other members of the New York establishment could work with to burnish their Radical Chic credibility on race.
“Founded in 1972, and backed by the Ford Foundation, among others, the Puerto Rican defense fund already had achieved victories in promoting bilingual education in the New York schools. Around the time Sotomayor joined, it was on the verge of its biggest coup, a challenge of City Council district lines that it argued were racially gerrymandered. The organization won an injunction forcing a last-minute postponement of the 1981 municipal elections, then a redrawing of the lines.
The organization went on to file successful discrimination challenges against the New York police, fire and sanitation departments; public housing and co-op complexes; and school districts that overused special-education designations for Hispanic pupils.”
New York Post – Obama Keeps his Big Apple Pledge
Writers Charles Hurt and Stefanie Cohen update their Sunday story to provide some of the details on the costs of the Obama’s big night out in New York. $24,000 for the corporate-style jet the first couple flew into JFK. The White House wasn’t saying how much the rest of the evening cost taxpayers.
Whatever the price, it was worth every penny to the New Yorkers who reveled in their presence.
“Then it was up to Broadway, where they had tickets at the Belasco Theatre for “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” a play by August Wilson about a man coming to terms with the history of slavery.
“I’m nervous, excited, honored,” said Andre Holland, who plays character Jeremy Furlow, before the show. “It’s like in Shakespearean times, when the king would come to the show.”
