I For One Welcome Our New Crony Capitalist Overlords

The Congressional Black Caucus thinks the bank bailout ought to include a bailout of prominent, successful black businessman and is holding up bank reform to make their point.  What are friends for?

Black Caucus Seeks to Ease Radio’s Woes
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON — The radio business has nothing to do with the plan to overhaul the nation’s system for regulating banks and other financial institutions.

Except, it turns out, in Congress.

One of most intriguing mysteries here in recent weeks is why members of the Congressional Black Caucus have chosen to buck their party and president in trying to stall financial regulation reform.

The answer lies at least in part with an aggressive lobbying campaign by a troubled New York City-based radio broadcasting company, Inner City Broadcasting, whose co-founder is a prominent New York politician and businessman, Percy Sutton.

In a rare break with President Obama, the caucus, made up of black members of Congress, is holding back support for the legislation because it wants the administration to help minority-owned businesses, including Inner City, whose financial plight has been specifically identified in meetings with top administration officials.

Inner City Broadcasting, which owns 17 commercial stations nationwide and was co-founded in 1971 by Mr. Sutton, faces a possible financial collapse because of pressure by Goldman Sachs and GE Capital

...Members of the caucus asked the administration to squeeze lenders like GE Capital and Goldman Sachs to renegotiate their loans with Inner City and other black-owned radio stations, arguing that these financial institutions themselves had already received federal assistance. Some caucus members even pushed to include black-owned radio stations in the bailout.

to repay nearly $230 million in debt, Pierre Sutton, his son, said in an interview Wednesday.

Team Obama is pretending to stand firm:

“We share the concerns raised by C.B.C. members about struggling minority communities, and that’s why we’ve engaged in a positive way to make progress on these issues,” Jennifer R. Psaki, a White House spokeswoman, said in a written comment.

But privately, participants in some of the meetings said, the Obama administration has raised objections, saying it did not believe it was appropriate to pressure financial institutions to make concessions for specific loans or businesses, according to one person who attended a meeting with Treasury and White House officials on the topic but asked to remain anonymous.

Inner City Broadcasting has hired the Podesta Group, which was founded by John Podesta and his brother Tony; John is now off at the Center For American Progress advocating for liberal causes, so IBC has their bases covered.

Comments

[clarice]

Why would Obama's crony capitalism be extended to apply to a man who publicly stated that an Arab Al-Mansour paid for Obama's Harvard law school education?

http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/obama_harvard_/2008/09/23/133199.html

[clarice]

Well, Sutton claims he wrote a letter of recommendation to HLS for Obama.

[Fred Beloit]

Isn't there a tenet in our law that addresses the equality of races? If so, isn't that a conflict with governmental organizations that promote and fund one race over others?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Podesta, Podesta — I've heard that name before.....

[peter]

Wasn't Percy Sutton another tax cheat? Sutton was David Dinkins' rabbi, transforming him from the title of "City Clerk" to Mayor. In these times of a troubled Obama administration, as a lifelong New Yorker, I recall how well our fair city rebounded from the dark days of the Dinkins administration, when squeegee guys terrorized the city. sutton made most of his money from crony capitalism, having an exclusive cable tv contract. Percy knows where a few of the bodies are buried, if you get my drift. See LUN

[hit and run]

I can't tell you how much I love this phrase (Jennifer R. Psaki, a White House spokeswoman):

...we’ve engaged in a positive way to make progress on these issues...

How have you engaged? In a positive way!

What has been positive about your engagement? The progress!

What progress have you made? We've engaged! In a positive way!

[Janet]

You want jobs? Better paying jobs? How about stopping illegal immigration. LUN is a video about SEIU from Naked Emperor News. It is sickening.

[clarice]

Hit, you make spin sound like it's dirty or stupid or both. HUMPH

[Jane]

I think the whole thing is racist!

[Thomas Collins]

Peter made reference to when:

"squeegee guys terrorized the city [New York City]"

They didn't terrorize me, peter. I once found myself on Bruckner Boulevard during Dinkins' reign. There was a red light and the squeegee guys approached. I just kept driving right through the light, leaving the squeegee guys the choice of scattering or getting run over. They scattered left and right like bowling pins sometimes do.

[John Bibb]

***
The same clueless communist Black Congressional Conference clowns who went to Cuba and praised the Castro brothers.
***
Rocketman
***

[peter]

Thomas, were you racing to Yankee Stadium to watch Reggie Jackson?

[Thomas Collins]

Peter, I was taking my aunt to her apartment in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, and I got bolluxed up on 95 and ended up on Bruckner Boulevard. I tell folks I was like the guy in Bonfire of the Vanities, except he was on Bruckner Boulevard with his young mistress and I was on Bruckner Boulevard with my seventysomething aunt!

[matt]

I hate to say it, but it started when they made redlining illegal.

[matt]

when I went to school in New York the squeegee guys hung out on both ends of Canal Street to get the bridge and tunnel traffic.

[Ignatz]

--Isn't there a tenet in our law that addresses the equality of races? If so, isn't that a conflict with governmental organizations that promote and fund one race over others?--

No, because the tenet is now 'all races are equal, but some are more equal than others'

[errol]

Crony capitalism fits perfectly with our Chimp in Chief's worldview: The "smart people" with Ivy League educations should CENTRALLY PLAN all are lives and our nation's life.

T-minue 3 years and counting until our Marxist-Moooslim in Chief is history.

[narciso]

OT, from an earlier thread, why I trust Fagan about as much as a rattlesnake

[peter]

when I went to school in New York the squeegee guys hung out on both ends of Canal Street to get the bridge and tunnel traffic

Used to see them on my way to CBGBs

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Injecting some levity into the day:

Greyhoundgate? Busscam? Sarahquiddick?