Fear and Loathing of the White House

People are scared to the death of the Obama administration, be they once-friendly parties or not. Consider the anonymity theme in the following articles, all of recent vintage and printed in mainstream periodicals.

• Hedge Funds Are Piqued by White House (WSJ):

Hedge-fund managers are showing rare public outrage against the Obama administration, saying that it has wrongly rebuked investors necessary to salving the financial crisis.

Fund managers caught in a dispute over Chrysler LLC with the government "generally have been anonymous for fear of going on the record against a powerful president," said one recent letter from Cliff Asness...

• Obama drama: Nets take a stand against primetime pre-emptions (Hollywood Reporter):

By and large, they personally forked out for his campaign, they voted for him, and they know he is capable of boosting TV ratings just by making an appearance.

But executives at the Big Four broadcast networks are seething behind the scenes that President Obama has cost them about $30 million in cumulative ad revenue this year with his three primetime news conference pre-emptions.

Now top network execs quietly are hoping that Fox's well-publicized rejection of the president's April 29 presser will serve as precedent for denying future White House requests for prime airtime.

"We will continue to make our decisions on White House requests on a case-by-case basis, but the Fox decision gives us cover to reject a request if we feel that there is no urgent breaking news that is going to be discussed," said one network exec, who, like all, would not speak for attribution fearing repercussions from the administration... "If the president wants to make it tough for your network, he can," the exec added.

Another network executive confided, "Nobody wants to take on the White House, so we'll have to tiptoe through this."

• SEIU may be linked to ultimatum on withholding stimulus funds (Los Angeles Times):

Officials in the governor's office say a politically powerful union may have had inappropriate influence over the Obama administration's decision to withhold billions of dollars in federal stimulus money from California if the state does not reverse a scheduled wage cut for the labor group's workers.

The officials say they are particularly troubled that the Service Employees International Union, which lobbied the federal government to step in, was included in a conference call in which state and federal officials reviewed the wage cut and the terms of the stimulus package...

The only folks speaking out publicly are officials at ACORN, the SEIU, and the UAW. After all, they're the ones calling the shots in the White House.

When the UAW needed Chrysler's contracts abrogated, they pulled strings at the White House.

When the SEIU needed to rip off California's taxpayers for the umpteenth time, they pulled strings at the White House.

And people are afraid to speak out, for fear of retribution on the part of the White House. And liberals complained endlessly about Bush's "Imperial Presidency"?

Welcome to Venezuela, drones.