Free Republic

President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave District of Columbia 20500 Dear President Obama, I am deeply concerned and angered by the unconstitutional, illegal, and tyrannical actions taken recently by the administration’s “pay czar”. While I personally am not financially affected by this action, I find myself repeatedly asking the question, “What country am I living in?”

Last week's announcement that "Pay Czar" Kenneth Feinberg slashed compensation for executives at seven large financial firms by an average of 50% stunned Wall Street, stoked the fires of populist resentment, and troubled economists. Will this government-mandated pay cut drive the most talented professionals away from these companies, endangering their recovery? Does it augur further politicization of economic decisions? Lost in the arguments over economics and political theory, however, is a more basic question: Was this action constitutional? Mr. Feinberg's ukase is the most prominent example (and not just by the Obama administration) of the exercise of power by an...

Friday, Oct. 23, 2009, was a glorious day. On that day it was reported that the Obama administration had failed in a significant effort in the area of the autocratic tactics it has employed since Barack Obama took office, and far more increasingly in recent weeks. I am speaking of the administration's attempt to maneuver establishment news organizations into segregating the Fox News network from the press corps. On Thursday of last week, the administration planned to allow members of the White House press pool to conduct interviews with "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg. The pool is a group of five...

In the most overt ploy yet to control the media the Obama Administration attempted to prevent FOX News from interviewing Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg on Thursday. At the same time the White House granted permission to interview Feinberg to CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC. This came on the heels of David Axelrod’s appearance on ABC’s This Week where he asserted that FOX was not a real news organization urging that other authentic news organizations such as ABC “ought not to treat them that way”. This is simply a continuation of strategies derived from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in which Rule 5 of the...

    Feinberg interviews turn networks against Obama administrationAP Photo/Kevin Wolf The Obama administration now claims it did not try to exclude Fox News from Thursday's round of network interviews with pay czar Ken Feinberg.   A treasury department spokesperson claimed, "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing".  Unfortunately for the Obama administration, four other networks are fully aware of the situation and have proof that the treasury department is lying.  Fox did have the same interview as their competitors, only because the other networks came...

This week Kenneth R. Feinberg, popularly known as the White House Pay CZAR, announced his plan to cut the pay for the top 25 earners at seven companies that received federal government help. On average cut total these executives had their compensation cut by about 50 percent. The companies are Citigroup, Bank of America, American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and the financing arms of the two automakers. This week Kenneth R. Feinberg, popularly known as the White House Pay CZAR, announced his plan to cut the pay for the top 25 earners at seven companies that received federal government...

Sen. Chris Dodd produced language that allowed Feinberg to cut salariesBy VICTORIA MCGRANE 10/23/09 4:37 PM EDT Remember all the heat Sen. Chris Dodd took earlier this year over writing the loophole in the stimulus that let AIG executives collect $165 million in bonuses? But that same provision had another key section – the authority for a White House pay czar to slash top executive pay at seven financial firms that still hold billions in taxpayer bailout funds. So what Dodd’s legislation gave away in the form of bonuses, it has taken back with special pay master Kenneth Feinberg’s power...

Pay Czar Feinberg, Not Obama, Behind Decision to Slash Executive Pay White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg did not seek President Obama's approval to order steep pay cuts from bailed-out executives. Thursday, October 22, 2009 White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg was the driving force behind the move to order steep pay cuts from bailed-out executives, and did not even seek the president's approval before making his decision. The Treasury Department is expected to formally announce in the next few days a plan to slash annual salaries by about 90 percent from last year for the 25 highest-paid executives at...

White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg was the driving force behind the move to order steep pay cuts from bailed-out executives, and did not even seek the president's approval before making his decision. The Treasury Department is expected to formally announce in the next few days a plan to slash annual salaries by about 90 percent from last year for the 25 highest-paid executives at the seven companies that received the most from the Wall Street bailout. Total compensation for the top executives at the firms would decline, on average, by about 50 percent. The sweeping decision, though, came from...

'PAY Czar' Kenneth Feinberg's official government title is "special master for compensation." You'll be happy to know that he's really getting into the confiscatory spirit of his role. Asked by Reuters if his powers include reaching back and revoking bonuses awarded to financial-industry executives before his office was created this year, Feinberg asserted broad and binding authorities -- including the ability to "claw back" money already paid out. Regulations governing his office explicitly limit his jurisdiction over contracts signed before Feb. 11, 2009. But the fine print is no obstacle to President Obama's czars. "The statute provides these guideposts, but...

President Obama's compensation czar has been meeting for weeks with executives at some of the country's largest and most troubled companies as they face a Thursday deadline to propose how much they will pay their top employees. Kenneth R. Feinberg has the unprecedented task of deciding executive compensation at seven companies that received large government bailouts. His meetings with American International Group, Citigroup, Bank of America, General Motors, Chrysler, Chrysler Financial and GMAC have been conducted in secret, with neither Feinberg nor the companies willing to say much in public.

The hefty 2009 pay package of Andrew J. Hall, leader of Citigroup Inc.'s lucrative Phibro energy trading unit, may spark a showdown between the New York-based bank and government pay czar Kenneth Feinberg.

White House appoints executive pay czarGlenn Somerville and Karey Wutkowski, Reuters Published: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration Wednesday named Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who oversaw the government's compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as its pay czar to police compensation of top earners at companies receiving "exceptional" government aid. The administration also urged new laws to give ordinary shareholders more say on how executive salaries are set. The pay packets of top executives, which sometimes are equal to several hundred times the pay of average employees, ignited a storm of controversy after...

Last week President Obama appointed yet another “czar” with massive government power, answering only to him. Even before this latest appointment, the top-ranking Democrat in the Senate wrote President Obama a letter saying that these czars are unconstitutional. President Obama’s “czar strategy” is an unprecedented power grab centralizing authority in the White House, outside congressional oversight and in violation of the Constitution. As of last week, Czar Kenneth Feinberg has the authority to set the pay scale for executives at any company receiving government money (and how many aren’t, these days?). Czar Feinberg has the power to say that someone’s...

Less than three months after the World Trade Center collapsed, a Washington lawyer, Kenneth R. Feinberg, was handed a highly unusual job. In an effort to prop up the airline industry, Congress had passed the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act. Along with loan guarantees, the new law called for a special fund to compensate victims of the 9/11 attacks. The amount of the compensation, and who qualified for it, would be decided by an all-powerful official known in legal language as a special master. Mr. Feinberg, a mediator best known for resolving the Agent Orange class-action suit, got...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - The McCain-Feingold law, which did more to change how American political campaigns are financed than any legislation since the 1970's, got its first real-world test in this year's election. And now its critics are more emphatic than ever in arguing that the law has fallen short of its goals, and even some supporters are calling for revisions. The 2002 law demolished the system that for more than a decade had allowed political parties to feed on unlimited soft-money contributions from companies, labor unions and donors. But what rose in its place remains the subject of fierce...