Note: I have posted at NewsBusters on how this story, which is about a week old, has gone uncovered by all but a couple of Catholic publications.

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From Seoul, South Korea:

May 21, 2009 / 08:45 pm

A letter from Pope John Paul II asking for clemency helped save the life of a future South Korean president who was sentenced to death by a military tribunal in 1980, new information reveals.

Then-President Chun Doo-hwan had accused Thomas More Kim Dae-jung of inciting the pro-democracy Gwangju People’s Uprising on May 18, 1980, UCA News reports. The uprising was crushed by the military, resulting in an official toll of 191 dead and 852 injured. However, more than 1,000 may have actually died in the clashes. When Kim was sentenced to death on December 4, 1980, Pope John Paul II wrote to President Chun a week later seeking clemency.

Chun replied to the Pope on January 5, 1981, claiming that Kim had not been charged because of political issues but had committed “an anti-national crime including subversion.”

However, President Chun acknowledged the Pope’s appeal for clemency was “based on humanitarian consideration and compassion.”

Kim’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on January 23, 1981. In response, Pope John Paul II sent a February 1981 letter to President Chun saying “you courteously acknowledged the appeal I made on purely humanitarian grounds for an act of clemency in favor of Kim whose death sentence has recently been commuted.”

“I pray God to watch over the noble Korean people and to bestow his richest favors on you all,” the Pope wrote.

Kim’s sentence was reduced to 20 years and he was forced to go to the United States in 1982, UCA News reports. He later returned to Korea and was placed under house arrest, with his full legal rights being restored in 1987.

Kim won the December 1997 election and became president in February 1998, leaving office in 2003. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Direct YouTube link:

From About.com (more background is at this link at usmemorialday.org):

It was 1866 and the United States was recovering from the long and bloody Civil War between the North and the South. Surviving soldiers came home, some with missing limbs, and all with stories to tell. Henry Welles, a drugstore owner in Waterloo, New York, heard the stories and had an idea. He suggested that all the shops in town close for one day to honor the soldiers who were killed in the Civil War and were buried in the Waterloo cemetery. On the morning of May 5, the townspeople placed flowers, wreaths and crosses on the graves of the Northern soldiers in the cemetery. At about the same time, Retired Major General Jonathan A. Logan planned another ceremony, this time for the soldiers who survived the war. He led the veterans through town to the cemetery to decorate their comrades’ graves with flags. It was not a happy celebration, but a memorial. The townspeople called it Decoration Day.

In Retired Major General Logan’s proclamation of Memorial Day, he declared:

“The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country and during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.”

The two ceremonies were joined in 1868, and northern states commemorated the day on May 30. The southern states commemorated their war dead on different days. Children read poems and sang civil war songs and veterans came to school wearing their medals and uniforms to tell students about the Civil War. Then the veterans marched through their home towns followed by the townspeople to the cemetery. They decorated graves and took photographs of soldiers next to American flags. Rifles were shot in the air as a salute to the northern soldiers who had given their lives to keep the United States together.

In 1882, the name was changed to Memorial Day and soldiers who had died in previous wars were honored as well. In the northern United States, it was designated a public holiday. In 1971, along with other holidays, President Richard Nixon declared Memorial Day a federal holiday on the last Monday in May.

Cities all around the United States hold their own ceremonies on the last Monday in May to pay respect to the men and women who have died in wars or in the service of their country. …..

Read additional history at the About.com link.

Democratic Cincinnati City Councilwoman Laketa Cole was pulled over by city police on Wednesday afternoon along with a friend while each was driving their own motorcycle.

WCPO-TV Channel 9 investigated the incident, and found that Cole appeared to attempt to get special treatment to avoid having her friend’s motorcycle seized.

The video verion of WCPO’s report ultimately notes that Cole and her friend received tickets. But “somehow,” the text that is supposed to reflect the content of the video does not.

The station did not mention Cole’s Democratic Party affiliation in its report, or in its follow-up when Cole called to defend herself. The Cincinnati Democratic Committee endorsed Cole’s reelection bid this November on April 8. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s report on the incident also doesn’t name Cole’s party.

That’s bad enough, but when Hamilton County Republican Party chairman Alex Triantafilou issued a press release denouncing Cole’s apparent attempts at obtaining favoritism, the Enquirer only identified Triantafilou’s party, and not Cole’s.

Here are segments of the text version of WCPO’s report:

As the police car camera rolled, Officer Zucker asked the pair (Cole and her friend Cornelius Scroggins), “May I see your driver’s license and proof of insurance please?”

Cole answered, “Sure. Can I ask what did we do?”

Zucker: “Yes, ma’m. You crossed the solid white line back there. That’s a violation.”

But it wasn’t the only one. Once Zucker ran the plates and license information, he found that Scroggins had a series of driving violations and license suspensions which led to an “ALS”, or Auto License Seizure. It’s a a designation that means the officer must impound that driver’s vehicle.

….. Zucker called for a tow truck. But Cole was making a call herself. On the tape you can see her hand her cell phone to officer Zucker, as he responds respectfully to a superior.

“Yes, sir. How are you?” he says. On the line was assistant police chief Lt. Col Mike Cureton. He wouldn’t talk to 9News on camera but confirmed that Cole called him and that he talked to Officer Zucker at the scene.

After Zucker hands the phone back to Cole, he walks toward his police car and you can hear him tell another officer, “He just told me not to take the motorcycle. Now what do you do?”

Zucker clearly had one understanding of that call; Cureton says he never asked the officer not to tow a motorcycle. He says Cole told him it was her cycle about to be towed. Once the officer told him it was Scroggins’ bike, Cureton says that was it.

On the police tape you can hear Zucker asking, “Miss Cole, did he want to speak with me again?” Zucker then instructs the tow truck driver to take the bike, which went to the police impound lot.

Cole dialed more than the assistant chief. City Manager Milton Dohoney confirms that she called him too.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the Enquirer’s report on the County GOP Chairman’s statement:

In a prepared statement sent to media, Hamilton County GOP Chairman Alex M. Triantafilou says voters should reject Cincinnati City Council member Y. Laketa Cole in the next election after her behavior during a traffic stop Wednesday.

Cole was pulled over by Cincinnati police for a minor traffic violation and called two high-ranking Cincinnati officials while still at the scene.

Cole and a friend were driving their motorcycles about 3:30 p.m. on Mitchell Avenue when they were flagged down by police. Cole admitted calling both Lt. Col. Michael Cureton of the Cincinnati Police and City Manager Milton Dohoney about the incident, but said she was not making a play for favoritism.

Compared to other Ohio cities, Cincinnati politics is not as dominated by Democrats. Though Democrats have held a majority of the nine-member Council most of the time for several decades, there are two other viable parties. First, there is the Charter Party, which has a rich history going back to 1924. Shortly after its inception, the Charter Party (aka the Charter Committee) was instrumental in moving the city from a mayor-council form of government (also referred to as the “strong mayor” form) to a council-city manager setup. City Council currently has two Charter Party members, and has had one or two during every Council term going back at least to 1991. Additionally, the Republican Party has usually had two or three members on Council since 1993.

The germane point is that large numbers of Metro Cincinnati-area news viewers and readers can’t automatically know the political party of a Cincinnati Council member in trouble. They can’t even infer Cole’s Democratic affiliation from the GOP’s criticism. Thus, the Enquirer’s and WCPO’s failures to identify Cole’s party in their news reports is seriously weak and substandard journalism by any objective standard.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

At Forbes, from “Capital Goes Where It’s Welcome,” following up on the Wall Street Journal op-ed (“Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich) by Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, which yours truly briefly noted last week:

The late, great Walter Wriston reduced Laffer’s and Moore’s examples to a simple formula: “Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.” By capital, Wriston meant both that which you carry in your head and in your wallet.

Most rich people are employers, by the way. When they leave, they take jobs with them. Now you know why California’s unemployment is 11.2%.

Sadly, the Buckeye State, despite the official posturing, does not treat human or financial capital well. Hence the ongoing exodus of the best and brightest.

Ohio’s human capital loss may be every bit as severe as that relating to financial capital.

Example: An early-20s person I know is contemplating a move to Texas for a job that pays all of $13 an hour, and will probably pull the trigger within a month. He figures he will be much better off in the Lone Star State than in Ohio. Factors in his equation: Texas has no income tax, and a long list of everyday goods and services is cheaper (translation: there are fewer hidden taxes in Texas that producers have to pass on to consumers). Getting a college degree is also quite a bit more affordable in Texas. He happens to be a pretty bright guy who will probably go on to bigger and better things, i.e., he’s pretty rich in human capital. Do you think he’ll be coming back to the Buckeye State when he does?

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UPDATE: On Friday, Uncle Sam told us that Cali’s seasonally adjusted April unemployment rate was 11.0%. Not seasonally adjusted was 10.9%.

From CatholicVote.org (HT Hot Air; YouTube link):

Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media on Thursday morning, when its appearance was also noted here at BizzyBlog.

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His and his administration’s whoppers are super-sized.

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In mid-February, I identified several clear fibs and pathetic straw-man arguments that Barack Obama and his teleprompters (not necessarily in that order) employed in four statements he made at his first presidential briefing, and at an appearance in Elkhart, Indiana earlier that day.

It is now painfully clear that Obama and his apparatchiks have entered an arena many thought Bill Clinton and his crew had all to themselves.

Admission to this very exclusive club requires the repeated ability to get through the Three Steps of Super-sized Lying with most of your perceived credibility somehow still intact:

1. The President and his administration must have the nerve to state what they know is an obvious falsehood without betraying any hint that he or they realize it is false, and in a way that causes virtually all who hear it to instinctively believe it.
2. Sadly, more often than not, Step 1 is enough, because the second step requires actual follow-up by someone who heard it. That someone has to discover, document, and prove beyond doubt that the statement or contention made by the President or his administration is not true.
3. Sometimes Step 2 occurs, but the truth-teller’s proof gets little or no attention. But if it does, the third step requires the president and his administration to cling to their guns, so to speak, using a variety of tactics that effectively amount to saying, “Who are you going to believe, us or the irrefutable evidence?”

Critics can say what they will about George W. Bush’s accomplishments or lack thereof, but if they’re honest — an unfortunately dubious proposition — they’ll have to admit that he and his administration almost never engaged in the three-step process to which this administration is virtually addicted.

If you look at what the Left continues to insist are Bush’s five biggest “lies,” you’ll realize that he and his administration never even got to Step 1, let alone the rest of the Three Steps to Super-sized Lying:

1. Most crucially, there is the assertion that there were weapons of mass destruction in pre-war Iraq. Critically, the Left’s claim has been and still is that “there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Please note that the critics’ claim was not “no stockpiles,” “no large caches,” or “only a few.” Their claim, frequently stated to great applause, was that there were none, with no exceptions, no qualifications, and no redefinitions. But the truth is that were WMDs in Iraq …. (this brief pause has been provided so lefties can pick their brainwashed jaws off the floor) …. Heck, I knew that in 2005. Later evidence proved that WMDs were really, officially there. What’s more, in November 2006, a New York Times article acknowledged the existence of a report showing that “(Saddam) Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.” As Ed Morrissey described it at the time, “Saddam (was) far ahead of Iran in the nuclear pursuit, …. (making) it much more urgent to take some definitive action against Saddam before he could build and deploy it.” Oh, and I almost forgot about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, specifically “the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel.” History will have to tell us why the hapless Bush crew didn’t defend itself against the Left’s long since refuted lie.
2. The supposedly infamous “sixteen words” (“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”) that made Joe Wilson a temporary media darling were and still are not only true, but doubly so.
3. Bush never said that the threat from Iraq was “imminent.”
4. The worst that can validly be said about the “Mission Accomplished” celebration in May 2003 was that it was overconfident; it doesn’t change the fact Saddam’s ouster had indeed been achieved.
5. Finally, the hope expressed by Dick Cheney in 2002 that ” My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators” was just that — a hopeful prediction.

None of the above items from the Bush era qualify as “lies” as any normal person who recognizes that intent is the key would define the word.

By contrast, there is no legitimate doubt that Barack Obama and his administration are serving up super-sized whoppers with a complete absence of shame. Here are just a few of the more egregious:

• In February, Obama, in a Peoria, Illinois visit, said in a speech that Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens had told him the previous day that “if Congress passes our (stimulus) plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off.” The truth is that Owens “told Obama he could rehire people if a ‘responsible stimulus bill is passed and the economy gets going again.’” Who do you believe, Barack Obama, or a CEO and the congressman who later spoke with Mr. Owens? (Update: On February 12, Jake Tapper at ABC’s Political Punch noted that Obama shamelessly repeated the “will be able to rehire” lie about Caterpillar even after Owens “said the exact opposite.”)
• On May 11, Obama and the administration claimed that executives and representatives of major healthcare providers agreed that they could wring major cost savings out of the medical system in the next 10 years on the road to a supposedly affordable government-run system that would save the government up to $2 trillion. Within days, health care officials denied there were any detailed promises, saying that “they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.” Who do you believe, Obama or the others at the conference?
• On the day of government-run Chrysler’s bankruptcy filing, Obama and his car guys told a bipartisan group of political leaders that the bankruptcy “will not disrupt the lives of the people who work at Chrysler or the communities that depend on it.” Those who heard it reasonably took that statement to mean that no plants would permanently close. At least two congresspersons issued press releases to that effect. On May 1, government-run Chrysler announced that it would close plants in Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Obama lied; jobs died. Who do you believe, Team Obama or a bipartisan group of politicians? (Update: A partial list of the deceived who would go on the record [links here and here] includes Twinsburg [OH] Mayor Katherine Procop; Charles Crews Jr., shop chairman for the UAW Local 122 in Twinsburg; Ken Lortz, director of the UAW Region 2b that covers Ohio; Mark Barbash, who was interim director of the Ohio Department of Development until last week; and three four Congresspersons — Paul Ryan (R-WI), Dennis Kucinich [D-OH], Steve LaTourette [R-OH], Candice Miller [R-MI].)

That the “Bush lied” crowd and the establishment media (but I repeat myself) is so quiet while Obama’s patent falsehoods go virtually unchallenged tells you all you need to know about whose side they are on — and it’s not the side containing the truth.

From LifeNews.com (link included in original):

The results of a new national poll are the fifth survey this month to confirm a majority of Americans take a pro-life position on abortion or show movement in the pro-life direction. The latest poll was conducted by the Polling Company of 800 adults from May 17-18 and it has a 3.5 percent margin of error.

The poll, which also found the public does not want President Barack Obama to appoint a pro-abortion activist to the Supreme Court, featured two questions directly about abortion.

A first question asked respondents to identify themselves as either pro-life or “pro-choice” on abortion.

The poll found a plurality, 47 percent, took a pro-life position while 45 percent said they were “pro-choice” when it comes to abortion.

However, a second question, asking respondents to delineate their specific position on when abortion should be legal, found a 14 percent pro-life majority.

The poll found 55 percent take one of three pro-life positions saying that all abortions should be prohibited (10%), abortion should be legal only in cases to save the life of the mother (16%), or abortions should only be legal in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother (29%).

Just 41 percent took one of three pro-abortion positions, with 26 percent saying abortion should be legal for any reason within the first three months of pregnancy, 8 percent saying abortions should be legal within the first six months of pregnancy for any reason, and just 7 percent agreeing with President Obama that abortions should be legal for any reason throughout pregnancy. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

At RealClearPolitics, and surely many other places:

The Bush policies in the war on terror won’t have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.

It must be heck to have spent the last 6-plus years waiting for your guy to come in and undo all of George Bush’s supposed evil, only to see the guy who you thought would do the undoing largely do the opposite.

I’m not under any illusions that Obama isn’t a weakling in many foreign-policy areas, or that his public poses as a hawk will be reflected in key or even day-to-day decisions. Sadly, he is a weakling, and has shown it in several ways already, and his advisers will virtually always recommend that he take the appease-y way out.

Still it’s fun to watch the guy directly contradict so many things he said on the campaign trail and fail to do so many of the things he promised he would do to return us to a pre-9/11 mentality, while the left is forced to swallow it with minimal objection — lest they too offend Dear Leader.

Rephrased, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is very imperfectly trying to apply the Three Steps of Super-sized Lying I discussed yesterday in presidential terms at Pajamas Media to her knock-down, drag-out spat with the CIA:

1. First, you have to have the nerve to state what you know is an obvious falsehood without betraying any hint that you realize it is false, and in a way that causes virtually all who hear it to instinctively believe it.
2. Sadly, more often than not, Step 1 is enough, because the second step requires actual follow-up by someone who heard it. That someone has to discover, document, and prove beyond doubt that the statement or contention made by the person involved is not true.
3. Sometimes Step 2 occurs, but the truth-tellers’ proof gets little or no attention. But if it does, the third step requires the person to cling to their guns, so to speak, using a variety of tactics that effectively amount to saying, “Who are you going to believe, me or the irrefutable evidence?”

Step 1? Well, she tried, but too many people weren’t buying.

Step 2? There’s been enough follow-up to show that she has indeed been lying. That knowledge, while not particularly widespread, has gone well beyond what little people know about the whoppers Obama and his peeps have foisted on us that were noted at the PJM column.

Step 3? She’s trying, but the video below would seem to indicate that it’s not working particularly well. A long holiday weekend will help her cause.

Unfortunately and unlike President Obama, who along with former president Bill Clinton has the Three Steps down cold, she’s just not that good at it. Anyone familiar with the dispute knows she’s lying, at this point, that has to include her Democratic Party colleagues. There are simply too many others with sufficient credibility who have contradicted her, and she has produced no evidence to support her contentions.

What will be the consequences? I’m guessing you won’t hear the word “ethics” much from the Democratic Party for a while. Beyond that, who knows? Watch this YouTube, and decide for yourself (HT Hot Air):

UPDATE: For the slow of learning, the Pajamas Media column also referenced above identifies the five biggest alleged lies of the Bush administration and shows that they weren’t, and still aren’t.

TOPSIDE NOTE: I don’t think I have ever seen any of the major networks, cable shows, or so-called newspapers of record link to an important speech as a PDF. If anyone can cite a specific example besides the one cited here, let me know.

If there isn’t one (and I don’t think there is), that would make the speculations here that much more plausible.

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At the right is an enlarged screen cap of part of the home page at the New York Times taken at about 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon.

Hmm. Obama’s speech was right there, one-click ready. Cheney’s is a clunky, clumsy PDF, even though:

• Bill Kristol, who wrote for the Times until recently and has contacts there, had the remarks as prepared for delivery at the Weekly Standard at 10:30 in the morning.
• The American Enterprise Institute also presumably put their pre-speech transcript up in the morning.
• Text-only PDFs can be converted to HTML pretty easily.

Did the Times link to a PDF because Cheney was so verbose? Nope: Cheney’s speech weighed in at about 5,500 words. Barack Obama’s was over 6,500.

Since the Cheney speech was clearly and readily available in HTML, process of elimination for motivation pretty much leaves slant, slight, pettiness, or laziness.

But why would the Times want readers to go to the more easily accessed Obama speech and make them work to get to Cheney’s? The first three of the items mentioned in the last paragraph would explain it.

I would suggest that there is motive. After all, as far as the Old Gray Lady is concerned, the fewer readers who saw this excerpt from Cheney’s speech the better — especially while it was the topic du jour:

Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls and track contacts between al-Qaida and persons inside the United States. The program was top secret, and for good reason, until the editors of the New York Times got it and put it on the front page.

After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of every single individual killed by al-Qaida on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaida. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn’t serve the interests of our country or the safety of our people.

The Politico put the full Cheney speech up at 4:45 yesterday afternoon in user-ready form.

The Times finally posted the Cheney speech transcript from the Associated Press in HTML at 9:44 last night after the buzz died down. Mission accomplished?

Exit speculation: Did the Times convert a reader-ready HTML to PDF in the name of obstruction? Given the petty people there, that’s not inconceivable.

Speaking of speculation: Jimmy Orr at the Christian Science Monitor wonders if Obama started late to prevent the networks from covering Cheney. I wonder if Obama rambled on and on for the same reason. This is what you do when you know your ideas are weaker. Cheney waited until Obama was done. Surely a lot of people with afternoon plans who attended the AEI event had them messed up. That’s just another day in Obama’s it’s-all-about-me world.

Earlier today, I noted in a post updating the sad situations at bankrupt Chrysler and headling-for-bankruptcy General Motors, that GM is, according to a Wednesday Reuters report, offering secured bondholders a much better deal than the 29 cents on the dollar Chrysler’s secured creditors have been offered. Chrysler’s “non-TARP secured lenders,” after what they allege with much evidential support was a campaign of threats and intimidation by President Obama and the White House, abandoned their efforts to have their first-lien rights recognized in bankruptcy court.

But Indiana pension funds holding some of that secured debt representing teachers, police, and other workers have taken legal action objecting to the terms of the Chrysler bankruptcy that don’t give first-lien lenders their proper and legal due.

It thus appears, despite a chest-thumping May 2 assertion in the New York Times that the White House’s Chrysler hardball might have taught GM lenders a “lesson,” that Obama and his car guys don’t have the stomach for riding roughshod over the rights of GM’s secured bondholders and ending up with the possibility of another bankruptcy moving into a regular federal district court (the Indiana situation could be the first).

Now what? Well, if you’re Team Obama, you instead try to put the screws to GM’s unsecured bondholders — to the benefit of the United Auto Workers’ Voluntary Employee Benefits Association (VEBA) trust.

GM owes the VEBA about $20 billion. It is believed that the company’s tentative deal with the UAW, announced Thursday but not officially commented upon, has it paying the VEBA $10 billion and forgiving the other $10 billion in exchange for a 39% ownership stake in the “reconstituted GM.”

Meanwhile, remaining unsecured bondholders, according to this report which references a Bloomberg TV commentary, are being asked to forgive $27 billion of the $35 billion they are owed in exhange for a whopping 10% stake in the new company.

The complete proposed lineup is supposed to turn out this way:

• UAW’s VEBA — Of $20 billion owed, $10 billion forgiven, 39% ownership.
• Unsecured bondholders — Of $35 billion owed, $27 billion forgiven, 10% ownership.
• Uncle Sam — Of $15.4 billion owed, representing money funneled to the company since December, “the bulk” is forgiven, for a 50% ownership stake (it’s reasonable to believe that it’s really a tad more than 50%).
• Existing shareholders get a 1% ownership stake.

Everything I’ve seen thus far would indicate that the VEBA does not have superior status in the bankruptcy pecking order over unsecured bondholders. Yet its ownership stake is about 4% for each billion forgiven, while the unsecured bondholders get less than a 0.4% stake for each billion they are supposed to forgive.

As you would expect, unsecured bondholders are furious. A group calling itself “Main Street Bondholders” alleges that:

Unions and large investors have a seat at the negotiating table, but what about the average Americans that have played by the rules and now face a devastating loss, particularly seniors and soon-to-be seniors?

….. The Administration’s offer to “Main Street” bondholders is unfair – cents on the dollar – for individuals relying on these bonds to finance retirements, college tuition and medical expenses. It is disheartening that the Obama Administration is driving GM into bankruptcy.

They have brought their complaints to Congressmen, who have in turn raised the fundamental issue (bold is mine):

Four U.S. Republican lawmakers have complained to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that a plan to restructure automaker General Motors Corp subverts the rights of bondholders, according to a letter from the lawmakers obtained by Reuters on Friday.

A proposed restructuring favors the claims of the United Auto Workers union “over the rights and claims of the company’s diverse group of bondholders, who collectively hold $7 billion more in General Motors debt than the UAW’s health trust and are equal members of the creditor class,” the lawmakers said.

“We are extremely concerned that in the name of restructuring General Motors, the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry … has begun waging what some believe amounts to a war on capital: contractual rights of investors are being trampled by the government under the rationale of ‘extraordinary circumstances,’” the lawmakers wrote.

So this must be just a front for a bunch of evil, greedy hedge funds, as with Chrysler, right? Wrong, twice. First, the Indiana pension litigation shows that real, everyday people, union and non-union, are getting unfairly and illegally hosed under the current deal at Chrysler. Second, GM’s unsecured bondholders are flesh-and-blood people too:

Calling themselves Main Street bondholders, the investors said they are ” average” Americans who purchased GM bonds “as a part of their financial planning for retirement, medical expenses, small business expenses, and providing for their children’s education,” according to a statement. The meetings in Congress, the group said, are intended to highlight their “interest in a fair and equitable solution to GM’s financial crisis.”

….. Jim Graves, a 58-year-old software developer from Celebration, Fla., said that under those terms, he and his mother stand to lose most of the $100,000 in GM debt they have been counting on for retirement.

When such a thing happens to an everyday person who is ripped off by a financial planner, the press is sympathetic, usually justifiably so. But when the government and the companies it has for all practical purposes nationalized do the same to large numbers of people, the media silence is deafening.

If you see anything about this large-scale fleecing of unsecured investors for the benefit of organized labor on the Big 3 evening news programs or on any non-business cable news channel besides Fox, let me know. I don’t expect a flurry of tips.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.