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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mannie who wrote (158387)	1/18/2009 6:54:13 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361945

Charter Said to Hire Advisers for Possible Bankruptcy Filing By Jeff St.Onge Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Charter Communications Inc., billionaire Paul Allen’s money-losing cable-television company, hired law firm Kirkland & Ellis and investment bank Lazard Ltd. to advise on a possible bankruptcy, according to people familiar with the matter. Kirkland’s Rick Cieri is providing counsel, according to two people involved in talks on Charter’s strategy. Allen has also hired lawyers and financial advisers, people said. If the St. Louis-based company decides in favor of bankruptcy, it may file as soon as next week, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private. Charter said Jan. 15 that it was working with bondholders on “financial alternatives” after missing an interest payment to lenders. The company is vying with larger rivals for customers and has more than $20 billion in debt, prompting Moody’s Investors Service to say last month that bankruptcy is likely unless Charter restructures it. Major bondholders are also organizing for a possible bankruptcy filing, with senior noteholders hiring investment bank Houlihan Lokey, the people said. The Los Angeles-based firm has advised on some of the biggest debt restructurings of all time, including the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and WorldCom Inc. bankruptcies. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., has held a controlling stake since 1998 in the company, which hasn’t turned a profit since going public a decade ago. Allen is represented by Nick Saggese of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in the talks and is being advised by Miller Buckfire & Co., the people said. Shares Unchanged Cieri represented Federated Department Stores Inc. in the 1990s, during its reorganization while with the Jones Day firm. After Federated came out of Chapter 11, he represented the department store chain when it bought Macy’s Inc. out of bankruptcy. He has since helped reorganize such companies as Calpine Corp., LTV Steel Co. and Trans World Airlines Inc. Charter shares were unchanged at 12 cents in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday. The stock has dropped 89 percent in the past year. Charter’s 11 percent note maturing in 2015 rose 3.25 cents on the dollar to 16.75 cents on the dollar, according to Trace. The yield fell to 70.97 percent. The company had already lost almost $1 billion through the first three quarters of 2008 alone. Charter had about 5.5 million customers as of Sept. 30. Spokeswoman Anita Lamont declined to comment. Kate Kortenkamp, a spokeswoman at Kirkland & Ellis, also declined to comment. The company and its units had more than $900 million of cash on hand and cash equivalents as of Jan. 13 to pay for operating costs and expenses, according to a statement Jan. 15. Charter’s interest payments amounted to $478 million, more than half that, in its latest quarter. The cost to borrow surged last year as the subprime mortgage-bond collapse spread to the broader credit markets, shutting the door to new financing for the riskiest companies. Charter failed to pay about $73.7 million in interest fees due Jan. 15. The company has 30 days from that date to make good on the payments or risk a default. The company has sold about $16.4 billion of U.S. high-yield bonds since 1999, the most of any company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff St.Onge in London at jstonge@bloomberg.net Last Updated: January 17, 2009 00:01 EST

To: Mannie who wrote (158387)	1/19/2009 6:30:47 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361945

Could Air Force One NOT be a Boeing jet? blog.oregonlive.com

To: Mannie who wrote (158387)	1/20/2009 2:58:42 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361945

The Politics of Cohesion _______________________________________________________________ By DAVID BROOKS Op-Ed Columnist The New York Times January 20, 2009 In 1962, Daniel Bell published a book called “The End of Ideology.” The title struck a nerve because it reflected the view, common at the time, that the United States was about to leave behind the brutal, ideological politics that had characterized the 1930s and the early cold war. The 1960s, it was believed, would be a decade of cool pragmatism. Keynesian models would be used to scientifically regulate the economy. Important decisions would be made empirically. Instead, we got what Francis Fukuyama later called The Great Disruption. The information economy began to disrupt the industrial economy. The feminist revolution disrupted gender and family relations. The civil rights revolution disrupted social arrangements. The Vietnam War discredited the establishment. These disruptions were generally necessary and good, but the transition was painful. People lost faith in old social norms, but new ones had not yet emerged. The result was disorder. Divorce rates skyrocketed. Crime rates exploded. Faith in institutions collapsed. Social trust cratered. As community bonds dissolved, individual autonomy asserted itself. Liberals championed the moral liberation of individuals. Conservatives championed their economic liberation. The combined result was a loss of community and social cohesion, and what Christopher Lasch called a culture of narcissism. Instead of ending ideology, the Great Disruption produced ideological politics. The weakening of social norms led to fierce battles as groups vied to create new ones. Personal became political. Groups fought over basic patterns of morality. Republicans tended to win elections because liberals were associated with disorder and conservatives with attempts to restore it. Yet both sides were infected with the same pulverizing style. Politics wasn’t just about allocating resources. It was a contest over values, lifestyles and the status of your tribe. This venomous style dominated politics straight through the two baby boomer presidencies — of Clinton and Bush. But societies do mend themselves, slowly and organically. In 2002, Rick Warren wrote a phenomenally popular book called “The Purpose Driven Life.” The first sentence was, “It’s not about you.” That was a sign that the age of expressive individualism was coming to an end. New community patterns and social norms were coalescing. Crime rates had begun to fall, along with teen pregnancy rates and a rash of other social indicators. Young people flocked to perform community service. Couples created families that sought to harvest the gains of feminism while preserving the best of traditionalism. In the cultural realm, the Great Disruption came to an end. New social norms and patterns settled into place. Barack Obama exemplifies the social repair. The product of a scattered family, he has created a highly traditional one, headed by two professionally accomplished adults. To an almost eerie extent, he exemplifies discipline, equipoise and self-control. Under his leadership, as Peter Beinart noted in Time, Democrats came to seem like the party of order while Republicans were associated with disorder. Obama’s challenge will be to translate the social repair that has occurred over the past decade into political and governing repair. Part of that will be done with his inaugural address today. Look for him to emphasize the themes of responsibility, cohesion and unity. Look for him to reject the culture, which lingered in the financial world, of anything goes. Part of that will be done with his governing style. Obama aims to realize the end-of-ideology politics that Daniel Bell and others glimpsed in the early 1960s. He sees himself as a pragmatist, an empiricist. Politics is not personal with him. He does not turn political disagreements into a status contest between one kind of person and another. He is convinced that most Americans practice their politics between the 40-yard lines. Part will be accomplished with his aggressive outreach efforts. Already he has cooperated with Republicans. He has rejected the counsel of the old liberal warriors who want retribution and insularity. But the real test will come in the realm of policy. The next few months will be occupied with the stimulus package. And anybody who is not terrified by the prospect of spending $800 billion hastily has not spent enough time studying the difference between economic textbooks and the way government actually operates. But after that, folks in the Obama camp hope to create a Grand Bargain. That would mean building on a culture of cohesion and tackling the issues that require joint sacrifice — like reducing deficits, fixing Medicare and Social Security and reforming health care. These problems were insoluble during the era of division and distrust. In the climactic season of his presidency, the winter of 2010, Obama would seek to fundamentally restore balance to American government. If he can do that, the Great Disruption would truly be over. The next chapter in American history would begin on firmer ground. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company