According to the Wall Street Journal, the National Retail Federation wants a piece of the stimulus teat, too, with plans to push President-Elect Obama offer a series of national sales tax holidays of ten days each in March, July, and October 2009.  In doing so, the National Retail Federation is pressing for a massive federal transfer of taxpayer monies that is stupid,short-sighted, and anti-Federalist.

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Hope and change.  That is what unions and union organizers all across America are planning once Barack Obama is inaugurated.  Why?  Because Obama, like the rest of his decidely not post-partisan leftist friends, is an ardent supporter of the massively mis-named Employee Free Choice Act.  This piece of legislation would destroy worker rights in America, and would take business right down the drain with it.

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 The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has announced a 7-cent per hundred increase in the insurance rate premiums charged to banks.  The five member board of the FDIC voted last Tuesday to increase the premium charged to banks for deposit insurance, raising it to between 12 and 50 centes per $100 of domestic deposits.

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 Today marked an auspicious day in history:  I am probably looking forward to the impending departure of George W. Bush from the political scene more than any conservative in America.  I've never known what it was like to be raped in the anus before today.  It's a feeling I will not soon forget, as George W. Bush made all US taxpayers the lender of last resort to Chrysler and General Motors.  We are on the hook for $13.4 billion -- nearly the identical deal rejected by the the US Congress this week -- with little or no real guarantee that we will ever be paid back.  And what's worse, W is protecting his friends, not American workers.

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 After a substantial investigation, the Gunpowder Chronicle can now formally announce that we believe that 1st Mariner Bank and Chairman Ed Hale are in substantial and meaningful violation of Regulation "O", a key regulation established and enforced by the Federal Reserve that prohibits Loans to Executive Officers, Directors, and Principal Shareholders.  According to Insights for Bank Directors, "the regulation applies to any extension of credit by any federally insured bank to any executive officer, director or principal shareholder of the bank, of its parent company or of any other subsidiary of its parent company."

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By now, you have probably read that Mayo A. Shattuck has officially announced that Constellation will not sell itself to Warren Buffet's MidAmerican Energy Holdings.  Gunpowder Chronicle has received the official "Dear Colleague" letter that Mayo sent out to Constellation employees today.  I would be remiss in not continuing to note that Mayo A. Shattuck is the only Baltimore businessman to successfully sink TWO Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Maryland.  The letter is presented below:

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Big shock:  the UAW, the Fascist Left, and the Press are lying to you.  By the way, there was also gambling at Cafe Americain in Casablanca.  Everyone in favor of a monstrous giveaway to Old Detroit (which is relaly a monstrous giveaway to the criminal class running the UAW) loves to tout the number "2-3 million jobs lost" if the three companies that make up Old Detroit are forced to file Chapter 11.  But that is a bold faced lie

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 The White House has announced that it will make use of the craptaculous TARP funds to float loans to GM and Chrysler in order to stave off their failure.  There's only one problem: that would be against the law.

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 I was pleased as punch when a small group of Senate Republicans had the courage to draw the line in the sand on corporate bailouts.  First, the proposed legislation was not really a bailout, but a pork-laden fascistic drive to consume one of the last old manufacturing industries at the expense of the US taxpayer.  Second, the proposed legislation was a disgusting sop to the UAW that protected their counterparty risk and would never fix a damn thing.

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 The press doesn't exist in Baltimore anymore.  The Baltimore Sun -- it's parent company now trapped in a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy it may not emerge from -- and the Baltimore Business Journal are nowhere to be found covering the long swan dive of 1st Mariner Bank and its Chairman, Ed Hale.  Why not?  

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