Harsanyi on the new normal. “Cronyism isn’t capitalism”:
“Right now, businesses across this country are proving that America can compete,” Obama explained, listing a number of businesses that get it like Caterpillar, Whirlpool, Dow and a company named Geomagic.
All of these phenomenal success stories (thanks to Ira Stoll at The Future of Capitalism blog for pointing this out) also share, in one way or another, the privilege of feeding at gumit’s welfare trough. Oh yes, these exemplars of good corporate citizenry prove they can compete in a marketplace with taxpayer funds. Which will no doubt make them more compliant with the administration’s wishes.
General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who Obama recently appointed to lead his new panel on “job creation,” understands this new reality. One of the nation’s most effective cronies, Immelt’s company has benefited from government bailouts, waivers and lines of credit. A real icon of capitalism, Immelt.
On a completely separate issue, Immelt has also supported every initiative the president has forwarded from the stimulus — “Bold, visionary action!” — cap and trade (under which, unlike you, GE would benefit financially) and embraces all the subsidies that come with the progressive green agenda.
It’s comfortable, no doubt, to be insulated from failure and market-driven innovation and competition. But even an administration as uncontaminated by greed and corruption as Obama’s may become susceptible to political favoritism as it offers an ear and help to those who help them.
Now, we hear that the putrid job situation — kept at an illusory 9 percent through an exodus from the job marketplace — has nothing to do with instability created by regulatory overreach in various departments of government. It has nothing to do with a $1 trillion federal deficit or a $14 trillion debt hanging over the entire economy. And it’s got absolutely nothing to do with a new health insurance mandate that brings higher taxes and costs with every new hire a company undertakes.
If this were true, the administration wouldn’t have had to grant over 700 waivers — 40 percent to unions representing only 7 percent of the private workforce of the nation — to help companies avoid the regulatory burden and cost of Obamacare even before all the goodness trickles down to the common man. These entities will be very grateful, no doubt.
But do we want more corporate welfare or less? Do we want more subsidized industries or fewer?
Hey. So long as the new bullet trains run on time? We’re good.
I think it was James Madison who said, “who needs freedom for all when I got mine, and I’m getting paid.”
Or maybe that was Alec Baldwin. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track.
I don’t have the quote handy or remember the exact phrasing, but there is a quote out there – I think by Immelt of GE, but maybe some other CEO – effecively saying that ‘working with the government’ is the future and companies need to get with it or get passed by history.
And if they have their way, they’ll be right. Any company that doesn’t get with the program and the ‘new way of doing business’ will be driven out of the market.
America is become so trashy we’re like the trailer park of the western hemisphere
No other country in the western hemisphere is better.
Would that there were, I could move.
There’s been a strong argument made that these waivers aren’t constitutional but I also wonder how long this is politically viable.
They normally steal from the minority to bribe the majority. Which, while terrible, is inherently popular. These waivers seem like a real liability for them.
… effecively saying that ‘working with the government’ is the future and companies need to get with it or get passed by history.
Man, are these guys in for a rude awakening. That crutch is shortly to be kicked out, at which point we’ll see which of these entities can stand on its own. I’m not even coming at this from a Tea Party angle — Tea Party victory or not, the money is running out. When it comes down to paying off their union minions versus paying off their corporate buddies, how do you think Congress is going to go?
Time to figure out what people want to buy when they don’t have a gun to their heads, guys. Chop chop!
OT: “Webb won’t seek reelection”.
Retirements are a leading indicator.
2012, baby.
“Drag a trillion-dollar bill through
a trailer parkthis administration, you never know what you’ll find in it until you pass it.”To paraphrase a[n] [in]famous American.
No. 62:
Here is a nice breakdown of those companies Obama admires so much mentioned by Hyrsanyi.
My favorite bit:
You know, I used to think that our “representatives” were amusing.
Not so much any more. My ass hurts from the raping they are putting on us…
As Arianna said, you have to give head to get ahead.
Hey, you know that $53 Billion that Baracky wants to spend on high speed rail? Who builds high speed rail?
GE, we bring evil to life!
She learned that from her husband.
that’s can’t be so, Pablo. Baracky said it wasn’t going to be business as usual in Washington.
Gee, if corporatism is the future, why does the future look like the 1930s? (And not in a Rocketeer kind of way!)
Gee, I’m thinking that we’ve seen this act played out before, in some other place…
1930’s Germany perhaps, or Italy during the same period perhaps?
Remind me, how did that all work out…
What’s to prevent Congress from passing a law making it illegal to exhale any CO2, then grant waivers to certain people? I mean, hypothetically. No one in their right mind thinks the Federal government would…
Oh, shit.
Trillion And Bullet…
[…] mmerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they […]…
#1
I think that was the CEO of I.G. Farben in 1940.
The more this absurdity in the executive unfolds the more it the more it conforms to Godwin.
OK, Joe, that’s hilarious. Yours, or do you have a linky?
Either way, I’m stealing. )