Crony Capitalism Booming Under Obama Rule

One of my biggest fears about the Obama administration is not that it is liberal and not that it is communist, but rather that it is the beginning of a renaissance of National Socialism. One of the common misconceptions that people have about National Socialism is that it was against big business, or that big business opposed it. Free markets oppose national socialism, and individuals oppose national socialism, but Big Business, threatened by government, does the logical thing, and joins in. National socialism leads to an alliance of Big Business, which enjoys government protection against challenges to its market share and in exchange transforms itself into a tool of government control over the economy. Top executives and lobbyists do very well under a National Socialist regime, while the people suffer.

Via Powerlineblog's post Crony Capitalism, 2010 comes this post from Michael Barone called: "Under Obama, crony capitalism again rules the day:"

Last week, amid Washington's blizzards, Obama was asked about the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon and the $9 million bonus for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein."I know both these guys; they are very savvy businessmen," he said. "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth." So much for campaign-trail denunciations of "fat cat" bankers and bloated bonuses.

But the savviness that Obama handsomely acknowledged has been evident not only in their business judgment but in their politics. Goldman employee contributions to Democrats in 2008 ranked second only to those employed by the University of California. JPMorgan Chase's employees ranked No. 7. The stereotype of Wall Street being Republican is decades out of date.

Crony capitalism is now the order of the day in the United States. The government and the United Auto Workers own General Motors and Chrysler, which aren't likely to pay back their billions in TARP money any time soon, if ever. Meanwhile the government tells Americans to stop driving Toyotas.

The government was going to remake the health care sector, and so Billy Tauzin and other health care industry lobbyists were busy in the White House cutting deals to keep their clients above water. The government was going to remake the energy sector, and utility CEOs and lobbyists have been busy flaunting their green credentials.

As my Washington Examiner colleague Timothy Carney has been documenting, Big Business has been busy lobbying Big Government for "reforms" that serve big companies' interests. Wal-Mart backs a health care mandate, Philip Morris shapes tobacco regulation, General Electric is setting up a joint venture to trade carbon offsets (wasn't that Enron's line of work back in the day?).

The picture is not pretty. Government's pets or, in the president's words, "savvy businessmen," use government to get policies that will give them competitive advantages and stifle smaller competitors. Pleasing their masters in government is now absorbing the psychic energy of CEOs who used to concentrate on meeting consumers' needs in order to make profits.
This is a scary picture that is being painted- but it is a picture that is getting closer to reality the longer the Obama administration and the Democrats are in office. Republicans aren't perfect, and the GOP made a lot of mistakes in office, but people need to wake up and realize that the 'Third Way' that Obama is forging has already been done before, and its called National Socialism, or Fascism as its variant called in Italy, or Nazism as its variant called in Germany.

I've written about this before, for a while. Please check out my posts A Conservative Teacher: The Third Way: Obama and Fascism or wikipedia description of fascist sounds like someone i know or calling a fascist a fascist or book review: the man who was thursday or barack obama was a member of the new party. My dad might want me to tone down the "Obama is a fascist" rhetoric, but I'm just calling a spade a spade.