-By Warner Todd Huston
Last week President Obama appointed the CEO of General Electric, Jeffery Immelt, to head up his Economic Advisory Board. This is, as Freedomworks’ Tabitha Hale wrote, “an obvious rent seeking arrangement between Big Government and Big Business.”
This could not have been a more clear product of a crony corporatist relationship, and it is one that has no place in government that professes to value the free market. So now, we fight it.
Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks sums it up well:
“It’s time to break up the unethical romance between government and big business. For too long, corporate elites have lobbied to profit from the size and growth of government at the expense of hard-working Americans. We’re here to let President Obama and Jeffrey Immelt know that the days of easy money through backroom deals are over.”
Let’s have a small reminder of who and/what Jeffery Immelt is, shall we?
Now, some of you out there may be confused about my post, here. “Aren’t you a conservative,” you might ask? “Aren’t you usually FOR the business community?”
Yes, of course. I am for the business community in its sphere and the government in its sphere. I am for government getting out of the way of the business sector as much as possible to allow it to work. But when big business (any big business) becomes part of the government that sort of crony capitalism is no longer “business” but insider trading and sweetheart deal making that works against freedom, liberty, and, heck, common fairness!
Let’s face it. The only reason the extreme, left-wing Obama would be engaging in this cronyism is to rake in campaign donations and to keep bug business under his thumb to further his left-wing agenda. After all, it’s easier to control a handful of giant businesses than to control thousands of small businesses. So, if Obama can eliminate all those thousands of small businesses he’s that much closer to full control.
This is no help to capitalism. It is a detriment to it and our country.
As to the donations to Obama’s coffers, Open Secrets has GE’s 2008 donations to Obama’s presidential campaign clocking in at $499,130 putting the company in Obama’s top 20 donators. Other big donors include Goldman Sachs ($994,795), Citigroup ($701,290), and UBS AG ($543,219).
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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