-By Warner Todd Huston
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is one of Obama’s biggest donors. Curiously enough, the SEIU is also one of the more than 700 unions and corporations that have gotten waivers from the Obama administration to get out from under some of the oppressive rules of Obamacare. Yet, even as they have been allowed to escape Obamacare’s rules, the SEIU is lobbying hard to make sure the rest of us don’t have as much luck.
The Hill reported that the SEIU lobbied hard against the repeal measure that Senate Minority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell helped bring to the Senate floor earlier this week.
The SEIU sent around a flurry of emails to senate offices.
“A vote in support of this amendment is a vote to raise out-of-pocket healthcare costs for working families and takes away critical consumer protections provided to Americans for the first time,” SEIU urged senators, according to a copy of the e-mail obtained by The Hill.
So a group that has gotten the favor of the King and been allowed special waiver treatment is indignant that anyone else would want to find themselves in a similarly favorable position. Ah, the self-righteousness of the favored, greedy and afraid that their special status might be lost.
This is the epitome of crony capitalism, the sort that the Obama administration has become expert practitioners. The cronies, you see, benefit from the largess of their patron and in return donate lots of money to causes or funds that the patron favors — if not donating to the patron himself (Obama for president 2008/2012). For his part the patron, always one in a position of political power, grants favors to the rent-seeking crony and happily lowers for his pals the crushing barriers under which everyone else is forced to suffer.
But it is an epitome of another thing, too. We call it hypocrisy. Those that have found the favor of the King are jealous of that favor and don’t want the rest of us peons to be so fortunate. This sort of thing has embroiled kings’ courts for time immemorial, haven’t they? It all sounds like the plot of some poor man’s Shakespeare play.
Sadly this is no work of fiction. It is Washington DC under Barack Obama.
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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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