The Washington Examiner‘s Timothy P. Carney has devoted much of his professional effort to exposing crony capitalism in Washington. He documents another instance of the problem in this “Beltway Confidential” entry:
When President Obama thinks of businessmen, naturally, he thinks of those of who make their money by partnering with government and eschewing the free enterprise thing.
That’s why Obama’s jobs czar is Jeff Immelt, who heralded government’s role as an “industry champion,” and whose company, GE, spends more on lobbying than any other company while profiting from subsidies, bailouts, mandates, and regulations in industries ranging from embryos, to trains, to methane, to windmills.
These aren’t what I would call exemplars of the productive class. They are people that make money without necessarily creating value. If these are the liberals’ ideas of capitalists, I can’t blame them for distrusting capitalism.
That’s why Obama’s export czar is from a company, Boeing, that has a whole government agency dedicating a majority of its spending to subsidizing its jet sales.
And now Obama named two manufacturing czars: John Bryson and Gene Sperling.
Follow the “entry” link above to see what Carney has to say about Bryson and Sperling. Follow this link to sign up for Carney’s John Locke Foundation Headliner luncheon speech at noon Thursday in Raleigh.
