Regular readers in this forum — who’ve seen plenty of examples of the Obama administration’s anti-market tendencies — might appreciate the following blurb from the latest National Review:
In a speech at Chrysler’s Toledo plant celebrating his administration’s “successful” bailout of the company, the president invoked the multiplier effect by pointing out that saving the plant had helped Chet’s Restaurant, a Toledo institution since the 1920s, to stay open. A few days later, Chet’s announced that it was closing: the owner laid equal blame on the current hard times and Ohio’s 2006 enactment of a smoking ban. When dirigisme meets the nanny state, the results are not good for old-school greasy spoons, and while Obama may envision a future of highway rest stops filled with subsidized Tofu Huts, the demise of Chet’s shows the usual relationship between government activism and business success.
