The right-wing press is chock-a-block with articles decrying the Obama administration’s romance with industrial policy. So reflexive is this ideology that some of them are even written by major beneficiaries of industrial policy, whose sense of entitlement must be so ingrained that they fail to notice this anomaly.
Exhibit A appeared in Monday’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page, in which Charles Koch of Koch Brothers fame took out after crony capitalism and industrial policy.
In a 2009 poll conducted by the BBC, only one out of every four Americans thought that capitalism in its current form was working well. Then came Occupy Wall Street (OWS), a physical manifestation of the anger of millions of Americans at an economic system in which big banks are bailed out by taxpayers only to turn around and pay billions in bonuses while filing record home foreclosures. Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, our nation's total income rose by $528 billion, but of that economic growth, 88 percent went to corporate profits and just 1 percent—that's right, 1 percent—went to workers.
Back in 2010, Rep. Darrell Issa called Obama one of the most corrupt presidents in history, and pledged to investigate his administration. After a year’s worth of hearings and investigations, Issa has come out empty-handed. Of course, when has lack of proof stopped anyone from making ridiculous accusations in politics? To wit:
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Bloomberg TV that the Obama government is “proving to be” the “most corrupt in history.”
Tim Fernholzon how financial reform seems to be proceeding apace without undue influence from the banks.
Last year, in a landmark essay, economist Simon Johnson observed that the dynamics of the financial crisis made the United States look more like an emerging market economy, with all the rampant crony capitalism and corruption that entails, than a developed country with an efficient, modern financial market.
Michelle Malkin is perhaps the world's greatest practitioner of "I know you are, but what am I" conservatism. The Bush administration faced a great deal of corruption allegations -- from Jack Abramoff to the U.S. attorney scandal to Halliburton. So, Malkin writes a book titled Culture of Corruption about the Obama administration not even seven months in. Bush was accused of stacking his administration with unqualified cronies like former FEMA Chief Michael Brown, so Malkin has taken to use the word "crony" to describe people affiliated with Obama at every turn.
