Crony Faux Capitalism, and Proud of It?

President Obama’s year-end press conference last Friday was another missed opportunity (in a long list) to bridge the growing political divide in America.

If you pay careful attention to the words Mr. Obama uses and the context in which he uses them, you will notice a consistent and troubling pattern. Mr. Obama rarely uses any data or evidence when he talks about the economy and taxes and he carefully and deliberately uses terms that are impossible to define. He does this because he is employing a marketing technique in an attempt to sell Americans on his failed economic policies.

For example, President Obama uses terms such as “fair share” when talking about taxes without discussing what exactly that means. What is a “fair share?” Is there a number he can provide us to assist us in managing our finances?  Does the fact that the top 5% of earners in the country pay the overwhelming majority of taxes not constitute a fair share? Is there evidence that his tax rate number actually generates growth and tax revenue? He avoids all of these “complexities” because he isn’t really interested in growth.  He is interested in control of your money and, when you are ideologically committed to state control of a free economy, you use slick marketing to separate people from their hard-earned money.

Here’s another example: did you ever notice that when President Obama discusses the economy and growth he always talks about them in terms of what he will “allow” and “not allow?” “Allow?” What kind of country have we morphed into when Americans’ economic prosperity and security are held hostage to the ideology of one man? We are not a monarchy, yet, sadly, the administration is lording over the transformation of a once free economy into a state-controlled, economic monster. In this new economy, friends and donors to the politically-connected class move directly to the front of the line for government approved “credit” in the form of taxpayer subsidies and they write their own regulations to ensure that their competitors are buried in red tape.

These regulations are enacted to bankrupt ideological enemies of the President and his crony faux capitalist friends (i.e. coal, derivatives markets, the petroleum industry), with zero regard for the millions of lives negatively impacted by the administration’s ongoing assault on economic liberty.

These regulations double down on economic destruction by bankrupting small businesses not connected to the political cocktail-party-class who are unable to handle the massive legal fees needed to comply with the thousands of pages of red tape: regulatory measures slapped on their backs as they are trying to get up from the near knockout punch the recession delivered to them.

Finally, I need to address a counter argument, which many of the President’s supporters are using in a bait-and-switch tactic. It goes something like this, “The President is doing a great job! The stock market is up, fuel costs are down, and the economy is adding jobs.” While these statements are factually correct, they completely ignore the role of the President’s policy initiatives.

First, the stock market is up in spite of the President’s policies, and here’s the evidence. American businesses are doing quite well everywhere else but here. Much of their bottom line growth is coming from overseas sales and the cutbacks on expenses such as labor. In other words, many of these companies, due to our corporate tax rate, which is the highest in the industrialized world, are leaving us in order to stay profitable in a globally competitive market. If we refuse to fix this problem both outsourcing and off-shoring will continue and American employees will suffer.

In that sense, Obama is the Outsourcer-in-Chief.

Second, fuel costs are down because petroleum extraction technology has enabled us to tap into our, once-hidden, wealth of oil and gas. We are floating on petroleum wealth here in the United States and this is driving down fuel prices. But, and this is crucial, this is happening on PRIVATE land, not PUBLIC land. The President is actively standing in the way of us responsibly developing a limited subset of public land, and the hidden wealth underneath. That the President takes credit for the decrease in gas prices, despite his numerous attempts to block bipartisan energy development plans (i.e. Keystone, ANWAR, continental-shelf exploration), is utterly outrageous. If he would just get out of the way, gas prices would likely be dramatically lower, and stay that way permanently.

Third, although we are adding jobs, we are doing this slowly at the SLOWEST rate of any economic recovery in modern times. In the eight years of both the Reagan and Clinton administrations, they were both in office while the economy created over 15 million jobs. For President Obama to leave office with the same results, the economy would have to generate 10 million MORE JOBS in his final two years alone.

Mr. Obama’s state controlled “capitalism” model is an abysmal failure that has only succeeded in increasing the paper wealth of America’s crony faux capitalists. Surely, many of you remember the real economic recoveries of the Reagan and Clinton years when you and your neighbor both had smiles on your faces. The only people smiling now are the jokers who made big investments in expensive Washington D.C. cocktail parties to cater to the elected oligarchs who get to pick who wins and, tragically, who loses in our new, government controlled “free-market.”

EDITORS NOTE: 

Dan Bongino is the bestselling author of the book Life Inside the Bubble and was the 2012 and 2014 Republican nominee for the United States Senate and 6th congressional district in Maryland. He is a contributor at Conservative Review, a radio host and a frequent guest media-commentator on political issues and security matters.