Rented

clipped from douthat.blogs.nytimes.com I’ve been looking for an opportunity to discuss Tim Carney’s new book, “Obamanomics,” which takes on the nexus between big government and big business, and Keith Olbermann’s recent claim that “corporations, by definition, lean to the right,” gives me the chance. Here’s Carney’s rejoinder: Let’s start with Olbermann’s employer, a corporation called General Electric. By what measure does GE “lean to the right”? Not by campaign contributions, I’ll tell you that. That doesn’t mean they should be pinned with the label “liberal,” either, and it’s one of the strengths of Carney’s book — which is less partisan than its title suggests — that he doesn’t make that claim. His argument isn’t that G.E. (or Pfizer, or Chevron, or Goldman Sachs) has a liberal agenda, necessarily; it’s that corporations have a rent-seeking agenda, and the rents in the age of Obama are very rich indeed.