Not Cronies

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The picture is not pretty. Government's pets or, in the president's words, "savvy businessmen," use government to get policies that will give them competitive advantages and stifle smaller competitors. Pleasing their masters in government is now absorbing the psychic energy of CEOs who used to concentrate on meeting consumers' needs in order to make profits. What we're seeing is the beginning of a renaissance of National Socialism, thought dead after World War II. Big business, threatened by government, does the logical thing: if you can't beat them, join them. Big business enjoys government protection against innovation, and in exchange transforms itself into a tool of government control over the economy. Top executives and lobbyists will do very well under a National Socialist regime. The rest of us? In Barack Obama's world, we don't count. We aren't cronies.