Menaces

clipped from www.forbes.com A comedian or satirist could not have come up with the recent scenario of Treasury Chief Timothy Geithner and other Administration officials suddenly trying to reassure corporate chieftains that the Obama Administration is pro business and loves free enterprise. A close and powerful Obama aide, Valerie Jarrett, sent Verizon CEO (and Business Roundtable chairman) Ivan Seidenberg a letter declaring: "While we may disagree on some issues, we have an open door and are always willing to consider input and ideas from everyone, including the business community." That's like Dracula saying he prefers bottled water to blood. The truth is that not even the Franklin Roosevelt Administration was as hostile to and ignorant about free enterprise as this Administration is. Almost every action Obama officials take underscores their belief in the stereotype that businesspeople are mostly amoral, corner-cutting, consumer-shafting, pollution-loving menaces.