Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
Timothy Carney
Timothy Carney argues that while he presents himself as a champion of the average American citizen, President Obama is, in reality, more of a champion of big corporations and Wall Street financial firms
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
Carney does correctly note that none of this started with Obama. Indeed, George W. Bush also worked to favor his corporate cronies, though to nothing like this degree. Ultimately we need to recognize that the problem lies in government itself. Governmental regulation inherently favors the powerful and they themselves know this. Indeed, corporations have used governmental regulation to promote their agenda for the better part of a century.
"Obamanomics" is shorthand for corporatism; the use of big government regulations to support corporate profits. This, of course, is not how most commentators see the new administration. They accept the rhetoric that this administration is promoting change by putting the interests of ordinary citizens ahead of corporate lobbyists. As this important book reveals, nothing could be further from the truth.
During his campaign for president, Obama carefully crafted a message of change. A repeated theme of the campaign was that big business had too much power in the Bush administration and his own administration would strictly regulate lobbyists and their corporate sponsors. Throughout the election, the Obama campaign successfully portrayed John McCain as a representative of "Big Business" while suggesting that Obama was funded by donations from average Americans. This myth is still believed by many Americans today. Throughout the book, however, Carney shows how fundamentally wrong this conception is. Obama received far more money from big pharmaceutical companies, like Pfizer, from big oil, like Exxon Mobil, from GE and Goldman Sachs, than McCain. Indeed, he received more than any other candidate for President in history. Carney carefully details the money spent on Obama industry by industry and in subsequent chapters describes just what all this money bought.
In general, popular mythology notwithstanding, large corporations routinely benefit from government regulation. Carney details several ways this can happen. Government contracts and direct subsidies are of course enormously profitable, but other effects of regulation are less obvious. One of the least obvious ways is that regulatory costs protect large corporations from competition. Consider for example the Waxman-Markey climate change bill. This bill proposes to limit greenhouse gas emissions by giving away carbon credits to industry and then letting markets decide how to price and trade those credits. Conveniently enough, the bill will simply give away credits worth 51 billion dollars to established corporations like GE, Exxon, and Chevron. But new businesses, hoping to compete with these giants, will have to purchase the credits. Barriers to entry are essential to a monopoly and markets don't readily provide these. But governments do, and so it is no wonder that as the size of the federal government has expanded, so too has the influence of corporate lobbyists who stand the most to gain under the policies of the Obama adminstration.
One of the key points in the book is that none of this has anything to do with Obama's intentions. Obama may well believe his own rhetoric. He may think (or hope) that he is representing the little guy against the power of professional lobbyists, but the simple facts are that when government largess is offered out, those with the most resources will be the first to collect. An example of how this logic plays out is Obama's health care initiative. Despite his rhetoric against pharmaceuticals and HMOs, Obama received a lot of money from this industry, far more than his opponent. During the campaign, he offered 4 solutions to the health care crisis: a "public option" (meaning a government run health insurance to "compete" with private care), opposing individual mandates (ie., requiring an individual to buy health care), subsidizing insurance, and preserving a tax subsidy on employer sponsored (but not privately purchased) health care. Now, the first two solutions are not favorable to industry and the last two are. And the current bill ... favors industry and will include an individual mandate. The first two campaign suggestions are off the table. Again, big business wins and the tax payer is left footing the bill. To paraphrase Gore Vidal, this is truly socialism for the rich and capitalism (with heavy taxes) for everyone else.
Amazon.com: Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses (9781596986121): Timothy P. Carney: Books
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