Party of the People Fights Like the Dickens to Preserve Crony Capitalist Payoffs

I think it's pretty obvious they're not "The Party of the People."

They're just The Party of Government.

You know how taxpayers get emotionally upset when the government raises taxes, constituting, as that does, the picking of the taxpayer's pocket in order to deposit that money in government slushfunds?

Well it turns out The Government and its Acolytes get plenty steamed when you threaten to cut their "income," too.

There's nothing like a good fight over corporate welfare to bring out the Left's love of Big Business.

I don't think it's a love of Big Business, but rather of Big Government, but this is Tim Carney, and he knows what he's talking about, so I'm sure he's just being rhetorical.

Mostly. Because the left does love Big Business, or at least strongly favors Big Business over small business. Big Business is easily co-opted into becoming a catspaw of the government.

In the current battle over the Export-Import Bank, Democratic politicians and liberal journalists have dropped their populist pretenses and openly embraced the corporate-federal collusion that Ex-Im embodies.

For some, it's largely partisanship or disdain for the Tea Partiers who want Ex-Im dead. For others, it's that increasing government's role in the economy takes precedence over railing against Big Business. And for a shrewd few, it's about raising money from K Street and Wall Street.

Liberal writer Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, who in 2013 mocked the notion of free-market populism as "Ayn Rand in overalls," this year sees the free-market attack on Ex-Im as a grave danger to "Big Business," and, by extension, all of America. Lind blasted "militants on the right."

...

Margaret Carlson, a liberal commentator at Bloomberg, wrote that ending Ex-Im, and thus leaving the financing of exports to -- gasp -- banks, was as absurd as privatizing the U.S. Mint.

...

[L]iberal business writer Joe Nocera dedicated two columns to defending Ex-Im, which he laments has become a "Tea Party piñata." Trying to cut export subsidies, Nocera writes, is "an attack on exports." One of his authorities on the matter is Republican congressman Chris Collins, who received Ex-Im subsidies. It's an amazing turn when millionaire Republican congressmen who received corporate welfare are now heroes of the liberal New York Times.

Again, rhetorical -- this is only amazing to those who haven't been paying attention.

posted by Ace at 02:36 PM

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