| Submit your comments on this article |
| Economy |
| Democrats Bid Business Adieu |
| 2009-03-27 |
| Barack Obama meets with a flock of nervous bankers at the White House tomorrow to reassure them he understands their interests. Good luck. There has always been tension between the Democratic Party and the private sector. That tension is over. With its vote in the House of Representatives to punish corporate bonus payments, the national Democratic Party has disconnected itself entirely from the private sector. The public bear-baiting of AIG's Ed Liddy, and then passage of the bonus bill, gave the nation a good look at the modern Democratic Party freed of constraints. The current version of the party has largely broken free of any understanding whatsoever of the private sector -- how it works or what it needs to function. True socialists at least think about markets so they can criticize them. The Democratic Party's leadership doesn't stir to even that level of engagement. In the House, Senate and some corners of the Obama White House, the party is acting as if the marketplace was the world of an alien tribe, which it has to control through intimidation or demands for protective tribute (read: campaign contributions). This is not true of the entire 90% of self-identified Democrats who voted for Barack Obama. But Democrats who work in real jobs rather than work for the mothership in Washington must recognize that the party's obsessions are becoming ever less hospitable to a functioning economy, or Mr. Geithner's labors to that goal. This decoupling has occurred mainly in the Northeast (New England lost its last House Republican in 2008) and in California. Invulnerable seats have allowed politicians from these regions to control key committee chairs affecting the economy: Barney Frank (finance), Henry Waxman (regulation) Pete Stark (the health subcommittee of Ways and Means), Chris Dodd (Senate banking), Ted Kennedy (health), Barbara Boxer (environment). |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 Not to mention that there's large amounts of the continental shelf that the Feds have basically refused to survey in detail themselves (it's not open to lease or anything in the near future, afaik). |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-03-27 23:14 |
| #3 'moose, I think every mile of seismic data shot by or for the oil companies in the Federal offshore has to be given to the MMS essentially at the same time. Their complaint must be that they lack the expertise or manpower to interpret it, not that they don't have the data. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-03-27 22:50 |
| #2 It cracked me up the other day when an Obamaniac, after threatening the hell out of the oil industry, when before a meeting of industry leaders to point out that current oil and natural gas surveys are 40 years out of date, so would they please spend a fortune to update them, so the government would be able to more effectively oppress the oil and natural gas industry? It must have been truly amazing to see a room full of Texans saying absolutely nothing, not moving, not blinking, not breathing. It would have been a lot more amazing to hear what they had to say after he left. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-03-27 15:17 |
| #1 The only principle |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-03-27 04:59 |