H/T The Holy BlogfaddahYoud think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen Ideas Festival--which is running all week in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-gooders--would be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own.
In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave pairing the Aspen Institute think tank with the Atlantic Monthly magazine might even be seen as President Obamas natural base.
Apparently not so much.
If Bambi's losing THIS crowd, he is well and truly toast.
"If youre asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, Id say its actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what weve already experienced in Western Europe," Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson
, who's nobody's idea of a conservative Trunk,
declared during Mondays kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obamas economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.
"The curse of longterm unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, theyll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time," Ferguson said. "Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy."
"We are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world," Zuckerman said
(that'd be Mort Zuckerman, NYC real estate zillionairre and also nobody's idea of a conservative Trunk).
"The real problem we have...are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country."
as Rantburgers have been saying ever since this nest of mooks, fixers, thugs, crackpots, bagmen and faculty-lounge Bolsheviks took office
Ferguson called for what he called "radical" measures. "I cant emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness."
RTWT, as the wise man said. Co-starring Barbra Streisand and James (Mr. Barbra) Brolin in a jaw-dropping scene.