Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Auto Bailouts Give the Lie to Obamanomics

The folks that voted for President Obama felt that Obama would bring a new culture to American politics. John R. Talbot's Obamanomics: How Bottom-up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-down Economics provides a look at what a pro-Obama partisan thinks an Obama economy would look like. Today, America is a travesty.

The rich buy boats and cars and diamonds and jewels and throw lavish parties, while their fellow citizens scrape by trying to pay the rent and feed their families.

Under Obama, things will be different.

In a bottom-up economy, the rules of business and government are fair and apply to all... They feel that their personal success will be determined by their hard work and effort, not by who they know or who they are related to.

It's difficult to characterize the auto bailouts, perhaps the biggest US government intervention into industrial policy ever, as bottom-up Obamanomics. Not when school-teachers and pensioners, holders of auto company bonds, are getting the shaft while the UAW and UAW members are getting 55 percent of Chrysler.

Newt Gingrich calls this a scandal, on a par with the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s when oilman Harry Sinclair got drilling rights to the Teapot Dome in Wyoming after giving Interior Secretary Albert Fall a hefty bribe.

My guess is we are in the early stages of a huge backlash against the Democratic Party. The American People hate the bailouts. They hate the stimulus. They hate the huge deficits. And in the months and years to come, politicians will find out how to lead them and give electoral muscle to this rage.

In the Bush years, liberals convinced themselves that Bush was bad and Dems were good, and that was all you needed to know. But I think that they are living in Fantasyland. Americans hate the bailouts; they will hate federal control of health care; they will hate renewable energy and cap-and-trade.

It will take time. But one day liberals will wake up and find that the American people want them out of there, fast. It is one thing to talk about wonderful health care. It is another thing to change the relationships that American women have with their doctors. It is one thing to talk about bottom-up economics. It is another thing when you've just paid off your supporters with a crony-capitalist deal. It is one thing to talk about wonderful green energy and millions of green jobs. It is another thing to increase taxes on energy.

The reality check on all these liberal notions is right ahead. And it won't be pretty.

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