It is an objectionable habit of human behaviour in the modern world deeply ingrained in all humans. Has fuck all to do with capitalism as such though.
And unless Immelt somehow is related to your President (I shouldn’t think so), it’s not nepotism.
“The problem with lefties is that they don’t understand business!”
“Well, OK, we’ll bring on a successful businessman to offer advice.”
“Crony capitalism!”
I think China Guy is on the money. I don’t see Immelt’s appointment as “jobs czar” as a crony capitalism issue.
The issue for me (and many others) is the concern that the corporatist perspective he will likely bring to the table in dealing with our economic problems, a problem primarily of unemployment, is a perspective that is not only redundant (corporate interests are already well represented in the US government), but reflects an agenda at odds with the needs of ordinary Americans.
Of course it isn’t nepotism. I was responding to John Mace’s “lead in” comment. As I said, “lead in to…what?” I provided two (incredibly stupid but at least tangentially related) directions the discussion could go, primarily so that they could be dismissed while also eliciting a response. I then left it open-ended for John Mace’s thoughts. They were his words, after all.
I see two main possibilities for furtherance in the OP, the first of which is a discussion of whether this even qualifies as crony capitalism (as you have done, and which might actually be informative). The second concerns how this is yet another example of Obama corrupting our system.
By my lights (perhaps misconstrued), there’s a lot of the latter expressed in the OP, despite the fact that crony capitalism is a widespread occurrence (across governments in general). Yet my first post in this thread, pointing exactly to other instances of crony capitalism, was readily dismissed.
If one is gonna bitch without partisan leanings (as Sam Stone has innocently proclaimed he’s doing), I’d expect additional fodder would be welcome…
Ah right, fine then.
Or, on second thought, I could be reading more into the phrase than was meant – i.e., “lead in” for direction of general discussion vs. “lead in” like “introductory sentence”. If the latter, please accept my apology, John Mace, for seeing something that wasn’t there.
I have to admit your “for crying out loud” got under my skin and colored my subsequent responses.
Well, now, don’t chase him off, he’s our only extreme non-partisan.
Putting aside what happened back in 1780, answer this: do you feel that the Democrats and the Republicans are equal on the issue of crony capitalism in 2011? Or do you feel that one of the two big parties is more involved in crony capitalism? And if so, which party do you feel is more involved?
Bricker! Its a trap!
At a national level, and recognizing that this is an unsubstantiated WAG, I’d have to give the nod to the GOP as the more or less undisputed leader in this arena.
He’s not exactly the only economic advisor. There’s something like 10 people in the panel he’s head of, and IIRC, there are two other similar panels just under the office of the President (wikipediaing, there’s the National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisers, the former of which is all academics and the latter appears to be headed by a Clinton era economic policy maker). Plus the VPs economic advisor. And those are just the people without any actual power. Add the Secretaries of Treasury, Commerce and Labor and all their assorted minions, and the President isn’t exactly lacking for people to give him varying advice on economic and jobs issues.
Selective memory there, Sam. When non-Republicans complained about crony-capitalism issues in the close ties between Cheney and Halliburton, for example, you routinely pooh-poohed the complaints as “conspiracy theories”.
And this is exactly the same sort of thing, just on the other side of the aisle. You can’t point to any specific instance of actual misconduct on the part of Immelt as a government advisor (a far less influential position than Vice-President, by the way), or of the Obama administration in appointing him. All you’ve got are the same sort of vague unspecified-cronyism accusations that you tried to laugh out of court back when people were applying them to Dick Cheney.
Mind you, I wouldn’t bet any money on the prediction that Immelt (or any other business leader) won’t use his advisor position to advance his private interests. I don’t approve of crony capitalism myself, as far as that goes. It’s just that I think you personally, Sam, have a pretty piss-poor record when it comes to opposing it.
In short, my verdict on this thread is “Reasonably interesting and discussion-worthy Original Post from an Original Poster who on this issue happens to be a hypocrite with zero credibility.”
Did anyone notice that the thread title was “Crony Capitalism Sucks”? It wasn’t “Obama engages in crony capitalism.”
I used the Immelt example because it’s a lead news story, and because he is the current head of a major corporation while simultaneously heading a council that is supposed to make recommendations for government action to help business. There’s a huge conflict of interest here.
I’ve already said that I understand that this practice has been going on forever, and that both parties do it. I’ve criticized Bush for it in the past.
As for my nefarious intent to lead this thread in the direction of Obama bashing, isn’t that just poisoning the well? If you’re always going to assume nefarious intent on the part of anyone posting anything that could possibly be construed as a criticism of the current president, then those of us who actually try to be fair might as well just stop, since we’re not going to get credit for it anyway.
Where I was actually going with this thread was to suggest some concrete ideas for ending the practice. For example, I don’t think anyone who has fiduciary interest in a company should sit on a government panel that might make decisions affecting the bottom line of that company. Immelt should be asked to step down from GE if he wants to be on Obama’s team. Or better yet, Obama could have chosen Jack Welch for the job, who was a better CEO of GE anyway, but who now has no operational control over the company.
No, I pointed out that Cheney was forced to divest himself of any control in Halliburton and to put his investments in a blind trust.
I just suggested in the last post that one solution to this problem would be for Immelt to do exactly what Cheney did. So, no hypocrisy there.
And he’d have to work pretty fast for there to be actual examples of malfeasance in his position, since he was only appointed to it a couple of days ago.
You’re really reaching now.
Oh, I see. So while you actually agree with me, you couldn’t resist dropping in just to shit on the thread and lay down another ad-hominem attack. Nice work.
True, but I don’t get the sense that Obama is necessarily very savvy when it comes to economic issues. His basic plan was appointing all the Clinton guys and letting them dust off the mid 90s playbook, and everything I read about his economic advisors in his first two years suggests that it was mainly Summers, Geithner, and Bernanke who ran the show.
Sam, if I tried to drape the mantle of non-partisan objectivity about my manly shoulders, you would laugh with scorn. Rightly so. Defend what you believe, defending one’s dignity is for lesser minds than you or I.
Why pray tell would the President of GE need to (or even given the public profile desire to) use such a position to advance private interests.
I remain quite unclear as to why this is “crony capitalism”
It’s not ad hominem, Sam. I’m not arguing that the concerns you raise are necessarily invalid just because you’re a hypocrite, which is how an ad hominem argument works. I’m simply pointing out that you’re being a hypocrite on this issue, even if these particular concerns have some merit.
In short, I’m not committing the ad hominem fallacy of attacking the post by means of an unrelated criticism of the poster; I’m attacking the poster on his own merits, irrespective of the merits of the post.
And that’s relevant because you yourself went along with the original diversion of this thread to the question of your hypocrisy, trying (unconvincingly) to argue that you’ve been even-handed on this issue.
In fact, you did pooh-pooh concerns about ties between Cheney and Halliburton as “conspiracy theories”, repeatedly. And no, an elected official’s having put his company shares into a blind trust (even leaving aside the related issue of Cheney’s lavish additional options separate from the shares) is not the same thing as being devoid of industry ties that can influence the official in industry’s favor.
The fact of the matter is, as other posters have pointed out, that in a political system where there are close involvements between government and big business personnel, the government is always going to be strongly influenced in favor of the businesses’ interests. And you, Sam, are always going to go on calling it “crony capitalism” when the government administration is Democratic, and calling it something more positive when the administration is Republican.
(See, for example, this post from 2004 where you explicitly CONTRADICTED the claim that the neoconservatives in power were “crony capitalists”.)
Hilarious.
Well these are reasonable ideas and concrete. Although you still haven’t convinced me there is any crony capitalism involved at all. (never mind I read things that suggest Jack old Man in the end created many of the issues his successors struggled with…
You know you do winge on a lot about ad hominem. Get a spine.
I’m largely on your side ideologically, but I also note you’ve got a bad habit of posing ideologically framed ‘facts’ and then crying when called on it. While your Leftists critics are often hypocritical in their banging on you, a bit of self reflection is in order mate.