No matter how soothing the White House overtures to business leaders sounded this week an inconvenient fact remains: Washington is gripped by crab-in-the-bucket syndrome. And theres no cure in sight.
Put a single crab in an uncovered bucket and it will find a way to climb up and out on its own. Put a dozen crabs in a bucket and 11 will fight with all their might to pull down the striver who attempts escape. President Obama sought to reassure 20 CEOs that he wasnt the king crab holding them down: I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success he cooed. We want to be boosters because when you do well America does well.
Take it all with a huge grain of sea salt.
This is after all the same booster who in April mused openly about limits on profits government determinations for what constitutes a good product or service and the expectation that private businesses serve a collective need to goose Washingtons jobs numbers. I mean I do think at a certain point youve made enough money the president said. But you know part of the American way is you know you can just keep on making it if youre providing a good product or providing good service. We dont want people to stop ah fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.
Our Founding Fathers had quite a different view of the American way of course. In 1816 Thomas Jefferson wrote: To take from one because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much in order to spare to others who or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
But like a success inhibitor injected into the body politic Obamas policies have only served to suppress growth punish ambition and discourage profit-maximizers. He has railed against fat cats on Wall Street while protecting his favored financial industry benefactors. He threatened to kick the a**es of oil industry executives while refusing to punish the scientific lies and distortions of his own job-killing environmental czars and bureaucrats. He inveighed against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for collecting dues from international affiliates while ignoring the same practices among deep-pocketed unions. And he bemoaned tax relief for millionaires and billionaires that would actually benefit wealth-producing couples who annually earn more than $250000 and individuals who earn $200000 or more.
Most small-business owners will tell you they dont want Obama boosting them. They just want him to get out of the way. But none of them was represented at his CEO shindig. Instead among the business leaders the White House invited was billionaire Penny Pritzker -- a Chicago crony Democratic fundraiser/bundler and heiress whose family co-owned a failed subprime specialty bank.
While Obama the olive-branch poseur has called for a restoration of civility in Washington and liberal elites whine and whinny about the need for no labels class-warfare demagoguery has metastasized unchecked.
Socialist Bernie Sanders took to the Senate floor to filibuster tax relief for all Americans last week in a ponderous eight-and-a-half-hour harangue against greed the rich richer and richest and millionaires and billionaires he had the audacity to liken to bandits. On the House side N.Y. Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley attacked the GOP as the party of the wealthy and compared all people who earn more than $250000 a year to the late convicted tax evader Leona Helmsley and her Maltese doggie heir.
The left wastes no opportunity to blame tea party and talk radio rhetoric for violent acts by lone nuts. But when a suspected serial arsonist (still on the loose) burns down expensive homes in an upscale Cape Cod neighborhood and spray-paints f**k the rich graffiti at the crime scenes the words-have-consequences crowd is nowhere to be found. Such is the silence of the crabs.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010).
No matter how soothing the White House overtures to business leaders sounded this week an inconvenient fact remains: Washington is gripped by crab-in-the-bucket syndrome. And theres no cure in sight.
Put a single crab in an uncovered bucket and it will find a way to climb up and out on its own. Put a dozen crabs in a bucket and 11 will fight with all their might to pull down the striver who attempts escape. President Obama sought to reassure 20 CEOs that he wasnt the king crab holding them down: I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success he cooed. We want to be boosters because when you do well America does well.
Take it all with a huge grain of sea salt.
This is after all the same booster who in April mused openly about limits on profits government determinations for what constitutes a good product or service and the expectation that private businesses serve a collective need to goose Washingtons jobs numbers. I mean I do think at a certain point youve made enough money the president said. But you know part of the American way is you know you can just keep on making it if youre providing a good product or providing good service. We dont want people to stop ah fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.
Our Founding Fathers had quite a different view of the American way of course. In 1816 Thomas Jefferson wrote: To take from one because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much in order to spare to others who or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
But like a success inhibitor injected into the body politic Obamas policies have only served to suppress growth punish ambition and discourage profit-maximizers. He has railed against fat cats on Wall Street while protecting his favored financial industry benefactors. He threatened to kick the a**es of oil industry executives while refusing to punish the scientific lies and distortions of his own job-killing environmental czars and bureaucrats. He inveighed against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for collecting dues from international affiliates while ignoring the same practices among deep-pocketed unions. And he bemoaned tax relief for millionaires and billionaires that would actually benefit wealth-producing couples who annually earn more than $250000 and individuals who earn $200000 or more.
Most small-business owners will tell you they dont want Obama boosting them. They just want him to get out of the way. But none of them was represented at his CEO shindig. Instead among the business leaders the White House invited was billionaire Penny Pritzker -- a Chicago crony Democratic fundraiser/bundler and heiress whose family co-owned a failed subprime specialty bank.
While Obama the olive-branch poseur has called for a restoration of civility in Washington and liberal elites whine and whinny about the need for no labels class-warfare demagoguery has metastasized unchecked.
Socialist Bernie Sanders took to the Senate floor to filibuster tax relief for all Americans last week in a ponderous eight-and-a-half-hour harangue against greed the rich richer and richest and millionaires and billionaires he had the audacity to liken to bandits. On the House side N.Y. Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley attacked the GOP as the party of the wealthy and compared all people who earn more than $250000 a year to the late convicted tax evader Leona Helmsley and her Maltese doggie heir.
The left wastes no opportunity to blame tea party and talk radio rhetoric for violent acts by lone nuts. But when a suspected serial arsonist (still on the loose) burns down expensive homes in an upscale Cape Cod neighborhood and spray-paints f**k the rich graffiti at the crime scenes the words-have-consequences crowd is nowhere to be found. Such is the silence of the crabs.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010).
