by Dave Cribbin
Everyone wants a free lunch these days, and it seems that in the Cafe of Crony Capitalism, sometimes known as Washington, the free lunch special is being handed out as openly as the candy given to children who knock at the door on Halloween. But alas, not everyone gets a treat, because there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone has got to pay. That’s why you, the taxpayer, are always the one who is tricked into picking up the tab.
Turns out you, the taxpayer, don’t qualify for the free lunch. Just how does one qualify for the free lunch? Well, in this bold new era of hope and change “we all have embraced” it’s nice to see that the more things change the more they stay the same. You need to be a Crony (one who plys Congressmen with cash) or you’re going to go hungry.
How does one become a Crony with benefits? Is it based upon need, as in GE needs their $139 billion debt guaranteed or their profits won’t look as good? Or is it based upon some other metric such as literally keeping the Gold in Goldman Sachs? It was the President of the New York FED who intervened in the negotiations between two parties to a contract to ensure that the taxpayers ponied up enough cash to make sure they got paid back 100 cents on the dollar on the bets they placed with their bookie AIG, and not just the measly 60 cents they were trying to settle their claim for. No, it’s not based on need, it’s pretty much just based on cash, it’s campaign contributions that matter.
It seems that there are all sorts of companies that qualify for Crony Benefits. If you’re an automaker and you run your business off the road and into the ditch you need to just wait patiently for the taxpayer tow truck to pull you out of the ditch, provided that is that your membership in the Crony Capitalist club is up to date and you have ponied up enough for the right campaigns. If you’re a banker, it is a little trickier. Of course you need to start out the same way, by lending money to folks who won’t ever pay you back, but you need to be very nimble if you want to end up like JPMorgan and not like Lehman Brothers.
If you are a professional Crony Player like the folks at Fannie and Freddie, you get to play by your own personalized set of rules where it doesn’t matter how badly you have screwed the pooch, you still get to walk away with $90 million, give or take.
Even if you’re not a profit making Enterprise you can qualify to be a Crony with benefits. You can have the Attorney General of your state over-look your criminal activity and instead bring charges against the Whistle blowers, especially if that AG is running for Governor of California and your fraudulent non-profit is tight with SEIU.
The list of Cronies gets longer each day. Come to find out most of the jobs saved by the Gargantuan “stimulus” package weren’t saved at all. They were there all along, but you got to give them extra credit when it comes to creative math skills, counting cost of living raises for State workers, and funding for undergraduate students to hand out pool cues in the college rec center as jobs created or saved!
Next week in the house you can watch the Democrats in control pay off the AMA with the so-called doctors fix for Medicare. They will debate the $210,000,000,0000 bill for 1 hour, with no amendments allowed and then pass it on a purely partisan vote. Want to know who is going to pick up the check on this Free Lunch? Why you, the taxpayer are, of course! Not a bad payday for supporting the farce of a health care bill the President is so desperate to pass.
But take heart all you lesser folks who don’t qualify for Crony benefits. At least this President and his advisors aren’t making the same foolish mistakes that Roosevelt did when he was confronted with his Congressionally induced recession. Oh no, they’ve learned their lesson! This time there will be no run away spending programs in an attempt to prop up excessive wages, nor increased taxes and price controls. They’re a thing of the past. You can also be confident this time they won’t let the dollar go to hell. Please someone tell me they won’t let that happen. Could you imagine where we would be if they made the same mistakes this time? This time is different, right? Someone please tell me it’ll be different this time!
Dave Cribbin, President of Tailwind Capital Group, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
