As sure as the sun rises in the east, crony capitalists know who butters their bread each day, and in 2016, they are rallying to support the Clinton dynasty and block the Trump insurgency.
A recent headline trumpeted the result of a survey among the “Fortune 500” executives: “Not one of the top Fortune 100 CEO’s supports Donald Trump.”
The story was curiously silent on how many of those top 100 corporate leaders support Hillary Clinton, but Americans are supposed to be alarmed that not one of them supports Trump.
Really? C’mon, man: most Americans will find that news reassuring, not alarming.
Why anyone should be surprised at Clinton’s support among top corporate leaders is a mystery.
The party of Big Government will always have good friends in Big Business, especially in those industries highly dependent on continued government largesse.
Yet, apparently, the major media believe their own propaganda, that the Republican party is the party of big business, which is a myth that expired at least two generations ago.
Anyone half awake knows that for decades, Big Business has been playing both sides, giving money and endorsements to the party they think will win. “Access” is the name of the game, and it has nothing to do with business principles but a lot to do with corporate interests.
Crony capitalists are expert at buying access because that’s the key to corporate profits in an economy highly dependent on government spending.
Do you think Safeway wants to see a cut in food stamps? Does WalMart want to see high tariffs on Chinese goods? Are the big banks who have survived Dodd-Franks going to welcome with open arms new policies to encourage a revival of healthy, thriving community banks? Does Big Agriculture welcome a cut in ethanol subsidies to corn growers?
The answers to those questions are no, no, and hell no. So, it’s not news that very few CEOs in those industries are supporting Donald Trump. We should see corporate America’s opposition to Trump as a sign of hope: Did we expect crony capitalism to be defanged and defunded without resistance?
To be sure, not every successful business leader is a crony capitalist, dependent on access to friends in government to help get that next government contract. And let’s admit that the term as it is used today lacks precision. The term is often used by the left to denigrate and smear all business success.
The problem is that our economy has become so intertwined with government that it is often hard to separate the two. The question is, do we want more of that “business-government partnership” or less? Crony capitalists want more, a lot more.
Much of corporate America’s fear of Donald Trump is based on the uncertainty created by talk of cutting those intimate ties. Many corporate CEO’s worry that Trump might be serious about dismantling the federal regulatory apparatus that today absorbs over $2.1 trillion in compliance costs.
If you’ve ever been a candidate for public office, you have probably had a personal experience with the network of corporate political action committees and semi-secret groups that try to influence elections– and not always on the side of taxpayer protections. In the 2014 gubernatorial race in Colorado, a cabal of business leaders arranged for a sizeable amount of laundered out-of-state money to purchase radio advertising attacking my candidacy.
More recently, a group led by a former Republican Governor funded primary election challenges to incumbent Republican legislators who had dared to rock the boat — they called it “grandstanding”– in ways they disapproved. Oddly, they did not fund challenges to a single incumbent Democrat legislator.
Many of those same corporate leaders are found among the backers of Hillary Clinton’s White House bid. While we think such support for the progressive Democrat agenda is shameful, we should not be surprised by it. Crony capitalism is notoriously nonpartisan and bipartisan, and that is why it is so entrenched and so powerful.
The Trump candidacy is a frontal assault on the crony capitalism that has led us into a no-growth economy, a $19 trillion national debt, the blind export of millions of middle-class jobs, and an addiction to deficit spending that extends to state governments as well as the federal octopus.
Are you one of the hundred million Americans who thinks, “Thank goodness my state constitution requires a balanced budget– my state is not in the mess we see in the federal budget!”
Well, my friend, take a closer look at your state budget. What percentage of total state spending comes from “federal dollars”? That budget number will be staggering.
In fact, you may have one or two state agencies funded 90 percent or more by federal tax dollars. States are becoming mere administrative units of the federal bureaucracy– in health care, energy, transportation, education and more.
Now, ask yourself: Is the typical Fortune 500 CEO or “Colorado 100” or “Connecticut 100” CEO losing any sleep over the fiscal mess we are in? No? Should we trust the country’s future and our grandchildren’s freedom to the candidates they endorse?
Crony capitalism is as economically insidious as it is morally abhorrent. It will not be derailed and defeated by Chamber of Commerce complacency or coalitions of multimillionaires whose children are protected by a safety net called a trust fund.
Our nation’s destiny is not the property of the crony capitalists; it is not theirs to sell or trade in the “global marketplace.” It belongs to us, the American people– sometimes known as the American electorate.
Donald Trump is far from the perfect candidate, and as a businessman, he has at times engaged in business practices required by the corporate culture he inherited. But a man is known by both his friends and the enemies he makes, and in 2016, Trump has made exactly the right kind of enemies.
I for one am thankful that those Fortune 500 and Colorado Chamber of Commerce crony capitalists take him seriously enough to publicly oppose him.
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