Daily Beast: The Elite Turn On Obama
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 4:19PM This is so awesome. Even the idiot liberal elites realize what a disaster the Obama administration is. This from Daily Beast:
You’d think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen Ideas Festival — which is running all week in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-gooders — would be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own.
In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave pairing the Aspen Institute think tank with the Atlantic Monthly magazine might even be seen as President Obama’s natural base.
Apparently not so much.
Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers, and his departing budget director, Peter Orszag, can expect heavy weather when they land in Aspen later this week to make their case to this civic-minded clique of wealthy skeptics.
“If you’re asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, I’d say it’s actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what we’ve already experienced in Western Europe,” Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared during Monday’s kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obama’s economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.
“The curse of long-term unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they’ll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,” Ferguson said. “Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy.”
Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. Both lambasted Obama’s trillion-dollar deficit spending program — in the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown — as fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.
“We are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world,” Zuckerman said. “The real problem we have . . . are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”
Zuckerman added that he detects in the Obama White House “hostility to the very kinds of [business] culture that have made this the great country that it is and was. I think we have to find some way of dealing with that or else we will do great damage to this country with a public policy that could ruin everything.”
Ferguson added: “The critical point is if your policy says you’re going run a trillion-dollar deficit for the rest of time, you’re riding for a fall . . . Then it really is goodbye.” A dashing Brit, Ferguson added: “Can I say that, having grown up in a declining empire, I do not recommend it. It’s just not a lot of fun actually — decline.”
Ferguson called for what he called “radical” measures. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.” He praised “really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his wonderful ‘Roadmap’ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system” and “unleash entrepreneurial innovation.” Otherwise, Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.”
This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. “Depressing, but fantastic,” Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. “So exciting. Wonderful!”
Brolin’s assessment: “Mind-blowing.”
In a session Tuesday morning, Silicon Valley guru Michael Splinter piled on. “From an industry standpoint, it’s below what a lot of people in industry have viewed as the solution to the jobs problem,” Splinter, president of the Applied Materials solar energy company, complained about Obama’s economic performance. He was speaking to an agreeable audience in an interview with Atlantic Media owner David Bradley. “When I talk to venture capitalists, their companies are starting to move their manufacturing operations out of the United States . . . Our corporate tax rate, on a worldwide competitive basis, is just not competitive. Taiwan is lowering their rate to 20 to 15 percent in order to stay competitive with Singapore. These countries have made it their job to attract industry. You don’t get that sense here in the United States.”
The consensus was similar in an afternoon panel discussion on the decline of the American middle class. “He said jobs were going to be his No. 1 priority — there’s a huge disconnect between Washington and what’s going on out in the country,” nominal Obama supporter Arianna Huffington said. “The president’s economic team kept talking about a ‘cyclical’ problem. Larry Summers said jobs were a lagging economic indicator. All these things are simply wrong. The president put all his trust in the wrong economic team — an economic team that didn’t understand what was happening.”
Reader Comments (11)
Wow, who knew that if you pay someone to sit on their butt all day, they'd continue to do so for years and years. A blind man in an underground cave could see that.
I used to enjoy articles like this. But at this point, I'm sick of reading them because THAT MORON IS STILL IN OFFICE! No one's doing anything about it.
Duh... The Liberal A-Holes have finally taken their heads out of their A-Holes and discovered that this activist flim flam artist has the best interest of HIS OWN socialistic agenda in mind! The hollywood "Stars", never at a loss for words, constantly bitched and moaned about that terrible Bush person! And now that they see what this socialist administration is trying to do, steal their money, they finally see what the hell is going on!! Way to go SH*T HEADS!! Way to keep up!! I'd like to BITCH SLAP the whole lot of you!! **** off and die!! And on a lighter note, Lindsey Lohan is going to jail, Hee, hee!
They'll turn right around and vote someone in more liberal than this dolt next time. These people are clueless idiots. That don't live in reality.
These people can't hear the truth from Republicans or Conservatives. It only becomes the truth to them when they arrive at the same conclusion.
Why, I think I've been censored...
Sorry Dano. I couldn't let the elephant line stand - though it was a good one. Too many kids and family members looking in. Hope you understand.
Nothing here folks, might as well move on, same song ,same dance and a few words
from the king of Hopey Changey and he will be right back in business blowing smoke up
their rear ends..
Business as usual for boy Barry and his crew of Street Hugging Thugs....
Your right, sorry 'bout that...
What did you AMERICANS expect when your LIBERAL DRONES voted in a COMMUNITY ORGANIZER from the South side of Chicago to become the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. With his main goal was the TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA . It now looks like some of the ELITIST DRONES have seen the light.But is it to late to stop your DEAR LEADER ?
No worries at all Dano. Keep it coming!
The media elite on the left are so blasted stupid they'll be behind this failed "President" when re-election time comes. You can't fix stupid!