The influence economy

How public money in private hands changes government, the economy, and most of all, the public's perception that fair play and hard work is the basis for our American way of life.  

Portions of the speech below are semi-redacted to eliminate partisan politics.  The problems of big government cross all party lines.  Big government at the federal level where there is an enormous amount of public money or competitive advantages to be handed to private interests, happens at all levels of government.  Wherever public money and government power exist, there will be those willing to exploit it: the bigger the government, the bigger the opportunity for corruption.  

Wall Street Journal. December 6, 2014

Notable and Quotable:
Ed Gillespie

Obama's influence-peddling economy

From a Dec. 6 speech by Ed Gille­spie at the Re­pub­li­can Party of Vir­ginia’s an­nual meet­ing in Chan­tilly, Va.; the for­mer Re­pub­li­can Na­tional Com­mittee chair­man was the GOP’s 2014 U.S. Sen­ate can­di­date from the state:

We can see an in­flu­ence econ­omy start­ing to take shape. CEOs are becom­ing less concerned about in­venting the right prod­ucts, tar­get­ing the right mar­kets and hir­ing the right peo­ple in hopes of mak­ing a respectable profit for in­vestors—and more con­cerned about get­ting the right lob­by­ists, re­tain­ing the right lawyers and at­tend­ing the right fundraisers in hopes of get­ting a hefty sub­sidy from tax­pay­ers.

Mak­ing the right cam­paign con­tribu­tions are be­com­ing as im­por­tant to a com­pany as its research and de­vel­op­ment bud­get, and fed­eral-com­pli­ance lawyers will soon out-num­ber patent lawyers.

Fully im­ple­mented, Oba­ma’s in­fluence econ­omy will be one where or­dinary Amer­i­cans must get per­mis­sion from a gov­ern­ment agency or de­partment be­fore they can buy, build, in­vest or hire. It’s an econ­omy rooted in man­dates and waivers, tax cred­its and tar­geted sub­si­dies, Fed­eral grants and gov­ern­ment loan guar­antees.

Can you get the De­part­ment of Justice to file a suit against your com­petitor? Can you get the NLRB to com­pel work­ers to pay dues to your union? Can you get the De­part­ment of Energy to guar­an­tee your loan? Can you get the HHS to man­date that con­sumers buy your prod­uct?

It’s an Amer­ica where Wash­ing­ton lim­its our choices, con­strains our deci­sions, con­trols our be­hav­ior and man­ages our lives. Where more and more reg­u­la­tions are vig­or­ously enforced by an ex­ec­u­tive branch that rec­og­nizes fewer and fewer lim­its on its au­thor­ity, be­cause this pres­i­dent dis­dains the checks and bal­ances of two branches of gov­ern­ment our Founders cre­ated as equal but he sees as in­con­se­quen­tial.