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The Elite Turn Against Obama
The Daily Beast ^ | 7-14-2010 | Lloyd Grove

Posted on 07/14/2010 8:18:03 AM PDT by blam

The Elite Turn Against Obama

July 14,2010
by Lloyd Grove

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.

“The real problem we have,” Mort Zuckerman said, “are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”

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 longterm 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.”


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aspen; elite; failure; obama
"The president put all his trust in the wrong economic team—an economic team that didn’t understand what was happening.”

It's not Obama...it's those racist White boys he has advising him.

1 posted on 07/14/2010 8:18:06 AM PDT by blam
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To: blam

“this cerebral conclave”

They must have meant “Cerebral Concave”, because they sure didn’t mean “Cerebral enclave”.


2 posted on 07/14/2010 8:22:52 AM PDT by Celerity
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To: Celerity

Nope, they meant a cerebral “gathering of a group or association,” like a Papal Conclave, but of high-minded mucky-mucks instead of Cardinals.


3 posted on 07/14/2010 8:28:59 AM PDT by worst-case scenario (Striving to reach the light)
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To: blam

It’s all well and good that these “smart” people are finally seeing the light, but they should spend a little bit of time examining just how they fell for this garbage in the first place. The guy is doing exactly what he said he would do, and exactly what everything in his background suggested he would do. How can any of them claim to be surprised?


4 posted on 07/14/2010 8:35:17 AM PDT by cdcdawg
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To: blam

Well, at least we don’t have to put up with “if only dear leader knew”, like many soviets said to excuse Stalin.


5 posted on 07/14/2010 8:35:19 AM PDT by correctthought (Hippies, want to change the world, but all they ever do is smoke pot and smell bad)
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To: blam
It's OK, Aspen...

...help is on the way...

NObama O V E M B E R

6 posted on 07/14/2010 8:36:02 AM PDT by NorCoGOP (If OBAMA is the ANSWER, how STUPID was the QUESTION?)
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To: blam
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!”

When I get to the drooling dementia stage Babs has reached I hope they give me the same drugs she's getting.

7 posted on 07/14/2010 8:37:07 AM PDT by tx_eggman (Liberalism is only possible in that moment when a man chooses Barabas over Christ.)
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To: cdcdawg

He’s making them look bad... that’s why they’re turning on him.


8 posted on 07/14/2010 8:38:54 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a (de)humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
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To: blam
"“When I talk to venture capitalists, their companies are starting to move their manufacturing operations out of the United States"

This is a laugher.

This has been going on for more than a decade; it didn't just start to happen. Since the internet boom/bust, just about any VC would assume that you would outsource any and all mfg. operations as a prerequisite to obtaining funding.
9 posted on 07/14/2010 8:45:32 AM PDT by indthkr
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To: worst-case scenario

I stand corrected - thank you !


10 posted on 07/14/2010 8:55:37 AM PDT by Celerity
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To: worst-case scenario
Nope, they meant a cerebral “gathering of a group or association,” like a Papal Conclave, but of high-minded mucky-mucks instead of Cardinals.

Striesand and Brolin are 'high-minded?' As Casey Stengel would say 'Whoed have thunk it!'

11 posted on 07/14/2010 8:56:41 AM PDT by Ditto (Nov 2, 2010 -- Time to Clean House.)
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To: Ditto
You're kidding. babs and James are liberals, and therefore prima facie high-minded.
12 posted on 07/14/2010 9:56:24 AM PDT by expatpat
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To: blam
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/13/marxist-obama-why-the-media-has-been-silent/

http://investigatingobama.blogspot.com/2010/04/barack-obama-argued-strict.html

The full interview is devastating.


Too bad Fox News ignored Dr Drew in 2008 when he contacted them.


We now know the full details of Barry’s Occidental years.

He was an avowed and committed Marxist.


He looked forward to the revolution when the Marxists would overthrow our government.


His love for Marxism was unusually strong .


He was in passionate agreement with the most radical Marxist Leninist professors.


13 posted on 07/14/2010 9:59:23 AM PDT by DontTreadOnMe2009 (So stop treading on me already!)
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To: blam

Turned against? Oh, my a$$ they have. This is a little lover’s spat. He’ll spew some appropriate rhetoric, maybe even spend a weekend and have brunch with a few of ‘em, smooth their little neglected ruffled feathers and they’ll all be back in love again.


14 posted on 07/14/2010 10:19:51 AM PDT by greatplains
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To: blam
Turns Out Last Week's Sun Valley Media Retreat Was One Big Obama Trash-Talking Session
15 posted on 07/14/2010 2:55:04 PM PDT by blam
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