Crony capitalism

Some may be more equal than others.

Now that provisions of ObamaCare requiring a minimum level of health insurance coverage by employers are taking effect, some companies are saying they can’t afford it and are threatening to drop health insurance entirely. So instead of enforcing the law as written, the Department of Health and Human Services thus far has issued 773 compliance waivers, including 650 to unions.

And no sooner had the Environmental Protection Agency issued more stringent rules for the emissions of greenhouse gases than it issued its first enforcement waiver. It went to the stalled Avenal Power Center, a proposed 600-megawatt electrical generation project in the San Joaquin Valley, which coincidentally will use two natural gas-fired General Electric turbines and a GE steam turbine.

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt was recently appointed President Obama’s jobs czar, even though the company has cut 34,000 U.S. jobs in the past decade. The Washington Examiner reports GE has spent $65.7 million lobbying the Obama administration, the most of any company.

A Heritage Foundation blog reported additional federal government-private business coziness in just the past two months. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has left to go to work for Citibank, which received a $306 billion bailout. On Jan. 7, the president appointed Gene Sperling to be director of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic policy. Mr. Sperling had been with Goldman Sachs, beneficiary of the $173 billion AIG bailout. The president named fellow Chicagoan Bill Daley his chief of staff. Mr. Daley worked as a lobbyist for Fannie Mae, whose bailout so far tops $135 billion. He also was an executive with JPMorgan, which was bailed out with $12 billion.

The Heritage blog observed, “There is a phrase for an economy that is so dependent on close relationships between business people and government officials: crony capitalism. And it is strangling our economic recovery.”

Such exemptions, bailouts and buyouts put a different spin on the president’s call in his State of the Union address to work with private businesses.

Investor’s Business Daily editorialized on this topic, saying, “The insidiousness of this is obvious. First, make businesses and their owners totally dependent on the whims of bureaucrats. Then, make them beholden to you — partners, if you will, in the corruption of government favoritism.”

It’s enough to make one wonder if there is equal protection under the law.