Obama: in bed with big labor, big business, big government, and big green

It is interesting to hear Obama portray himself as the champion of little guys, yet do so by allying himself with big government, big labor unions, and big corporations. Fred Barnes quotes consultant David Smick:

“What an irony for an administration that claims populist roots,” Smick says. “Policy prescriptions for the most part use the top-down approach. Bring out the GE guy and various big labor bosses to deal with the jobless nightmare when the bulk of the solution involves fostering small business start-ups.”

More from Barnes:

Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric’s CEO, happens to be chairman of Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. GE is famous for having paid no corporate income taxes in 2009 and 2010 and shipping thousands of jobs overseas. The council’s membership consists of 23 corporate chiefs, two labor leaders, one economist, one biologist, and zero representatives of small business.

For contributions to his reelection campaign, Obama has tapped the segment of big business he’s referred to as “fat cat bankers”: Wall Street. According to the Washington Post, he has raised more from financiers and bankers than all of the Republican presidential candidates combined. He’s raised more at Bain Capital than Mitt Romney, who co-founded the firm.

Wall Street has reason to be grateful. “During Obama’s tenure, Wall Street has roared back, even as the broader economy has struggled,” Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post wrote last week. “Wall Street firms .  .  . earned more in the first two and a half years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration.”

Barnes goes on to document the rise of big unions and big government. Then, he finishes his essay with one more big:

Last week, Obama veered from his top priority with unemployment at 9 percent: more jobs. A Canadian company plans to hire as many as 20,000 workers to build an oil pipeline from the province of Alberta to Texas. Its application, pending since 2008, has sparked growing protests by environmental activists. Obama promises to decide personally whether to approve the pipeline. And last week, he took a preliminary step, delaying the decision until after the 2012 election. So for now, the little guy lost. The winner: big green.

Read more here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-big-guys_608006.html