Posted on 07/07/2010 8:02:18 PM PDT by neverdem
Even the Aspen Ideas Festival, an annual gathering of the country's brightest lights, isn't Obama country anymore. Lloyd Grove on the president's waning support among the intelligentsia.
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.”
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
> I hope the Republicans know what to do with the power
> that is coming their way...
Given all the opportunities I’ve seen them throw away - 1981, 1995, 2001, 2005 - I have to doubt it.
Unless there is some NEW and SMART and UNCOMPROMISINGLY PRINCIPLED leadership in the GOP, they will just do what they always do. “Reach across the aisle” ... “bipartisanship” ... yada yada yada ... with the end result being we have less freedom and the DemoncRAT communist agenda continues to move forward.
Or, through the translator: "Daaaaaahling. I sense, when some of the leetle peeple are around, that a tahrget is beink placed on my back. Eeen fact, my freinds feel the same, like we are the nobles facing the rest of the country in France in 1789...."
The “smart people” are always the last to know.
The higher the eeducation the less common sense.
Elgibility lawyer in coma:
On July 6th, 2010, an ‘unopposed motion for extension to file opening brief’ was filed in the Keyes/Barnett v Obama lawsuit now in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California. Appellants’ seek an extension until August 12th, 2010 to file the opening brief in the Keyes/Barnett v Obama appeal. The original schedule to file was June 28th, 2010. Previously, the Court granted Appellants’ an extension until July 12th, 2010, but due to serious complications from back surgery Attorney Gary Kreep is unable to meet that date. The motion was filed by Attorney Christopher P. Tucker. Below is an excerpt, regarding Attorney Kreep, from the motion filed yesterday, July 6th, 2010. The full motion embedded below excerpt.
More at:
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2010/07/eligibility-attorney-gary-kreep-placed.html
I read the comments at the link. Good to hear he is recovering. My prayers are with him and his family!
>> These same “elite” scumbags will do everything in their power to get Ubama re-elected.
>> Count on it.
Yup.
I have never seen an egg with a nose like hers!
Belay that, I saw one once when it was just hatching and the beak was sticking out. You may be right...
Quite true. Michele Bachmann has reported that Obama, at a meeting with members of Congress shortly before his inauguration, stated quite clearly that enacting his agenda his more important to him than having a second term.
The author gives them too much credit. This was nothing more than a therapy session to reason away their apparent cognitive dissonance. A circle jerk for the elites. They have learned nothing aside from burying their own incompetence efficiently. Makes them even more dangerous in my opinion. The guilt is still there, only there's more baggage attached to it and ready to be tweaked by the next Obama...
Cerebral? This was a conclave of idiots. Their savior was a false prophet.
And anybody with a 9th grade education in the realn world saw it coming. So, how "smart" are these "experts"?
Not sure how you can classify as cerebral, that which lacks as it's foundation, the perception of the obvious.
Amazing how some are still not laying blame on Obama but his team-If James Brolin thought the conference was “Mind Blowing” I wonder what words he would utter if he knew that all the policys Obama and his team are implementing are for the purposeful destruction of the United States. I think he will pass out
Strutting peacocks with not enough sense to have seen the trouble coming in early 2008.
If I hear HARVARD referred to again, with the implication that a degree from that factory is to be worshiped, I’m gonna PUKE.
Obama has surrounded himself with Harvard-oides, assuming the “little people” are impressed with his appointments. He, himself, was “sent” there and subsidized-—again, in the hopes the “little people” would be impressed.
Harvard-oides are the type that don’t know enough to come in out of the rain. I know—I have a sister who went to harvard...she voted for the offal in the white house.
(...and from such people turn away!...2 Tim. 3:1-5)
She and I have little to say to each other these days. Sadly, I don’t miss her stories about standing out in the rain.
Why Cloward-Piven Will Eat Itself
Ex-Spy Is a Long Shot to Oust Schumer
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Yeah, the great sage of economics, Arianna Huffington says it’s Obama’s economic team. Can no one on the left just come out and say it’s Obama’s fault?
Actually that’s more of a positive than a negative.
I think even the hard core Left is seeing that the country is falling apart economically and is scared to death. Now they want to support the American economy so that their standard of living won’t diminish.
LOVE your tagline. I’ve been telling people for a year that, “The President of the USA is actually George Soros.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.