Courtesy of the American Spectator…
Jason Mattera, best-selling author and “ambush journalist” (you’ve no doubt seen his recent attempted conversation with former IRS thug Lois Lerner), is one of the few conservative writers who consistently brings humor to his work and targets young adults with a message of “open your eyes while you still have a country to save.”
Crapitalism is a full-throated utterly vernacular defense of free-markets explained through maddening contrast with 27 Crapitalists — almost all Democrats — who use the power of government to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us. The ways that these people, ranging from members of Congress to lobbyists to entrepreneurs, are able to fleece taxpayers vary widely in method but share a common stench.
Congresswoman Maxine “Money” Waters steered bailout money to a bank her husband invested in, procured an earmark for a college that then became a major donor to her campaign, and makes sure that her children are hired by business and politicians who want her support, earning millions of dollars for her Mafia-like family business. As Mattera puts it, “You’d think being affiliated with Waters would be some sort of political STD, with only distance, time, and a healthy dose of penicillin being able to make it all better.”
But Waters is a piker compared to the serious Crapitalists whose pilfering of the taxpayer ranges into the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
Chuck Swoboda is CEO of Cree, Inc., which makes those extraordinarily expensive LED light bulbs that you see at Home Depot as our long-loved, inexpensive and non-toxic incandescent bulbs become near impossible to buy. It’s not an accident that the cheap bulbs are no longer on the shelves: A 2007 law that aims to phase out incandescent bulbs was not enough help for Swoboda, a big supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. “Obama threw Cree nearly $40 million in stimulus cash, and another $18 million through Department of Energy research investments and grants.”
Mattera’s summary of Cree’s business model captures an essential feature of Crapitalism: “A lot of business owners like the idea of putting their competition out of business. But they usually look to do it as a result of the overwhelming success of their business. Chuck and the other Crapitalists like him want to do it the other way around. Put the competitors out of business first, then open up shop. It’s a brilliant strategy. It’s just destroying our country, one overpriced and taxpayer-subsidized lightbulb at a time.”
Other Crapitalist “businessmen” include movie mogul Steven Spielberg, Minnesota Vikings owner Zigi Wilf, and GE CEO Jeffery Immelt, along with others of more or less renown.
One thing they have in common is large contributions to politicians. Even the cynical will be shocked to learn what the typical payback is for major Crapitalist donors to Barack Obama’s campaigns. These “investments” make Hillary Clinton’s futures trading look like getting 0.25 percent in a bank savings account.
In terms of harm to the nation, one of the biggest villains in Crapitalism is Sally Susman, the chief lobbyist for Pfizer Corporation. Susman’s father is “an investment banker who raised over half a million dollars for Obama’s 2008 campaign.” (Sense a trend there?) Susman had much to do with the pharmaceutical industry’s collaboration with Obama to shove Obamacare down America’s collective throat. Mattera describes it with his usual style: “It’s fitting that the company responsible for an erectile dysfunction treatment got in bed with the government to bone the American taxpayer by forcing us to buy overpriced health-care plans we don’t want or need.”
Two of the most galling Crapitalists are (coincidentally?) not American: George Soros and Carlos Slim. When it comes to people manipulating the political system for financial gain at citizens’ expense, “while many of the people profiled in this book would be metaphorical planets, George Soros would be the galaxy.” One of his many “achievements” involves using leftist think-tanks to push the Obama administration to restrict oil production in the United States while successfully using the Ex-Im Bank (a Crapitalist tool if ever there was one) to subsidize oil production in Brazil — where Soros (not coincidentally) has a massive investment in Petrobras. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is a black-belt Crapitalism ninja move.”
And the way Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim — in an ongoing battle with Bill Gates for the title of richest man in the world — fleeces American taxpayers and low-income Americans is so infuriating that this chapter of the book is by itself worth the cost of Crapitalism.
Mattera closes Crapitalism with an important call to action: “It’s time to bust up the collusion between big business and big government. It’s time that ideas succeed or fail based on their merits, not taxpayer largesse… What I’m saying is, it’s time to tell all the Crapitalists to get lost.”
Hallelujah, Brother Jason.
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