Friday, May 25, 2012

The real scandal: Obama's public equity record

I slightly mentioned it earlier this week, but I haven't talked extensively about Obama's attacks against Romney's tenure at Bain Capital...and I'm not about to start now, as this blatant attack on capitalism is blowing up in his statist face. What I would like to note is Obama's willingness to once again attack private equity, yet revel in public equity...and that's what Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post points out:

Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity — and that record is not pretty.

Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions.

After venturing through a lengthy dirty laundry list of public equity failures, including the infamous Solyndra that launched the administration's downward spiral into the monetary abyss of green energy, Thiessen concludes:

All that cronyism and corruption is catching up with the administration. According to Politico, “The Energy Department’s inspector general has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” related to the department’s green-energy programs.

Now the man who made Solyndra a household name says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital “is what this campaign is going to be about.” Good luck with that, Mr. President. If Obama wants to attack Romney’s alleged private equity failures as chief executive of Bain, he’d better be ready to defend his own massive public equity failures as chief executive of the United States.

Now put all that together, then try to account for this priceless moment, via Politicker:

Though the Obama campaign has repeatedly attacked Mitt Romney for his career at Bain Capital, President Obama still accepted $7,500 in campaign contributions from two Bain executives. His campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt told The Politicker the president has no intention of giving the money back.

Laughable. $7,500 is a drop in the bucket for the Obama campaign, yet Dear Leader can't muster up the strength to even approach practicing what he preaches. How 'bout that liberal integrity? So sincere...so full of it. The real scandal is Obama's public equity record...that's what we, and the media (I know, try not to bust a gut!), should be discussing daily, weekly, monthly, annually.