Barack Obama, Corporate Liberal - And secret friend of the one percent.

From Jay Cost at the Weekly Standard:

...don’t be fooled.

Obama may seem like the newest member of Occupy Wall Street—chanting “We are the 99 percent!”—but his record shows him to be a corporate liberal, and a closer look at last week’s proposals confirms it.

The corporate liberal offers the following deal: In exchange for greater authority—to tax, to regulate, to distribute—government will dispense benefits to the top and bottom of society.

The poor will receive more generous social welfare benefits; the wealthy will be granted special provisions, exemptions, and benefits.

Often those at the top get to reap a private profit for distributing benefits on the government’s behalf.

Obamacare is a perfect illustration.

The government subsidizes health insurance, but it does so through private companies, which are not forced to participate. Instead, insurers agree to get involved because they believe it will make them better off.

The government implicitly guarantees that insurers will profit in the individual marketplace.

Far from being a flaw in corporate liberalism, this is its dominant feature: The welfare state is expanded, and powerful corporate interests are drawn into a web of client-patron relationships.

The more interests are drawn in, the more our Madisonian system resists reform, and the more ensconced in power corporate liberalism becomes...

corporate liberals, at least the Democratic variety, can sound like down-on-the-farm populists when they talk about the top marginal tax rate for individuals.

But for those at the apex of the economic pyramid, the cost of “paying their fair share” is a pittance compared with the windfalls they can reap from favorable regulations, tax preferences, and redistributive schemes...
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Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/barack-obama-corporate-liberal_824300.html