Hillary: The Crone in Crony Capitalism

By P.J. O'Rourke

To people who believe in capitalism, the Clintons can seem puzzling.

They obviously aren't against making money. A speech by Bill costs like sin. (Fair comparison, since between 2001 and 2012, Bill's speaking fees totaled almost three times the $39.2 million cost of investigating him for his Whitewater imbroglio.)

But putting aside such long-ago ventures as the failed real estate development and Hillary's post-dated cattle trades, the Clintons aren't entrepreneurial. Their money comes from "crony capitalism."

A lot of rich people support Hillary. They understand crony capitalism, where what matters isn't hard work, entrepreneurship, investment, or innovation. What matters is political power and being "friends" with people who have it. The way to get rich is by gaming the political system or being paid to know how to game it.

Crony capitalists are like trust-fund babies, except they made the baby by screwing the public.

Meanwhile, for those who aren't Hillary insiders, her run for president isn't a real campaign. It's a bag of wishful thinking. An old bag of wishful thinking, if you will.

Hillary supporters think that if they get another Clinton into the White House, they'll get another "Clinton Era" – a fast-growing economy, a relatively peaceful world, some measure of bipartisan government cooperation, and a bunch of juicy scandals.

With Hillary, they'll get the scandals. But the 1990s Clinton Era was, in fact, a legacy of 12 years of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Hillary's legacy is eight years of Barack Obama. People think a Clinton is a lucky rabbit's foot. They forget that this foot is attached to a dead rabbit – the Obama administration.

Hillary also lacks Bill's charm, his persuasiveness, his willingness to "triangulate" policy issues, and... most of all... his "Teflon." Everything she does wrong sticks to her like dried egg yolk on last week's breakfast plate. (In fairness, she also lacks Bill's libido. Thank goodness.)

She's a weak candidate. But in 2016, being a weak candidate – as opposed to being a hopeless one – might be all that's needed.

Hillary's campaign platform is so vague that it might as well have been concocted by my daughter, a high school senior. I mean, reading Hillary's platform is like listening to my daughter when I ask where she's going and what she's going to do on Saturday night.

That said, Hillary was prescient in focusing her campaign on economic issues. Her website is titled: "A Plan to Raise American Incomes."

The plan, however, turns out to be nothing but giving more political power to Hillary.

Under the subhead "Strong Growth," we see "Hillary will invest..."

(Note that politicians never spend our money any more, they invest it. They've invested a lot of it. And they've been investing for a long time. These must be bad investments – or everybody in America would be rich by now.)

"Hillary will invest in infrastructure, clean energy, and scientific... research to create jobs..."

You can grow jobs in a petri dish?

"Infrastructure" could mean a much-needed repaving of I-95. Or it could mean a six-lane, 216-mile-long suspension bridge between the Hamptons on Long Island (where the Clintons like to fundraise) and Martha's Vineyard (where they like to vacation).

Clean energy? Maybe she'll build eco-friendly natural gas pipelines. Or maybe she'll re-fund Solyndra, the bankrupt Obama stimulus-plan scam to stick solar panels where the sun never shines.

Hillary doesn't pause to explain, forging ahead to "Provide Tax Relief for Families."

(Since Hillary has no plan to cut government spending, providing tax relief for some families means inflicting tax suffering on others. But never mind that.)

She offers just two policy proposals. First, "a tax cut of up to $2,500 per student to deal with college costs." Great! That covers 15% of my daughter's tuition, assuming she goes to an in-state public university.

Second, "cutting taxes for businesses that share profits with their employees." Businesses already do that, Hillary. It's called a payroll. And for your information – as someone whose entire time in the private sector was a couple of years as a lawyer defending chicken thieves in Arkansas – businesses have to meet that payroll whether they're making profits or not.

"Unleash Small Business Growth." Those are big words from a candidate in a political party that has been tightening the collar on business since 1932.

Hillary will "expand access to capital, provide tax relief, cut red tape, and help small businesses bring their goods to new markets." When President Obama did that, it was called Solyndra.

"Create a New College Compact." Here we go again with the "investing" – $350 billion for state university tuitions. My daughter will be going to college for free after all. And she'll get a government bonus when she's done because, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, total spending by all public institutions of higher learning is about $310 billion.

Free college will save me $17,000, at the price of increasing my income tax by – let me take a wild guess here – $17,000.

Or maybe, somehow, college will still cost money. Because the next thing Hillary says is that she'll "cut interest rates on student loans."

Like Bernie Sanders, Hillary can't understand why student loans have higher interest rates than mortgages or car loans. When did collateral become a hard concept to grasp? If my daughter doesn't pay back her student loans, will a repo man come and take back her bachelor's degree in gender studies (with a minor in post-feminist film criticism)?

On and on Hillary natters...

Raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour. A bargain compared with the $15 Bernie Sanders wants us to pay the kid who, when we say, "Cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke," looks at us as if we'd asked him to do the Black-Scholes formula calculation on McDonald's stock futures.

Hillary's going to close the "carried interest" loophole that allows people who do the hard work of hedging investment risks to treat part of their income as capital gains.

It's not a "loophole," Hillary. It's in the tax code. It's a law. And you've been known to sail pretty close to the law yourself.

Then, when our eyes are glazing over and we're nearly lulled to sleep by Hillary's dull, predictable liberal boilerplate, out pops the monster in the box!

"It's time to push back against the forces of 'quarterly capitalism' and boom and bust cycles on Wall Street... We need [to]... address the rising influence of the kinds of so-called 'activist' shareholders that focus on short-term profits... tackle dangerous risks in the financial sector... empower tough, independent regulators, and prosecute individuals and firms..."

Suddenly, Hillary is issuing a manifesto for Central Planning – the evil that, for 100 years, has destroyed every economy where it has been tried.

Central Planning means giving all the power to the government. And the head of that government will be Hillary.

Central planning is a crony capitalist's dream come true.

So what a Hillary presidency comes down to is that you'll do really well financially – if you donated enough to Hillary's presidential campaign.

Regards,

P.J. O'Rourke