The Blind Squirrel and other fables .............

When was the last time that a president of these United States had to go out and profess his administration’s support for the business community. Well, Jimmy Carter excepted, I can’t think of one until yesterday when Obama did just that. But it’s deeds not words that the business world wants to see.

Now we know that the Obama regime hates “Big Oil”, “Big Pharm”, “Big Banks”; in fact, “Big Anything” except for “Big Unions” and/or “Big Government” but as Obama’s pastor put it, “the chickens are coming home to roost”. And indeed they are starting, it seems, at the Aspen Institute.

Now I’d heard of this elite group but I didn’t know too much about it. Needless to say, I’ve never been invited and I’m willing to bet that neither were you and so here’s their quick blurb.

“The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1950 as the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies. Today, the organization is dedicated to "fostering enlightened leadership, the appreciation of timeless ideas and values, and open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues." The institute and its international partners seek to promote the pursuit of common ground and deeper understanding in a nonpartisan and nonideological setting through regular seminars, policy programs, conferences, and leadership development initiatives.”

Now that’s their version and now here’s mine.

It’s an elite think tank for people some of whom believe its more important to be elite than it is to think, However, among them and lucky for us, there are one or two who do. And what is more they seem ready to admit their mistakes.

Thank Heavens!

Two such which are worthy of note are Mort Zuckerman who is the owner of the New York Daily News and US News and World Report an Niall Ferguson, a Harvard historian. Both heavily favored and supported Obama during the run-up to the election and since but the times they are a changin’.

Zuckerman said to an audience of liberal Democrats, “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.” Then he continued that he detects in the Obama White House hostility to the very kinds of (business) culture that have made this the great country what 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.'"

And Ferguson chimed in with a withering critique of Obama's economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness. He said, "The curse of long-term unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they'll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time. Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy."

So you have lifelong Democrats saying this to a Democratic audience and being applauded for it even by the likes of Barbra Streisand and her husband, James Brolin. And you have to believe that if people are willing to speak out in public then what they say behind closed doors has to really special.

But there was more as 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.

Then Mr. Ferguson went on, “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.” And then he added: “Can I say that, having grown up in a declining empire [he's from the UK], 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.”

At long last, they’re getting it but as I have observed in the past, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while.