Obama's Attack On Apple: The Politics of Envy and Its Prosecutions

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 11:51 AM

  

According to the president, I am an "investor" in such escapades as Solyndra and other absurd schemes cooked up by the Chicago Gang as cover for rewarding their friends.  He told us this week that these "investments" were critical to our future.  We laughed and moved on, like every voter in the country who has any sort of a real investment in anything.

Like millions of Americans I also own some shares in Apple.  They are tucked away in a retirement account and I doubt I'll ever sell them.  But I do follow the news about Apple and was amazed and chagrined to see that President Obama's DOJ, which brought us Fast and Furious and the trial of terrorists in Manhattan while missing the shenanigans at Solyndra, is now targeting Apple for punishment.

Apple is fighting back, and every Apple investor and indeed everyone who wants the markets to work free of the addled economic theories of the Alinskyites who swarm the Obama Administration from the Oval Office to the Antitrust Division at DOJ need to speak up (and pony up.)  Here's how the Wall Street Journal reports the Apple response:

Apple Inc. broke is silence about the U.S. Department of Justice's allegations that it colluded with publishers over e-book pricing by calling the allegations "simply not true."Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris rebutted the charges Thursday evening.
"The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry," she said.

I suppose Amazon management might be cheering the tag team help they are getting from DOJ, but to me Amazon looks like the guy who is paying protection money to the enforcer in the neighborhood and calling out the guys with bats.  Shame on Amazon, which would have been snuffed out by bookstore chains if they had had a compliant DOJ working to stop innovation a decade ago.

There is a worldwide market in eBooks, and billions of people to sell to, with hundreds of thousands of authors ready, willing and able to deal exclusively with any publisher or distributor.  The last thing anyone needs is President Obama and his brain trust telling us we need to invest in one company or another, or that this successful company needs to be brought low.

Obama is now seeking another laurel: The man who cut Apple down to size.  Mitt Romney ought to be letting young voters and old investors alike know that the president's troops are now setting out to harm their favorite company because the Obamians don't understand how the information world is changing and they bear a grudge against success.  The later is surely the base motivation here since the president's "one-mediocre-size-must-fit-all" drives his entire agenda. Politico says Obama is trying to paint Romney as a "throwback" '50s guy?  There's nothing more retro than believing the government has a clue about how the market for eBooks works and how Apple and Amazon ought to compete with each other. 

I will ask Larry Kudlow and Brian Wesbury on today's program what they think of the president's decision to attack Apple.  But like Bill Clinton's ill-fated assault on Microsoft 15 years ago, this latest crusade by left-wing lawyers with government identification is bad for America's economy -but they and their president don't care.

MSM should be asking for detailed explanations about the decision tree on this one.  Start now to ask when Eric Holder knew and what he told the president.  We know from Fast and Furious and every other screw-up that marks the Obama DOJ that when this attack on Apple leads to a voter backlash, memories will suddenly go blank and witnesses will disappear.  Jay Carney won't know anything about it and the president will claim ignorance.  We have seen the show before, but the truth is that the Antitrust Division wouldn't have undertaken this insane case unless Holder signed off, and Holder is the president's guy.  Silicon Valley as a whole should take note.

As should every Apple investor.  You can contribute the equivalent of a tenth of one share of an Apple --$60-- and still have an impact, and do so to Team Romney or other key races for 2012 via this link and list.  Get in the game.  All the president's men and President Obama himself won't be happy until they have a war story or two or ten on how they took on the billionaires of tech land and showed them.  The politics of envy has a new set of targets.