Sarah Palin Friday said she is "ecstatic" for Carrier employees who will be able to keep their jobs, but she strongly criticized the deal President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence brokered to keep the jobs from heading to Mexico as being a case of "crony capitalism."
"When government steps in arbitrarily with individual subsidies, favoring one business over others, it sets inconsistent, unfair, illogical precedent," Palin wrote in an opinion piece for The Young Conservatives website.
"Meanwhile, the invisible hand that best orchestrates a free people's free enterprise system gets amputated," the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee wrote. "Then, special interests creep in and manipulate markets. Republicans oppose this, remember? Instead, we support competition on a level playing field, remember? Because we know special interest crony capitalism is one big fail."
A business, Palin said, must retain the "freedom to locate where it wishes," and the company makes a mistake, like the "marketing mistake that perhaps Carrier executives made" by threatening to move for the sake of efficiency, then the market's "invisible hand" will punish it.
But that means the business must assume it's on a "level playing field" and operating without government interference, she said, as special interests could manipulate markets.
"We support competition on a level playing field, remember?" she said of Republicans. "We know special interest crony capitalism is one big fail. Politicians picking and choosing recipients of corporate welfare is railed against by fiscal conservatives, for it's a hallmark of corruption. And socialism."
Even if the imposition is well meaning, Palin said, it's "never the solution. Never...gotta have faith the Trump team knows all this."
However well meaning, she continued, burdensome federal government imposition is never the solution. Never. Not in our homes, not in our schools, not in churches, not in businesses.
While the full details of the Carrier deal are not yet known, they hinge largely on multi-million dollar tax abatement deals in Indiana, and Palin said she's worried that could set a precedent.
"Cajole only chosen ones on Main Street or Wall Street and watch lines stretch from Washington to Alaska full of businesses threatening to bail unless taxpayers pony up," she warned. "The lines strangle competition and really, really, dispiritingly screw with workers' lives. It's beyond unacceptable, so let's anticipate equal incentivizes and positive reform all across the field – to make the economy great again."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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