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La Jolla's Linden Blue, co-chairman with his brother Neal Blue of General Atomics, the big Torrey Pines-based U.S. military contractor and maker of the Predator drones now in wide use in battlefield hotspots by the Central Intelligence Agency, is out with a blistering critique of Europe's welfare state and President Barack Obama.
"It is instructive that President Obama employs the European model of entitlement, regulation and income redistribution as his guide," according to the commentary, co-written with Herbert London, President Emeritus of Hudson Institute and Professor Emeritus of New York University. Blue is on the board of the Hudson Institute, a noted conservative think tank.
"It may be one of the few examples in history when a blatantly failed system is employed as a model for success. As the U.S. borrows more than 40 percent of the federal budget this year, we are perilously close to emulating the worst of Europe."
"Will Rogers offered excellent advice for President Obama when he said, 'there are three kinds of men: the ones who learn by reading; the few who learn by observation and the rest who have to pee on an electric fence in order to learn anything.'"
Over the years, Blue, his brother, and General Atomics and its employees have made millions of dollars of campaign contributions to local, state, and federal politicians that have helped reinforce the company's position as one of the nation's most successful military contractors, receiving billions of dollars from federal taxpayers.
GA also operates a multi-national uranium mining and reprocessing business, regulated and funded in part by the federal government, and conducts government-sponsored research and development efforts on everything from gun rails to algae-based jet fuel.
"The protests in Greece, England and Egypt, to cite three examples, provide vivid testimonials of an entitlement mentality at odds with the essential need for productivity," Blue and London go on to say.
"For decades the entitlement psychology has relentlessly decoupled the biblical and basic understanding that in order to eat, one must be productive."
"Many people, far too many people, believe the role of government is to care for them," the authors add.
"Capitalism can create wealth, but it also creates invidious comparisons (read: envy).
"Socialism tries to mitigate this eventuality through utopian engineering that never works.
"As Winston Churchill noted, 'The vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings and the vice of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.'"
Top political beneficiaries of the Blue brothers' largesse range from Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein to GOP Congressman Brian Bilbray.
Recently the firm has been lobbying Congress against defense budget cuts.
And troubles with the clean-up of old uranium facilities in Colorado have long dogged a company-owned subsidiary there.
In 2009, Neal and Linden Blue were inducted into San Diego’s Entrepreneur Hall of Fame.
Pictured: Linden Blue
La Jolla's Linden Blue, co-chairman with his brother Neal Blue of General Atomics, the big Torrey Pines-based U.S. military contractor and maker of the Predator drones now in wide use in battlefield hotspots by the Central Intelligence Agency, is out with a blistering critique of Europe's welfare state and President Barack Obama.
"It is instructive that President Obama employs the European model of entitlement, regulation and income redistribution as his guide," according to the commentary, co-written with Herbert London, President Emeritus of Hudson Institute and Professor Emeritus of New York University. Blue is on the board of the Hudson Institute, a noted conservative think tank.
"It may be one of the few examples in history when a blatantly failed system is employed as a model for success. As the U.S. borrows more than 40 percent of the federal budget this year, we are perilously close to emulating the worst of Europe."
"Will Rogers offered excellent advice for President Obama when he said, 'there are three kinds of men: the ones who learn by reading; the few who learn by observation and the rest who have to pee on an electric fence in order to learn anything.'"
Over the years, Blue, his brother, and General Atomics and its employees have made millions of dollars of campaign contributions to local, state, and federal politicians that have helped reinforce the company's position as one of the nation's most successful military contractors, receiving billions of dollars from federal taxpayers.
GA also operates a multi-national uranium mining and reprocessing business, regulated and funded in part by the federal government, and conducts government-sponsored research and development efforts on everything from gun rails to algae-based jet fuel.
"The protests in Greece, England and Egypt, to cite three examples, provide vivid testimonials of an entitlement mentality at odds with the essential need for productivity," Blue and London go on to say.
"For decades the entitlement psychology has relentlessly decoupled the biblical and basic understanding that in order to eat, one must be productive."
"Many people, far too many people, believe the role of government is to care for them," the authors add.
"Capitalism can create wealth, but it also creates invidious comparisons (read: envy).
"Socialism tries to mitigate this eventuality through utopian engineering that never works.
"As Winston Churchill noted, 'The vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings and the vice of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.'"
Top political beneficiaries of the Blue brothers' largesse range from Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein to GOP Congressman Brian Bilbray.
Recently the firm has been lobbying Congress against defense budget cuts.
And troubles with the clean-up of old uranium facilities in Colorado have long dogged a company-owned subsidiary there.
In 2009, Neal and Linden Blue were inducted into San Diego’s Entrepreneur Hall of Fame.
Pictured: Linden Blue