Crony capitalism and corporatocracy are two terms often used by "conservatives" in their internet blogs complaining about our country today.
Many of them might not realize those terms arose mainly on the left, to criticize capitalism as it operates in America.
A third term in Oligarchy. If one isn't yet rich when they reach government elected or appointed office, they can almost be assured of being rich as a result of their time in office.
Sit on a committee, and executives of industries you "regulate" and have "oversight" with will hire you for 6 figures the day you leave office.
Dick Cheney is a prime example, one of ours. He became rich by working for Halliburton, solely for his government contacts and influence.
If the GOP fails to win the Senate majority in 2014, Obama care will be so firmly entrenched as to make it extremely difficult to dial it back, or shut it down.
One reason Pelosi said they needed to pass it in order to find out what it said: It was largely written by the insurance industry.
Crony capitalism and corporatism
should be criticisms that conservatives apply to the government because regardless of the political views of the cronies involved, crony capitalism is antithetical to the principles of individual freedom and equality (i.e., the freedom to, which is not the sort of "freedom" that liberals/the left prefer, which would be "freedom from" - just another name for the gilded cage).
Case in point is your reference to the fact that the insurance industry played a large part in writing Obastardcare, in large measure to their own benefit - or at least the short-term benefit of the current crop of high-level officers at the large insurance companies.
Conservatives should be as suspicious of large business as the left supposedly is (I would note though that, as with Obastardcare, the left gets awful chummy with certain big businesses once it achieves political power). One of the biggest threats to the liberty and autonomy of the private individual is the capture of the government by vested interests and the use of the government's power for the benefit of those vested interests and at the expense of the rest of us. The real difference between left - assuming arguendo that they really do dislike big business - and conservatives is that the left hates all forms of private enterprise, no matter how much, or how little, any particular enterprise suckles on the government teat; conservatives do not, and should not.
Another perfect example of so-called "regulatory capture" in which large business interests "capture" the government for their own private interests is the Dodd-Frank monstrosity. That law, under the guise of imposing harsh new limitations on financial businesses, more or less puts the thumb firmly on the side of the large banks and financial institutions - the ones that played the bigger role in the 2008 financial mess - and against the smaller regional and local banks and financial institutions - the ones that played a much smaller role in the 2008 financial mess. That end is accomplished by imposing hefty new costs to comply with the new regulations that the large institutions can more easily pass on to their customers then can the smaller institutions simply because of the larger market power those large institutions command.
