President Obama -- Public Employee #1
President Obama -- Public Employee #1
By William Tucker
He has no idea what makes our economy prosperous.
President Obama gave a speech last weekend that was so utterly out of touch with American values, so clueless as to how things work in this country, that I have to add a few footnotes to his performance.
You've probably seen this already. It is essentially of reprise of Elizabeth Warren's famous "Moocher's Lament" that made such a sensation among liberals on the Internet. It's all stock footage from academia but here, for the record, is what the President said in front of another one of those 24-and-under junior-college audiences in Virginia.
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn't -- look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
Now let's make a few points here. First of all, anybody who thinks that somebody who starts their own business doesn't "make it on their own" hasn't the slightest idea of what they're talking about. I've started two small business efforts in my life. Both of them were complete failures and I lost a lot of money on each. But what I did learn is that when you're trying to start your own business, nobody is going to help you. You can hire people to work for you, you may persuade a few cohorts of the potential of your vision so that they join you -- with the expectation that they will be rewarded later. But when you're starting a business, the only person who is wholeheartedly interested in making it succeed is you. From the minute you wake up in the morning, you know taking only an hour off, a day off, even five minutes off, means your effort comes to a standstill.
In the opening pages of Socialism, Ludwig von Mises's monumental 1921 critique of that system, the great free market apostle presents a quote from V.I. Lenin in which the Great Leader of the Future That Works explains that all there is to running a business is keeping the accounts and adding up the profits as they come in. Lenin, said Von Mises, had "the errand boy's view of what business is about."
Obama has approximately the same view, spritzed up with a little faculty-room chatter. His is the assistant law instructor's view. "If you've got a business - - you didn't build that. Somebody else made it happen." After all, we make the laws. That's makes a business possible. The difference between them and us has nothing to do with being smart or ambitious. It's just that some people get lucky or are more willing to take advantage of others. After all, that's what business is about, isn't it?
What Obama really embodies is the college professor's resentment that even though he's always been the smartest guy in the room -- valedictorian of his high school, scoring over 750 on his college boards, editor of the law review -- there are still people out there much less smart who are making more money. You can see it right there on the page. "I'm always struck by [business] people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there." Ah yes, I wonder who we're talking about here? "It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there." Indeed, there are millions of people who work very hard at their jobs. But to start a business you've got to do more than work hard. You've got to create something entirely new. You've got to be sensible, you've got to be ambitious. You've got to be willing to quit your day job, run up a lot of credit card debt and maybe risk everything in order to turn your dreams into reality. It's a lot different than taking college exams.
A high school classmate of mine became a millionaire. He started a small insurance business in his garage and eventually sold it to a major company. He wasn't very smart in school. When I saw him at the last reunion he told me he was once featured in the student newspaper as a kid who couldn't spell. Yet he had the intelligence and gumption to create his own way of doing things and make it succeed. He now wears a little gold earring just to remind you how successful he's been. I admire him tremendously.
America was built by people like my high school classmate. It was built by people willing to pursue their own dreams, working around the clock, 24 hours a day, sometimes for ten or twenty years before they succeeded. And it was also built by all the people who had similar dreams and tried to build them into something and failed. They succeeded, too.
Our prosperity has been built by entrepreneurs, not by government bureaucrats. The government could pave the road in front of your house twelve times over and it wouldn't help one bit in bringing a dream to fruition. Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is filled with magnificent boulevards that would make any city in the world envious. They just doesn't have any cars driving on them or shops lining them or even people walking on them. That's what government without free enterprise gives you -- public monuments without prosperity.
I'll tell you one other thing about starting your own business. If government takes any interest at all in you, it's going to involve collecting taxes. I hadn't been incorporated for a month before I started receiving letters from the New York State Department of Taxation telling me when I could start paying them. There were incorporated business taxes, workmen's compensation taxes, unemployment taxes, Social Security taxes and on and on. Nearly all the correspondence I received while I was trying to start a business involved the government telling me how much money I owed it. I gave up the business in 2001 yet until last year I was still receiving letters from New York State trying to collect more taxes. They tracked me through three changes of address.
Democrats in general and Obama in particular have no idea what makes our economy prosperous. They think if we put enough people to work paving roads and repairing bridges we'll have full employment and all be rich. We've been hearing this since the first days of the Clinton Administration. Sure we should keep our roads and bridges in good repair, but what does that give us? Are we going to sell them to China? (China may be buying up our infrastructure soon enough, but that's a different story.)
You don't become a rich country through public works. You become rich by inventing things to sell to ourselves and to the rest of the world. In order to do that, you've got to have creative people who can invent new ideas and who are courageous enough to risk everything to turn them into reality. And you've got to let them keep most of the rewards if and when they do succeed. You can't come around mooching afterwards with, "Hey, we built that road in front of your house. We made you a success! You owe us."
Obama is Public Employee #1. He's from the same ranks as those repairmen in the New York City subway system who tell you, "Hey, if it wasn't for us New York City would shut down in a couple of days" and then go on strike to prove it. He hasn't the faintest idea what it means to be in private enterprise and hates it wherever he sees it.
And we may have another four years of this.
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Election 2012
Since April I have been tracking "Likely Voter" polls in the states that could possibly be in play in November. These are not polls of just "registered voters" but only those of "likely Voters" which are generally accepted to be the most accurate. As we get closer to the election most polling outfits will begin to poll only "likely voters" at present only a few do now. I will post the most recent of these LV polls as I find them. A (+) represents Obama is up a (-) represents that Romney is up in that state according to the most recent LV poll.
FL -3/OH +3/ PA +6/ IA +1/ NC -3/ VA +2/ AZ -13/ CO +1/ NV +8/ MO -7/ NH +4/ MI +1/
MN NA/ WI +8/ ME +14/ OR NA/ NJ NA/ NM +11/ GA +12/ SC NA/ IN NA/
BOLD are changes since 6/27 and direction of change for Obama (>)up (<) down since last poll
IA >
NH >
MI >
WI >
GA New
ME New
NM Bew
FL <
CO <
VA >
OH >
States where over 50% of voters would vote for President Obama in the above polling data:
NV 52%
NM 51%
States 45% or below for Obama
FL 45%
OH
IA 45%
NC 44%
VA
AZ 41%
MO 42%
GA 40%
CO 45%
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Why Obama's College Records Matter
By Monte Kuligowski
In context of the "mounting pressure" for Mitt Romney to provide more tax and employment records, a reporter recently asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney whether President Obama would set an example in transparency and release some of his records that critics have asked for.
That question was fingernails on the chalkboard to Carney. "Is that from Donald Trump?" Carey sneered, and laughed -- this time conspicuously alone.
This time it was Carney's own boss who had recently opened the door by demanding that Romney be an "open book" on personal finances.
Carney responded with the audacious claim that Obama is an "open book" and has a record of "unprecedented transparency." And the sky is green, and the grass is blue. Carney also suggested that the question wasn't specific.
When the reporter got specific and asked if Obama would release his college records, Carney replied: "Right, this is the Donald Trump question. It is preposterous. This is from the guy who insisted he didn't believe the president was born in the United States."
Asking for college records is preposterous?
Writing for the TheBlaze.com, Jason Howerton suggests:
Yes, many want to see Obama's college records for grades and courses (as with G.W. Bush and others). But in Obama's case, the primary reason to see his college applications is to learn whether the president applied for college in the U.S. as a foreign student.
Why should the public want to confirm that Obama did not register as a foreigner while not having the same concern for other candidates? Read on.
Most of the basic records of Barack Obama's past -- vital, hospital, medical, education, passport, draft registration, et al. -- are guarded as securely as the gold at Fort Knox. Notably, two documents -- elementary school and Selective Service registrations -- were obtained by independent citizens. And Breitbart.com independently obtained an interesting biographical brochure produced in 1991 by Obama's literary publicist.
The Associated Press (AP) was able to obtain a copy of Obama's elementary school registration from the Fransiskus Assisi School in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2007.
And Stephen Coffman, a retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, obtained a copy of Obama's Selective Service registration form via a FOIA request just days prior to the 2008 election.
From the 2012 Breitbart discovery we learned that Mr. Obama presented himself in 1991 as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." From the AP discovery we learned that Barack Obama was registered for school in Jakarta as a citizen of Indonesia named Barry Soetoro. And from the Selective Service registration form we learned that the same form had been forged.
Barack Obama lived in Islamic Indonesia as Barry Soetoro with his mother and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, and attended school in Jakarta from ages 6 to 10. It's beyond amazing that the general public is not aware of that fact. Last Thanksgiving I was with my in-laws and was surprised to learn that they had never heard that Obama lived in Indonesia as Barry Soetoro. And they are not uneducated people.
The "mainstream" media do not want to touch those facts.
The big question is whether little Barry was adopted by his stepfather, who was a citizen of Indonesia. There is reason to believe that he was and that in order to have been enrolled in public school in Indonesia, Barry had to be a citizen. Aaron Klein of WND.com notes that "[a]fter attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama later was enrolled at SDN Menteng 1, an Indonesian public school."
That Obama might have been a citizen of Indonesia and later presented himself as a foreign student in the U.S. is no "birther" conspiracy theory. It's the gravamen of the college records question.
Let's stop right here and stipulate for the sake of argument that Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii.
But even with the stipulation, we nevertheless have a major problem with Obama's records and staunch secrecy.
Of the few records that we have seen relating to Obama's past all are problematic and they point to a potential citizenship problem for Barack Hussein Obama II aka Barry Soetoro.
Mr. Obama's Arizona nemesis, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is readily dismissed by the establishment press as a man with an ax to grind -- but his control-test findings have not been disproven.
Once again, the general public remains in the dark because the national one-voice media will not touch the story.
Sherriff Joe's law enforcement "posse" confirmed what a multitude of nonpartisan computer graphic experts have already known. The image Mr. Obama "released" on April 27, 2011 is a computer-generated forgery. Irrespective of Mr. Obama's Hawaii birth, for some reason Obama did not upload a certified copy of his birth certificate to the internet; neither is he allowing Hawaii to send certified paper copies to interested state election officials.
Since Obama was born in Hawaii, the question is: why the forgery? And why the continued secrecy?
Something is not right. I have speculated that Obama's secrecy over the birth certificate may have been a calculated diversion from the important constitutional requirement for presidential candidates to have been born with a natural, sole allegiance to the United States.
That could be partially correct. Additionally, Obama might be hiding an amendment to his birth certificate, reflecting his adoption by Lolo Soetoro.
Others have suggested that the reason for the forgery could be over a petty issue, such as his mother having signed the certificate with her maiden name. In other words, but for the secrecy and forgery, the birth certificate may be completely irrelevant.
Nevertheless, if Obama has a citizenship problem because of Indonesia, the rest of the oddities and secrecies begin to make sense.
Sheriff Joe's team found probable cause to conclude that Obama also forged his Selective Service registration form. The mismatched date stamp "80" instead of "1980" is evidence not only of forgery, but of a crude forgery.
Then there is the question of why is Obama using a Social Security number issued on application from Connecticut, a state in which he never lived.
If that's not a news story, what is? Romney's tax records?
In light of the few biographical documents we have seen so far, coupled with the bizarre secrecy of Obama, it might be a good idea for "pressure to mount" for Obama to produce his college records.
And while we're at it, what passport did Obama use for his college break to Islamic Pakistan in 1981?
Since Obama is an "open book," producing informative records shouldn't be a problem for him.
It was just as much work for me to cancel my Business license as it was to get one,in fact more work.
I had to cancel my License 5 times over 5 yrs. They were actually sending letters threatening fines and worse.
I even had to get a front end alignment after driving over a pothole on the trip to cancel my license.
Thanks for the help Barry!
Game on!
Is Obama Ripping Off the Mask?
By James Lew
Hardball politics isn't new, but crazy hardball tends to be self-defeating. It reflects rage and desperation rather than cold calculations. Obama now seems to be playing crazy ball.
In 2008, Obama ran as a messianic figure, come to bring peace and love to earth. But in 2012 he is tearing off the mask bequeathed by Saul Alinsky and his other radical left mentors.
I think there might be two reasons. First, Obama really is an ideological radical -- there's no honest doubt about it anymore, given his expressed anti-capitalist and anti-constitutionalist views, his solid phalanx of radical associates throughout life, and his repeated assault on everyday Americans. And while Obama is the most convincing liar since Bill Clinton, he has essentially given up on hiding his radicalism.
That is hugely important.
Read the rest here: Link
Nobody Else Made It Happen, Mr. President
By Rob Miller
Link
Over the three years of his presidency, he now has built up a record of his decisions, his executive orders, his vacations, his legislation, his reactions, and the masses of regulations from his administration. Now we're getting to see Obama for who and what he is - not who he said he is.
In the past few weeks, aided (I think) by the pressures of a close campaign, Obama - both the person and the President - are coming into focus. Jer, your thoughtful blogs about Obama and his past have contributed a lot to understanding what is happening currently. When Obama says, "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that", we don't have to wonder what he meant - now we know, for we know the context within which he was talking.
I only hope that these articles continue - and perhaps even filter into MSM news! There have been several very good ones posted here today.
Thanks Oakland but go ahead stick your neck out, nothing will happen. If a person can not stand up for what they believe to be right they will continue to be wronged.
NoBama 2012!
Just in case. Here are the links.
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5
Bonus!
Hope for change!
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