I doubt Lianne Mellor has read The Road to Serfdom. As a young, artistically inclined person I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that she describes herself as a liberal rather than a conservative. And I’m pretty sure that, living in England, she won’t be familiar with Obama’s “You didn’t build that” speech, in which he essentially declared that no small business owner or entrepreneur can achieve anything without the help of a vast, benevolent government.
But amid all that’s been written and said by politicians and commentators in the last couple of days hammering Obama for his denigration of business and business people, Lianne, without realizing it, has offered the most eloquent and heartfelt rebuttal of the President’s weltanschauung that I’ve heard.
Unable to find work after qualifying as an architect, Lianne set up her own business producing tea sets and other homewares decorated with her own illustrations. She had support from a business advice service run by her local council, but essentially she did it on her own, progressing in just a couple of years from working in her dad’s garage to having her products stocked by upmarket British stores.
And she’s not afraid to take the credit for her success. Interviewed by BBC News for a feature on young people trying to find work in Britain’s struggling economy, she said:
“It’s really, really hard work but it’s so worth it. And when you can look around you at the end of each day and think ‘I got me here, you’re only here because of your own hard work’, and everything around you, you’ve created…”
“I got me here.” It’s an infinitely more appealing and inspiring mantra than “You didn’t build that”; it’s a celebration of earned success, and the polar opposite of Obama’s paean to stifling, destructive big government. Put it on a T-shirt. Put it on a bumper sticker. Get this girl to speak at the Republican convention.
Lianne’s website is here (I suspect Americans will like her quirky, Beatrix Potter-esque designs) and she’s also on Twitter. She might not care for being held up as the Ayn Rand of decorative pottery, and I don’t expect her to endorse anyone in the US elections. But it won’t be lost on American conservatives that this resourceful, proudly independent young woman produces all the paraphernalia you need to hold a tea party.
Hey Mr. Obama! That Solyndra loan to your buddies, you did not make that on your own. Millions of taxpayers worked their butts off to send money to Washington for you to fritter away.
Hey Mr. Mcconnel! That earmark you got for your buddies you did not make that earmark on your own. Millions of taxpayers worked their butts off to send money to Washington so you can grant favors to the toadies and goons that leach from federal goverment.
Success has a thousand fathers, Solyndra is an orphan.
Actually, I’m sure Obama wants to share the “credit” for Solyndra, too.
And with Solyndra, we shouldn’t forget the latest solar that went under in Vegas, Amonix, and this company was touted by Harry Reid, the can’t pass a budget genius, as the wave of the future.
Some people go around praising and thanking God for everything and saying they could not even have begun to have got it or done it without Him. His Royal Majesty, King Insane Hussein Obama, feels that he should have no less position and worship for himself and from everybody. This is Obama’s pathology. The man is nuts. To Insane Hussein everything comes from the state, which is now him, and without it, and him, individuals would be nothing and have nothing, when in fact the state gets everything it has from individuals and would be nothing, and have nothing, without them. Obama is quite mad.
No, this is NOT just about Obama. He is echoing a view that is widely held throughout the Left.
Look what Elizabeth Warren said, and look how the Left cheers her on for it:
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory… Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/20/1018700/-Warren-Tells-It-Like-it-Is-No-One-in-This-Country-Got-Rich-on-his-Own
And notice how left-wingers fell in love with those remarks, exactly as they were stated:
“She is brilliant at explaining rather complicated things.”
“I am bowled over by Ms Warren, and have been since the first time I heard her, probably on the Daily Show. She epitomizes intelligence and integrity.”
“I’ve never seen a better, clearer explanation of why the super wealthy are full of $h!4 — they did not get their on their own. God I love this woman!!!!”
That’s why I refuse to personalize this. This is no pathology on the part of Obama. This is a view held by over 20% of all your fellow Americans.
The Left in this country really does believe this: All progress is basically collective; inventors and entrepreneurs just provide some spice on the top.
Want more evidence? Go read Howard Zinn’s ghastly Marxist view of American history, “A People’s History of the United States.” In it, you will find that the only individuals actually named as having done things are left-wing political activists like Martin Luther King Jr.
All the great inventions and technological achievements are described in the passive voice, devoid of individual achievers: “The Transcontinental Railroad was built….Electricity was harnessed….”
No, sir – you are mad. You’re comprehension is poor at best. Obama clearly stated that individual hard work is very important. All you clowns are either stupid or lying.
You have an exquisite ability to discern the penumbras of the pretense of morality by the man who accepted a Nobel Peace prize whitout having done anything to deserve it.
FeralCat,
I agree. The self-accredited man has no connection with the rest of us, except for his “hard-earned” expectation that we will trust his superior wisdom. How did he “earn it”, by his own lights? By proselytizing the religion of communal bliss, using his big airplane, his high-tech teleprompter and his secret service escort as props for peddling his own brand of high-energy snake oil, so powerful that drilling is no longer necessary.
He has reached the point where he commands us to be grateful!
Feral, like the bumper sticker but I think it lacks an essential piece of info.
It should read: I (and G0D) got me here!
This will accomplish three things:
a) It will give some of the credit where some of the credit is due
b) It will take away “the you didn’t do it alone” meme from the Gliberals by stating that they are right, but wrong in averring that other men or the State should get the credit…
c) It will cause Democrat heads to explode trying to argue against Man as proposer and G0D as disposer…
I think everybody misses the point– what Obama said was monumentallt stupid because if he’s claiming that government made rich, successful people what they are, government also has to take credit for every poor failure. I mean, they had teachers, roads and access to the Internet, too, didn’t they?
No, no, no.
People (especially minorities) fail because of one thing:
Evil white men.
; )
“The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”
- try to follow along – I know it’s hard to read or listen to an entire speech
If Obama is monumentallt(?) stupid what are you?
I know it’s an impossible task; But, some people will still try to teach turds like you to swim. Why anyone would want to end up smelling like that and soiling themselves, is beyond me.
There’s something I remember about toilet training that goes bad for you poor kids.
ya ya ya – I hate you too. I personally believe all you confederates are smelling quite awful for laying down with the pigs – Where do we go from here? Want to talk about the issue?
Do you really need to be reminded that the confederates (then and now) are democrats? You know, the party of the KKK; segregation; fire hoses; standing in school doorways; Jim Crow laws; ect; etc;
And no – there was never a party shift. You people are still (as you were then) racists.
no kidding? WOW – Obama and every Democrat before him would like to reinstate slavery? Tell me more – I love it when you PJ media types demonstrate how ridiculous the entire right wing has become.
Wild one;
I do feel sorry for you, because you display immense immaturity. But, stick around and you may educate yourself.
Do you know what a compound sentence is?
And look up the definition of the word “hate”. Please, use it correctly next time.
Everyone thinks you are a troll, but you and President Obama have a point that’s worth responding to.
Of course successful people succeeded in part because the efforts of others have given us a firm foundation. Steve Jobs did not invent the computer, for example. He and his staff just refined and polished it to the point where it was superior. As it happens, there is more hard work in refining and honing a product like that than there is in creating the original ideas behind it.
There are two really important points, though, that tend to negate this idea.
First, there are 300 million people in this great nation. They all have access to the same roads and public services. And yet only a small percentage reach the level of success that, say, Steve Jobs did. Clearly there is something in Jobs’s efforts, not in the government services he was provided with, that produces his success. Otherwise we would all be equally successful, and that is very clearly not the case.
Second, Obama’s idea would give essentially unlimited funds to those who create our roads, etc, while his own budgets have starved the roads at the expense of silly, dysfunctional high speed rail projects. Unfortunately, the first law of government comes into play: Government will consume all money made available to it, until it runs out. If we give high priority to roads, wages to make roads will double, but the same amount of construction will happen. That has happened time and time again, notably in education. The same lousy schools, the same lousy classes, but better paid teachers and far better paid administrators. Our schools are extremely successful at providing secure jobs to employees, but miserably bad at actually delivering an education.
Heck, the infamous stimulus was supposed to provide hundreds of billions to highway construction. Great! We hear all the time about our lousy infrastructure, maybe this will solve the problem. But no. Only about 5% went to construction projects, the rest went to propping up broke local governments. My friends at a Pennsylvania roads and bridges contractor noticed essentially no change in their business.
After hearing examples like this, it’s really tough to take people like Obama and Elizabeth Warren seriously. They are bragging about projects that are just not successful in our current era. We have so many rules and regulations that we can’t build anything anymore, we can’t even afford to fix what we have. We are constantly told more money is needed, but when more money is supplied, we get precious little in exchange.
I now live in Florida, and I see well maintained roads and bridges all over the place. And yet Florida taxes are half or less those in Pennsylvania. Why? Well, in part because the weather’s a lot better. But also because Florida is non-union and that makes it much less difficult to build. Eliminating the requirement to use union labor would go a long way towards fixing our infrastructure crisis entirely, but it’s politically impossible.
So in short, I am profoundly disillusioned with the ability of government to deliver the services promised on the tin. And as long as this is so, arguments based on us “owing” money for infrastructure built 50 years ago ring hollow, no matter who makes them.
D
PS Zombie’s article on other problems with the President’s approach is available on this web site, and it is excellent and touches many points I didn’t include in this message. It is incorporated in this response by reference
. See http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/07/18/the-ultimate-takedown-of-obamas-you-didnt-build-that-speech/
If all we were paying for were things like firefighting, schools, police and roads, I think most conservatives would be all for that. Further, Obama and you conflate local spending (which covers firefighting) with federal spending (which does not.)
Still and all, if we collectively pay for something that we all collectively use and one of us makes better use of it then the rest of us, I still don’t understand why he owes money to the guy sitting on his couch playing XBox.
The unique thing about Lianne’s story is that it is not unique. I’ve met hundreds of entrepreneurs who succeeded solely on their grit and determination. Scratch the surface of almost every successful small business owner and you’ll find a similar story. People who were down to their last dollar. People bet their houses and lost but came back. People who had to live in their cars for a time.
The opportunity for anyone to create their own similar story is at the heart of American exceptionalism and what it means to be an American. Anyone who says “You didn’t get their on your own” has never successfully built and run a small business.
“I got me here.” It’s an infinitely more appealing and inspiring mantra than “You didn’t build that”; it’s a celebration of earned success, and the polar opposite of Obama’s paean to stifling, destructive big government.”
It’s the polar opposite of the Obama campaign’s pathetic “Life of Julia” where the government had to take care of people from cradle to grave. Socialists like Obama expect all of us to want to be like Julia, and THAT is their biggest mistake. Socialists never take into account the human spirit, which not only yearns to be free from the yoke of government oppression, but also has a burning desire to create and build things, like successful businesses. Socialists like Obama will never understand that and THAT is why they will fail in the end. Obama and his merry band of socialists are the biggest threat to this nation since Eugene V. Debs at the beginning of the 20th century. And they must be defeated just like Debs was. Our country depends on it.
Where to begin?
Mr. Obama; YOU haven’t attained YOUR status without the hard work and MANY paved roads and universities built with the sweat, blood, and hard earned cash, of many devoted American Citizens.
Mr. Obama; Washington D.C. wouldn’t be there for you to put your feet up on if it weren’t for the sweat, blood, hard earned cash, and devotion, of many patriots that wanted to make a better life for future generations of their fellow Americans.
I could make a multiple page essay out of this theme. But, I’ll cut it short, and get straight to the point:
Mr. Obama; You just plain suck.
an excellent point, but I KNOW YOU ARE, WHAT AM I. To bad you didn’t get past elementary school level debate skills.
Aha! I finally put it in words that you fools can understand!
I had to dig WAY back to elementary school dialog.
Keep up the great communication. (Sorry for that last multi-syllable word. Ask your mother for help with that).
State supremacists like yourself are in for some rather unpleasant surprises, I think.
you think poorly – that is, your brain does not function properly
Lonnie Wild:
Seems like you have a bit of trouble also with elementary school grammar, “to bad” should be too bad! Guess you were out on the day the teacher explained the differance between to, too and two.
Its about time to take the gloves offhand call 0 to account. So Mr.Mitt go to work please
Redball6
What Obama does not realize is how much sheer work goes into starting and maintaining a business. Far more work than goes into showing up, failing, and then being placed into higher and higher positions of power by white people.
Obama was just stating his own experience. He is a product of affirmative action, networking, trading favors, and crony capitalism. He’s in a profession- lawyer– where you succeed by finding folks with property and finding a reason to take it from them. Elizabeth Warren is the same, she used affirmative action to her benefit because that’s simply how things are done in her view. You truly don’t succeed on your own. You succeed through back room deals and patronage.
That is all they know. Like most of our political class. The experience of folks who actually take risks, identify needs, design build and deliver products or services without a safety net is completely foreign to them and outside and unfathomable.
Obama and Warren and all the other flaming leftists have no clue about the concept of “risk.” An enterprise will exist within the context of all sorts of external factors, e.g., roads, market demand, capital, honest labor, non-criminal politicians and license/permit issuers, etc., but, at the outset, the entrepreneur has to believe that, with his hard work and a little luck, the risk of failure can be overcome.
Bam and Warren have never had to consider risk. Bam was surrounded by liberals (in his youth) and felons all his career and they protected him from risk. Warren has been protected by liberals/her tribe. Although, her house flipping probably gave her more real world experience than Bam will ever have.
Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum – keep talking – show off that big brain of yours. If you get a chance try to apply the same logic and criteria to Romney or Bush or any other silver spoon Republican. Tell me more….
Lonnie, what may be surprising to you is that I agree with you in general. Regardless of party, the politicians take care of their own buddies and themselves. (I’d disagree somewhat about Romney and Bush understanding risk in industry because of their backgrounds). Increasingly the industry buddies are the same- for example the banking, Wall Street, automobile and pharmaceutical (sp?) industries play up to both parties. And recieve favorable treatment from both. Yeah, Obama flushed a ton of our dollars down his ‘green’ buddy drains but I don’t doubt for a minute that republicans would do the same. That is, perpetuate the private reward/public risk paradigm rescuing idiotic businessmen from their own damn mistakes. Too many of us support political parties and politicians like they are our favorite sports team and superstars instead of what they are– our employees. How did we ever let our employees provide themselves better health care, retirements, and rules exemptions than us.
BTW, the word you were looking for was ‘dumb,’ as in uneducated. Phonics HAS NOT worked for you.
Nice. Very nice.
Well, when you really think about it, Obama isn’t really our President. You see, he didn’t create himself (it was his parents who did that), and he didn’t create the votes he got in 2008 – it was the voters’ parents who did that. And he didn’t build the White House, Air Force One, or the Presidential Limo, and he didn’t write the Constitution that gives us the freedom to cast our votes, nor did he dream up the Electoral College that actually elected him, and he didn’t build the schools, nor staff it with the teachers, that gave him the education that got him where he is today. Nor did he build the communities that he organized and got votes from, someone else did that. So really, by his own logic, he’s not our President. Our President is all those other people who did those things!
ABO 2012!
That’s true.
He got a lot of help from ACORN.
YES! – keep ‘em coming! Geniuses I tells ya. If you believe what you just said then nobody will ever be president. You are a clown. Tell me more……
What is is his point?
We need some government so we need more government?
Is that what he’s trying to say?
Or is this Obama pumping up more class warfare and envy to justify grabbing even more from business owners?
Tell the union goons and the Occupier crowd that they helped build all those successful businesses so they are entitled to take over those businesses?
are you guys being dumb on purpose?
from the speech – “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”
Keep it coming…..
A little hint for you Lonnie: Quoting Obama is not helping your argument. It’s only making it worse.
But I’ll give you credit: it’s a step above your normal “You’re a poopy-face doody-head” posts you’ve been depositing on this thread…
To answer your question, Wild-one: YES! We just looove p!$$!ng YOU off!
You’re sooo funny when you get mad.
Also, you’re soooo incredibly stooopid to not have caught on that EVERYBODY here, EXCEPT you, has looong ago seen through O’bummer o’ Bundler’ (or is it o’ Bungler’?) and Ms. Cherokee’ straw man argument – and properly invalidated it.
Nobody has ever denied that we cooperate to create things together, and fund certain common things together, for the common good. EVERYBODY benefits EQUALLY, government performing an appropriate level of oversight over private industry’s creation of infrastructure.
This does NOT grant government, however, a blank check on unlimited funds, or to limitless future obedience. ITS demands and rights are capped — by the Constitution. OURS are NOT! It is OUR EMPLOYEE, not we its serfs. That holds true for EVERY individual citizen.
From this follows that there is NO COLLECTIVE right to ANYTHING. ALL rights are individual, the collective being merely what the word implies – a collection. From that follows in conclusion that there is NO RIGHT TO TAX SOME at the EXPENSE of others. (><50% of Americans pay no Federal taxes, while 47% receive transfer payments from those who do).
It further follows that all cooperation MUST be VOLUNTARY, subject to the government's respect for individual rights, which it is its function to protect, uphold, and enforce, and not to trash by demanding more of some than of others.
BO's implicit bringing up of the invalid collective rights argument, presumably to be enforced at the muzzle of the government gun, and to characterize this as the moral high ground, was a rather transparent attempt at class warfare, correctly seen as such by all here with whom you disagree.
Beyond that, it was extremely insulting to those who really do work harder, and are smarter, and take more risks, and are more persistent, and often fail before eventually succeeding at having created something of value — a value in which all are free to participate at a far smaller unit cost than was demanded for its initial creation. If in time that also creates great wealth, all the better. All benefit.
As for payment, that has been made already, by the creators, long before anybody purchased their first product. It had to be. Creation and production are ALWAYS "paid forward", to use that dumb "Cherokee" cluck's catch phrase, for once with its correct meaning. The Creators have EARNED the right to have their just rewards taxed at least NOT MORE heavily than a wage earner's, whose job and wage is one of the serendipitous byproducts of their quest. (No insult intended to real Cherokees: SHE used these "arguments" to advance improperly her life and agendas, so SHE will have to live with the derision.)
Equal rights under the rule of law, for all. Limited Constitutional Government. BO's speech and behaviors would indicate he disagrees. Too bad for him, WE disagree with his disagreement, and since WE ARE the BOSS, HE will be fired.
As are you, troll. — We LOVE it when you get mad. Really, we do!
That’s the head scratcher. So he’s saying that the infrastructure that was there four years ago is necessary for the operation of business? Duh. I don’t see any new infrastructure. In fact, I see a pipeline that should be under construction that isn’t thanks to the Obama administration.
Obama – all the infrastructure that we have was there four years ago. If we have infrastructure – you didn’t do that. Somebody else did.
again – liar or dunce? Keep ‘em coming…..
Two points:
1) Most of the people Obama was speaking to, his base, don’t even pay income taxes. Filing taxes is not the same as paying taxes if you get all your money back. It is up to 49% those who do not pay income taxes so, no, they didn’t help build ANYTHING. They are recipiants only.
2) If the contention is everybody pays for the infrustructure (a lie, see point one, but just for argument sake, say so) then raising taxes on the successful means we penalize those who rise to the top. What incentive is there to work 60-80 hour weeks if you get penalized for working harder. But then, that falls directly in line with Socialist and Union (redundant I suppose)thought.
And yes, Lonnie, Obama and the progrssives would like to reinstate slavery. What else do you call confiscation of someone else’s labor for personal gain? See, the IRS ensures you can’t just opt out. But I’m sure you are the star of your local Starbucks, intellectually.
lies, mischaracterizations, and inflamitory BS – everything you said.
Yet another one bobs to the surface of the Modern Liberal Cesspool. Notice the multiple post activity, that with the other Flushed Ones expelling methane in several other PJM comments sections.
Something in about Mr. President’s shovel ready speech the other day has activated a failure prevention mechanism that consists of, “I know what My Master said, because I lick boot really good”. The same Kiwi laden tongues are flapping out the same lines with such regular sameness. One Cynically Wonders if BostonLib and Lonnie Wild eat their free lunch off the same boot.
This does show that they do get help from someone, somewhere, somehow. After all, somebody is doing this for them somehow. How could any Modern Liberal think for themselves from now on after Mr. President slyly pulled up the Queen of Diamonds? Or did he just ring a bell?
Oh well, buy Kiwi stock, looks like a good bet.
If sharing a bit is so bad take a look at how Canada is now doing compared to the US. Not all that different from other responsible (by that I mean they pay their taxes, often high taxes) social democratic countries, particularly Finland which is acclaimed as having the most balanced economy in the world.
On July 1, Canada Day, Canadians awoke to a startling, if pleasant, piece of news: For the first time in recent history, the average Canadian is richer than the average American.
According to data from Environics Analytics WealthScapes published in the Globe and Mail, the net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household’s net worth was $319,970.
A few days later, Canada and the U.S. both released the latest job figures. Canada’s unemployment rate fell, again, to 7.2 percent, and America’s was a stagnant 8.2 percent. Canada continues to thrive while the U.S. struggles to find its way out of an intractable economic crisis and a political sine curve of hope and despair.
Democratic politics has been about buying elections since the time of FDR and that is what this debate is truly about. Liberals like to talk about equality but actions speak louder than words. As Representative Justin Morrill of Vermont observed, “in this country we neither create nor tolerate any distinction of rank, race, or color, and should not tolerate anything else than entire equality in our taxes.”(source below)
To learn more, (Lonnie, you need this brother), try this link:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-progressive-income-tax-in-us-history/
We gots a live one…
Yea! Ain’t it a hoot?
I don’t have time to debate the progressive tax right now – I have tomorrow off. BTW Democrat does not = liberal. Obama is a flaming centrist. You guys are seem sooooooo right fringe to me.
“I don’t have time to debate the progressive tax right now.” = I can’t debate the merits. We know, Lonnie…
We know Democrat does not equal liberal, and from your next comment we also know Democrat does not equal informed, either. If Obama is to the right of you then you are on the extremist left approximately 10 miles from Mars. There is nothing centrist about him, starting with gay marriage, Keynesian economics, expansion of welfare and government programs, immigration, foreign policy, and certainly not ending with extra-Constitutional executive orders. If you think he’s a centrist, you’ve been missing a lot of news since 2006 when he went into the US Senate and had the MOST liberal voting record in the Senate. But I can understand why you don’t want to claim him as a ‘liberal’, you’d have to own all of his failures.
Lonnie Wild: “lies, mischaracterizations, and inflamitory BS – everything you said.”
Care to support this statement?
20. Lonnie Wild:”I don’t have time to debate the progressive tax right now – I have tomorrow off.”
run away Lonnie, run away…….
Lonnie:”BTW Democrat does not = liberal.”
For once we agree, Democrat=Coward.
So we Conservatives were given a magnificant gift by the current occupant of the wh. I call it “The Roanoke Moment.” I’m not the only one. I truly believe that the occupant, in that unguarded moment, let out his true socialist spirit, along with misplaced contempt for American free enterprize It may very well cost him the election. Watch the polls from here on in as the slide downward begins for him and his minions.
There was no mistake, vocal error, nor slip-up here, in as much as it was repeated; and it echoed the similar sentiment of the Cherokee Warrior. So the Left is nailed to it, like shingles on the roof. Now, all we do is use it as a campaign issue. The target audience, I believe, is largely ours, only now there is robust emotional motivation that wasn’t there before the MOMENT.
There are millions of people in ownership of small, medium, and large businesses. There are lots and lots of entrepreneurs out there now with a cause to get out and vote. Here’s why:
To begin with, we who risked it all and managed to survive, prosper, excel, did so on our own initiative. It goes without saying that we all use the same roads, bridges, electrical grid, computers, phones, internet, railroads, planes, trucks, mail, schools, and that list, called infrastructure. It is there for us all.
We entrepreneurs build on that to create jobs, value, taxes. Let’s talk about infrastructure and taxes. The occupant and the Cherokee both made the inept statement that since we all use the infrastructure, we all never do it by ourselves.
That doesn’t account for the vast spectrum in this or any society in the world of incomes and assets. There are vast numbers of hard workers and smart people. The difference lies then in initiative, motive, drive, creativity, persistance. All that is merely stating the obvious. The socialists of this world strive for all to have equal outcomes, not equal opportunities.
They both made direct conclusion that it was everyone else but us who paid for and built the infrastructure. That is the gross flaw in the position. Consider the well-established fact that the top 20% of all of us pay 95% of ALL taxes. Thus, we can say to the other 80%: you are not paying your fair share, are you? In short, the occupant’s Roanoke Moment is grounds for the 20% of us to vote him out, along with whomever else cares to join us. He brought us together, eh?
Final thought. We entrepreneurs share a very special emotional bond: most all of us look upon our created businesses with special emotion. We think—this is our baby….Something that the occupant and the Cherokee cannot begin to understand.
Your final thought is a very adroit observation that has merit.
The two examples you cite, are a product of bad childhoods. They have emotional problems that manifest in their personas.
Like what has been written here at PJM before; Liberalism is a mental disease.
Giving that speech the most charitable spin possible, it’s a pointless statement of the obvious. No business is an island. Apple can’t make iGadgets without the silicon companies making the chips. Government Motors can’t make Volts without the steel industry and the Korean battery makers. Boeing can’t make airplanes without the aluminum mills and engine manufacturers.
So they all deserve stars on their foreheads for making the raw materials? No. They get paid. Just like the government got paid to build that infrastructure. And guess what? The government didn’t build anything. The took the tax money that they collected, and hired contractors to build those things.
So WTF exactly was his point? The best possible interpretation is that it was just dumb running off of the mouth.
Oh, Heaven Forfend! The correct spelling is “magnificent.” And, Cybergeezer, by the two examples, I presume you mean the occupant and the Cherokee? Yes?
Yes; The two referred to in your “final thought”.
lovely earth does a better job of riling up unsuspecting conservatives than the likes of lonnie wild, boston lib, and cynical wonder could ever do
Well, with Obama pulling a Biden almost twice daily. The Cooch of the DNC had to send in the scrubs and we all know how that works.
Than you, government for buildding the highway systems which enables felons to make fast getaways. Thank you also for the educational assistance given to poor students which enables them to fill life-sasving positions. We are lucky to have such people in those roles. Thank you also for laws protecting felons….they make me safer. I know and, lastly, thank you for our foreign policy which protects those of one religion and insults those of another.
I think if we don’t respond the fun goes out for Lonnie.
Besides you can’t teach stupid!
The young people are cutting off their own future with their support of the “0″.
So this guy “who did it all” (namely open a hot dog stand) never used roads, bridges, public schools, libraries, police, public parks and beaches, FDIC guaranteed bank deposits, etc. He has been a hermit all his life and completely “did it his way.”
Poppycock. Yes we have a public infrastructure that everyone can use. No we don’t all go to private school, hire our own schools, fire and police departments.
You people should have sex with yourselves because “it’s all you baby.”
The Sage of Wake Forest
You mean to say that only those who go to private schools can succeed, and who hire their private security and fire force, have private roads, etc.?
Really?! — That’s been YOUR excuse?
I see a different reason: You’re no “Sage”, George, as you fail to acknowledge that the infrastructure was created by all for all.
To each according to his ability, and from each, equally, according to the common need; the rest his to keep. Not quite what Marx wrote, is it?
That is, however, the REALITY. For proof: N.Korea, East Germany, USSR, N.Vietnam, Communist East Block countries, more recently Greece, now Spain; all failed or failing. All good examples how NOT to do things.
All places where individual initiative counted for little or nothing, the collective for everything. All places where Marx was more or less heeded and made into public policy. All places lacking sorely in infrastructure, or with very problematical infrastructure. All places producing little of value. All places gone, or going, broke.
Be “sage”, and learn, before you sign “The Sage…”.
Roger–
You are making my argument for me. Learn to read it.
The Sage of Wake Forest
Works for me. I made a very short video themed that way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlX-BqOX4oA
My business is a shopping cart that merchants rent to sell their merchandise online. Since Obama took over, more than half of my customers have ‘gone away’.
Where are they, Mr. President? Where did all those businesses go?
Here i a list (Forbes) of what recent university graduates in different countries can demand of their economies. Please note that what you lot would call socialist counties dominate the list, and, as usual, the US is not at the top of the list. Try not and confuse tax paying (sometimes high taxed countries), social democratic governments with hard socialism, and stop ranting about the US being best at…anything
The 2012 Cost of Talent Worldwide (monthly salary, pre-taxes):
No. 1 Switzerland, $6,612 (up 27.5% from 2011)
No. 2 Norway, $5,913 (down .5% from 2011)
No. 3 Denmark, $5,489 (up .4% from 2011)
No. 4 Canada, $4,594 (up 5.4% from 2011)
No. 5 Germany, $4,451 (up .3% from 2011)
No. 6 United States, $4,220 (down .8% from 2011)
No. 7 Sweden, $4,125 (up 3.1% from 2011)
No. 8 France, $3,766 (up .1% from 2011)
No. 9 Finland, $3,748 (down 3.4% from 2011)
No. 10 United Kingdom, $3,299 (down 1.5% from 2011)