"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." --Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richards Almanack, 1735)
2012-07-19-alexander-1Trust me, I never operated a lemonade stand, but I'm the president!
Barack Hussein Obama never so much as operated a corner lemonade stand, but his perspective on free enterprise, shaped by hislifelong socialist indocrtination, is certainly getting some traction.
Invoking the two pillars of his re-election campaign, tax "fairness" and class warfare, Obama first focused on the tax piece, asserting, "I'm not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy."
In ObamaSpeak, "gut the investments" translates as "cut taxes," and "grow the economy" translates as "grow the government." This remark was a smokescreen in regard to Democrat efforts to let the across-the-board Bush tax rates expire, which, in effect, will raise taxes on all Americans who earn a living rather than live on the dole.
To that end, Obama's Senate lap dog, Patty Murray (D-WA), served up this ultimatum: "If we can't get a good deal -- a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share -- then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013 rather than lock in a long-term deal this year that throws middle-class families under the bus."
Of course, EVERY aspect of her classist rhetoric requires a secret decoder ring.
"Good deal" means "raising taxes" and "balanced deal" means "more spending." If the Demo-gogues were serious about balancing anything, they'd do precisely what "middle-class families" do during tough times: cut expenses.
"The wealthy" means "tax payers rather than tax consumers." As for paying their "fair share," the producers and job creators who earn $250,000-and-above (which is the target for Obama's looming tax increase) while constituting just two percent of the population already pay 43.6 percent of all federal income taxes. Obama is also keenly aware that the top 25 percent of income earners already pay more than 84 percent of income tax revenues and the top 50 percent of earners now pay almost 98 percent of all income tax revenue collected -- which means he's all but created a voting majority who pay little or no federal income tax.
Clearly, Democrats don't represent the "99 percent." Instead, they pander to the 50 percent who are the beneficiaries of confiscated and redistributed wealth from the other 50 percent. I invoke again the timeless words of George Bernard Shaw: "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
Continuing with the translation exercise, Murray says Senate Demos won't "lock in a long-term deal," meaning "extend tax relief for tax payers," and "throwing middle-class families under the bus" is what Obama and his Socialist Democrats do best.
Every dollar paid into the bloated federal coffers is one less dollar to be spent or invested in the private sector -- where all those "middle-class families" Obama and his cadres use for cannon fodder -- are barely making ends meet.
After pitching his plug for tax increases, Obama then got way off his teleprompted script with the most pointed classist and collectivist rhetoric he has yet to regurgitate: "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. ... If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
Of course, in the context of his socialist agenda, "somebody else" is his collectivist euphemism for "government," a.k.a. Hillary Clinton's "village."
Finally, he asserted that collectivism is responsible for the existence of the middle class: "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 created the middle class." (As a half-truth, he may be partially correct. More middle-class folks could be wealthy if socialist government taxes and regulation weren't holding them back.)
According to Obama, then, we owe all that we are and all that we own to government.
Notably, after having presided over four years of a flat-lined economy, despite spending trillions of dollars with nothing to show but trillions of dollars in debt, Obama's chronic Narcissistic Personality Disorder enables him to completely ignore reality.
Every time he diverts from his ObamaPrompter, as he did with his assessment of free enterprise, he exposes his ultra-Leftist agenda. Some memorable examples include his recent assertion that, "The private sector is doing fine," but we need more government jobs. Then there was his infamous comment to Joe the Plumber that we need to "spread the wealth around." My personal favorite, however, was when an open mike caught his whispered assurance to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: "After my election I'll have more flexibility."
Contemplate those words again: "After my election I'll have more flexibility."
As if he hasn't yet done enough damage to our economy, culture and world standing in his first term? One wonders just what other damage he'd do with "more flexibility" in a second term.
Obama leads his lemmings to believe that business owners are millionaires driven by greed who don't care about the jobs they create and the families those jobs support. In fact, the vast majority of small businesses -- those which make up the foundation of our economy -- are owned by men and women who put in long hours for not much more money than their managers and supervisors. But that's during a healthy economy.
In a failing economy, like the current one under the Obama regime, small business owners who are personally liable for the debt required to operate their businesses, are taking out second home mortgages, maxing their credit cards, and borrowing from relatives and retirement savings in order to keep their businesses solvent.
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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasted no time returning fire in defense of free enterprise.
"The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn't build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn't build McDonald's, that Bill Gates didn't build Microsoft -- you go on down the list ... to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America and it's wrong," Romney said.
He continued, "[Obama's] logic doesn't just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation ... it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself up a little further ... [Obama] would say, 'Well, you didn't do that ... you are not responsible for that success.' Obama exposed what he really thinks about free people and the American vision, and government, what he really thinks about America itself. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. We have seen what Obama's political philosophy brings and we don't want any more of it!"
Romney closed by asking, "Do we believe in an America that is great because of government, or do we believe in an America that's great because of free people allowed to pursue their dream? Obama attacks success and therefore under Obama we have less success. And I will change that."
National Review's Rich Lowry summed up Obama's theory of economics: "Behind every successful businessman, there is a successful government. Everyone is helpless without the state, the great protector, builder, and innovator. Everything is ultimately a collective enterprise. Individual initiative is only an ingredient in the more important work when 'we do things together.'"
Ronald Reagan observed, "Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States."
We still are, and Obama and his Leftists despise nothing more than self-sufficiency, which is the antithesis of the government dependency they promote.http://patriotpost.us/alexander/14167

h/t MK