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Jewish World Review July 27, 2012/ 8 Menachem-Av, 5772 Obama: I Defy You To Believe What I Said About Business By David Limbaugh
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Obama's desperate protests that his anti-business rant was taken out of context are betrayed both by that very context and because they are a part of a piece — just one more component of his war against the American entrepreneurial spirit. He would have us believe that his words "you didn't build that" referred to roads and bridges and not businesses. Given his accompanying statements — "you didn't get there on your own," etc. — that is an absurd construction. But even if that's what he meant, why would he have felt compelled to point out that businesses don't succeed without access to roads and bridges? Do roads and bridges not connect the population to failed businesses? Why would any American president be inclined to think or talk this way? Of course governments — funded by individual and business revenues, by the way — build the roads and bridges, to successful and failed businesses. But why isn't Obama moved instead to echo the words of past presidents, who championed small businesses, such as those showcased in Sen. Scott Brown's campaign ad? Can anyone imagine Obama, on or off prompter and not under duress, saying the following words, which were said by President Lyndon Baines Johnson? "I am so proud of our system of government, of our system of free enterprise, where our incentive system and our men who head our big industries are willing to get up at daylight and work till midnight to offer employment and create new jobs for people." Can you picture Obama, like Ronald Reagan, praising American small businesses as heroes for feeding "a hungry world and keep(ing) our families warm while they invest in the future to build a better America"? Obama is way too busy criticizing capitalism and the free market for any number of sins that exist only in his mind. Obama can't possibly champion as heroes those whom he believes have so unfairly exploited a system at the expense of a victim class. Obama hasn't only attacked small businesses; his war against Americana is much more wide-sweeping. He has embarked on an unmistakable course to reward sloth, dependency and covetousness and punish hard work and achievement. He has stood on its head the old adage that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him fish. Nor has he fostered a climate of voluntary Christian charity. He hasn't even encouraged fishermen to give their fish to others. He doesn't want them to do it on their own. He insists on government's taxing and regulating the fishermen and their fishing poles — not to mention a surtax for crossing the roads and bridges leading to their fishing ponds — and impounding their fish for redistribution to those he is discouraging from even visiting the pond, much less grabbing a pole. For example, there was a bipartisan consensus that the 1996 welfare reform measures were overwhelmingly successful, reducing the number of people on welfare, illegitimacy and poverty, especially among minorities. The reforms were helping people regain their dignity and self-sufficiency, but Obama simply couldn't tolerate it, so he unilaterally and lawlessly removed the work requirement in the law. Why? Does he want fewer people supporting themselves? In his term, the number of people not paying income taxes has greatly increased. He is incentivizing states to expand, as opposed to reduce, their food stamp programs. He has insisted on extending unemployment benefits, despite evidence showing that such extensions increase, rather than decrease, unemployment. In addition, Obama vilifies the so-called wealthy and uses his bully pulpit to deceive Americans into believing they are not paying their fair share, when they pay staggeringly more taxes than all other income groups. In stumping for the "Buffett rule" and higher taxes and more burdensome regulations, he has led Americans to believe that millionaires and billionaires are paying less than their secretaries — an out and out lie. He has attacked corporations and their executives, suggesting they are impersonal, malicious, profit-sucking entities that exist to exploit people and prey on the poor. Indeed, if it weren't so obvious that Obama is contemptuous of the free enterprise system and longs for some utopian workers paradise where equality of outcome is guaranteed instead of equality of opportunity, he wouldn't have to spend so much time pleading he is a fierce advocate of the market. Obama doesn't have to fool all the people all the time — just enough to win the swing states. If you can believe that Obama was truly against same-sex marriage when he said he was, that he is for an "all of the above" energy policy, that Obamacare won't come between patients and their doctors and will decrease costs, or that Obama has been the most frugal president in the past 60 years, I could sell you any bridge (or road), and I suppose you can believe he isn't the enemy of American businesses. I trust the majority knows better.
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David Limbaugh, a columnist and attorney practicing in Cape
Girardeau, Mo. Comment by clicking here.
© 2010, Creators Syndicate
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Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||||||||
