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Obama’s vision of the state as master, not as servant

Obama’s vision of the state as master, not as servant

As you know from the primaries, I’m no fan of John Sununu.

But when it comes to Obama’s complete lack of understanding and disdain for what makes this country’s economy work, Sununu got it right yesterday

Despite the media hoopla, tell me exactly what was wrong with this statement:

In a conference call with reporters, former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu criticized President Obama’s comments in Virginia on Friday when, talking about how the government builds infrastructure, the president said, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”

The remarks, Sununu charged, were “insulting to the hardworking entrepreneurs who really do create jobs, who create businesses, who take out a second mortgage and take the chance and hire some people and get the business going. These are the people who are the backbone of our economy and the president clearly demonstrated that he has absolute no idea how the American economy functions. The men and women across America who have worked hard to build their businesses from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world, the American way and I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”

Boo hoo, the media is up in arms because of the last clause. But the analysis is dead on correct.

In the very same call Sununu clarified what he meant by “learn how to be an American”:

“What I thought I said, but I guess I didn’t say, is the President has to learn the American formula for creating business,” Sununu said. “The American formula for creating business is not have government creating business.  The American formula for creating business—that I wish he would get comfortable with—is to create a climate in which entrepreneurs can thrive.  If I didn’t give all that detail, I apologize.”

John Hinderaker attended the conference call, and had this observation of the media reaction during the call:

So you can see what is happening. The Romney campaign puts on a devastating show, and the only thing the Democratic Party reporters are interested in is how they can spin it back to Obama’s talking points.

Obama, doing his Elizabeth Warren imitation, was insulting the people who make this country work, and was rejecting the heart of our system.

Sununu hammered his points in a later Fox interview:

Obama needs to learn a few things, and the first is that the source of national wealth and prosperity is not the government. That doesn’t mean that government has no role, but is does mean that anyone who values our system understands that roads were built with tax dollars confiscated from private citizens who created wealth.

Commenter coralbrief put it in proper perspective:

I’m astonished that one critique of Obama’s business “didn’t build this” slur hasn’t made it to the forefront of conservative comment.  We can’t deny that government helps business.  But it’s not the roads that provide that help. It’s not the infrastructure.  All societies have that. Red China (to use the politically incorrect but highly accurate term) has roads and infrastructure. So do Cuba, Venezuala, Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq (etc.) [read the rest of his comment, it’s worth it]

The vision of Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren of a populace beholden to the bureaucracy out of some misplaced debt of economic gratitude is contrary to our system.

It’s a question, as Margaret Thatcher put it, of whether state is master or servant:

Good for Margaret Thatcher and good for John Sununu.

Obama is a threat to economic freedom.  Someone needs to say it.

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Comments

Obama and the political ruling class exist only because “we the people” vote them into existence. Now, we the people must vote them out of existence because tyranny is raising its ugly head. Obama is a nobody without votes and even with votes he proves over and over again that he’s a nobody.

Don’t forget: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country…”
The Iran-inspired UN disagrees with this statement, of course, and I’m sure RBG does, as well. For now I’ll stick to my guns.

I’d have to say that off-shore accounts are looking better all the time.

Thank you Professor. This post is a masterful response.

My own thoughts when hearing the Obama (and Warren) drivel were: if government is the key to building businesses, why is it then that everyone doesn’t have a business?

jimzinsocal | July 18, 2012 at 9:20 am

Great post and if you are interested there is a link at tip line for some visuals that get at the very same things.
Clearly this is a gift for Romney and all of us to use. The very notion that we dont build our own businesses insults us all at every level.
Its an attack on the “individual” in favor of some collectivist drone mindset.
Its also a parlor trick aimed at selling a sick ideology to college students where the President spoke.
The President offers cherry picked examples to illustrate how government involvement has worked. Yet he forgets to mention, as with the Hoover Dam, just who actually built the dam. Six Companies. He seems to think shuffling paper around is the same as the blood sweat and tears that made that project happen.
He plays down the value of individual iniative always.
I might ask the President? Where was “government” when this 52 year old self motivated individual caught a little girl who had fallen 3 stories.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/17/us/new-york-bus-driver-hero/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

So no Mr President. You are wrong in all this.
America works on the basis of individuals carving out some niche for themselves not by positioning themselves under a nearby government teat.

No “clarification” was needed. Obamao needs to learn to be an American. Then again the WON thinks he is the messiah so noone should be surprised that he thinks you should be thanking him for your success.

If democRATS were honest they would tell the voters the real reason they’re running for office is because they like to have their asses kissed, repeatedly.

“Obama needs to learn a few things, and the first is that the source of national wealth and prosperity is not the government.”

I remember the folk song line; “It’s a lesson too late for the learning…”

Pres. Paracosm will not and cannot learn about the America of the Founding.

That America is already in his mind as a bad place of antique European values that had been over-taken by new Progressive notions from great intellectuals…mostly, ironically, from Germany.

Obama cannot comprehend the magic power of markets and of the American Revolution because he was taught all his life those things are failed, outmoded, self-centered, and powerless systems.

Rush Limbaugh is and was right; Obama hates America (as founded).

    Moonbeam in reply to Ragspierre. | July 18, 2012 at 10:52 pm

    You made my comment for me- that was exactly the portion of the Professor’s post that rang my bell. It’s like the adage that you can’t reason someone out of a position that they weren’t reasoned into in the first place. With the president, it’s in his bones.

    I would also like to add, enough with the apologies. When someone labels you a felon, the rules of the contest have been set. Accept them and engage accordingly.

So why did Sununu apologize? Jeezus I’m geting tired of apologies and “clarifications” from Republicans. Just say it and if they squawk, double down on it!

“…media is up in arms because of the last clause…”

What Sununu said about Obama applies to the Media. Conceited talking heads who never created anything of tangible value but get paid to legitimize the subjugation of those who do.

The Media, like this administration, can go f*@# themselves.

LukeHandCool | July 18, 2012 at 9:41 am

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”

How about …

“If you’ve got a couple of autobiographies, you didn’t write them.”

Come on, Romney team. A little humor ridiculing this guy is the most lethal weapon. Punch back with a few punchlines at this joke of a president. Are you guys even going to show up for the fight??

“Obama is a threat to economic freedom”

Along with a few more..freedom of thought, speech/expression, religious belief, press (exception Fox News comes to mind), entrepreneurship, ______, ______, (fill in blanks).

Believe I read somewhere, about early America having a tussle with a King of Great Britain concerning governing by fiat.

I hear that those early folks penned some sort of document. #44 supposedly lectured on them, but doesn’t agree with it, cause he has not “learn-ed how to be an American”.

    JP in reply to JP. | July 18, 2012 at 9:58 am

    “#44 supposedly lectured on them IT, but doesn’t agree with it”

    When I learn this here English stuff, I gonna’ be real gooder at it..

Rush said yesterday Obama is setting the stage to gin up support for confiscatory taxes by claiming no one really produced wealth by themselves.

Maybe Obama wants MORE THAN coercive tax rates on income. Maybe he wants control of private citizens’ IRAs and 401Ks.

When Theresa Ghillarduci floated this concept to Democrats in Congress in 2008, it included a 5% withholding from “all workers” to fund a universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration.

“Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration…

All workers would have 5 percent of their annual pay deducted from their paychecks and deposited to the GRA.”

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/dems-target-private-retirement-accounts.html

Also: “Ghilarducci makes the case for a mandatory, government-sponsored defined benefit pension system.”

http://www.annuitydigest.com/blog/tom/teresa-ghilarducci-pension-reform

    logos in reply to logos. | July 18, 2012 at 9:49 am

    According to Col Craig Roberts, Obama’s OCTOBER SURPRISE is rumored to be seizing private citizens’ 401Ks and IRAs.

    Go to 26:30 on the audio at the link

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/col-craig-roberts-breaks-down-operation-blackstar.html

    I keep hearing that even if Obama taxed “rich” Americans at 100% of income, it would only be a drop in the bucket to the current level of spending.

    Does anyone have any idea of the value of all existing 401Ks and IRAs in this country which individuals saved for their retirement, but which we now learn that they didn’t really earn by themselves had the government not provided roads?

    Now, we’re talking some real money.

    Oldflyer in reply to logos. | July 19, 2012 at 12:26 pm

    Wait. The Democrats have a NEW retirement plan for the hoi poloi? I thought they already imposed a defined benefits pension program back in the ’30s, that we are required to contribute a percentage of our income in to. It is called Social Security. When I say, “we are required to contribute..”, I am exempting members of Congress, the Civil Service and most municipal employees, of course. They have retirement plans that were specifically designed for them–by them.

As I saw elsewhere …

“When I have to expand my business and need money to do that, who puts up their home as collateral for the loan ? It’s certainly not anybody else.”

In the New America…

If you build a better mouse-trap…

1. the world will beat a path to your door

2. you will have to produce it overseas (or Canada) because you can’t afford to hire American workers

3. your President will assure you that you didn’t do that

4. you will be heavily taxed to pay for the government of other people who don’t pay for theirs

Incentives are powerful things.

Midwest Rhino | July 18, 2012 at 10:58 am

Obama has stated his agenda and the union agenda are the same (speaking to ACORN I think). The unions are always antagonists to private enterprise “bosses”. Obama wants all workers of the world to unite in solidarity AGAINST company owners. He might be surprised to find that many workers appreciate their job and company owner, and don’t want to hire union “hit men” to overthrow them.

Obama’s “not your company” belief should be tied to his White House frequent visitor Trumka. Trumka helped sink GM, then got taxpayers to turn much of the company over to the unions, while stiffing the real owners, the bondholders. That was a little foreshadowing of what Obama thinks of private ownership.

In government unions, the entitlement mentality is “bankrupting” states and municipalities, yet the government unions have essentially become the boss. Every time teachers go on strike, they are essentially saying “that is not your company, it is ours”. This is not a new message for Obama. “You don’t own those schools (or your kid’s educational choices), give your children to the collective monopoly”.

But to really understand “government is the master”, I probably should reread Mike Royko’s “The Boss”, which reveals the real corruption of the Chicago Machine, remnants of which Obama was politically raised in. ‘Crony capitalism” is too mild of a term to really describe the Obama regime.

Next we might hear “If you have guns, you don’t own those guns, the government allows you to have them, and we can take them away … ‘cuz I’m working on gun control beneath the radar”.

LukeHandCool | July 18, 2012 at 11:21 am

Wow. When you’re losing hardcore former punk rockers like Exene Cervenka of the great L.A. Band “X,” you can’t be doing too well.

I know she’s done some spoken-word performances with extreme lefty Henry Rollins of “Black Flag,” so that moron is sure to be pissed off. Great!! Loved that time when Greg Gutfeld skewered Henry Rollins over his supposedly “edgy” attack on conservatives a few years ago.

Exene tweeted:

“robotic eyes, skin crawling reality of hideous creatures ruling over us, sic-fi nightmare. can’t vote obama. too many executive orders.”

Rock on, Exene!

https://twitter.com/exenecervenka/status/222055473694769154

prior to 1960 we didn’t have an interstate highway system … funny how the industrial revolution managed to get along without one …

for example from Wiki:

The Delaware and Hudson Canal was the first venture of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, which later developed the Delaware and Hudson Railway. Between 1828 and 1899, its barges carried anthracite coal from the mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania to New York City via the Hudson River. This affected both the city and the region, stimulating the former’s growth and encouraging settlement in the latter, then sparsely populated. It remained a profitable private operation for most of its existence, unlike other canals of the era. Construction of the canal involved some major feats of civil engineering, and led to the development of some new technologies, particularly in rail transport.

The fact is that a business that uses the roadways pay a much higher amount for that road use than the average citizen via the fuel taxes. They pay their way everyday and have no need to “give back” … they’ve given plenty and continue to do so …

This is the beginning of the brass knuckles phase for Romney. I do beli8eve that calling him a felon got him angry.

More surrogates will be coming out hammering away at Obama. Hope this makes some of you happy.

Chris Matthews: I Know There’s An “Ethnic Piece” to the Puzzle of Why Republcians Attack Obama

He has got us guys … it’s because Obama is ……. Hawaiian

Will Obama’s Election End ‘Kill Haole Day’ in Hawaii?

Kill haole day has been around for decades. It’s not a myth; young people say it happens, and sometimes incidents hit the press on the islands.

Local school kids in Hawaii will harass and sometimes beat up on mainland young people, largely Caucasian. Tourists don’t know of this culture, but local people do. It isn’t discussed openly or written about in newspapers, but it has been part of island practice among some of the young people.

In some of Hawaiʻi’s schools, the last day of school before summer is reputedly known as Kill Haole Day. The origins of the day are unknown, but the tradition dates back to the 1950s.

I’m sure we can guess which side Obama was during Kill Haole Day

Midwest Rhino | July 18, 2012 at 2:01 pm

just checking … posted a comment here … doesn’t show up. Says there are 20 comments, but then it will only show me 14. And it keeps saying I’m logged in as “Trionic Labs”, even after logging out and back in as “Midwest Rhino”

just a glitch I guess … for a few hours.

Wait until you guys see Romney’s speech today. You will be jumping up and down for joy.

Romney will be carving Obama up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Here’s the preview

http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/18/romney-on-obama-the-only-job-he-is-interested-in-saving-is-his-own-excerpts/

TrooperJohnSmith | July 18, 2012 at 6:58 pm

I like the “pay your fair share” remarks by Prez-O-Bama to business owners. In his mind, all a business does is create taxable income.

He apparently doesn’t realize that businesses also create tax-paying jobs, they provide health, life and savings benefits to workers. They utilize those skills taught by colleges and universities to create wealth.

Businesses pay taxes, fees and permits. Yes, they use roads and bridges, but it is in the pursuit of wealth creation. Commercial businesses pay vehicle license fees, over-the-road fees, fuel taxes, tolls and federal excise taxes. They pay school taxes, real estate taxes, franchise taxes, sales taxes and payroll taxes.

So, just what DID he mean? I think he was telling us in a very succinct manner that he hasn’t a clue how business works; his thinking is one dimensional; his focus is on outrage and collectivism and not on bettering society.

I’m not a big fan of Sununu either but as an attack dawg… He’s hard to beat.

I especially appreciated his take down of Andrea Mitchell the other day and he repeated the, “…you’re struggling…,” with Juan Williams last night.

I’m so thankful that this is not a repeat of the limp-hearted campaign of McRino being repeated.

It’s open season on those running on non-record this year!

So does this also mean that the Federal Government is responsible for the failure of my businesses, too? Why yes, to some degree…besides business climate….taxes and fees were always an issue…and roads could be sh**ty sometimes despite the gas taxes paid!

[…] William Jacobson lays it out. Obama, doing his Elizabeth Warren imitation, was insulting the people who make this country work, and was rejecting the heart of our system. […]