In her CPAC speech Friday morning, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said that Obamacare is one of the "things that keep me up at night."
"Let me tell you about some of the things that keep me up at night," Ayotte said. "Too many Americans are out of work. Federal regulations are strangling businesses. Obamacare is increasing healthcare costs and stopping so many of those businesses from hiring."
She also took shots at Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama over taxes.
"We have a broken tax code, and the president and Senate Democrats, they just want to keep increasing taxes, making it harder and harder for our small businesses to hire and grow and put people to work in this country," Ayotte said.
Originally Published on the Sultan Knish blog Regardless of how many wars on poverty are declared and how often calls are issued to make the rich pay their fair share, neither the rich nor the poor will be going anywhere anytime soon. The question is what forces will keep the poor impoverished and where the rich will derive their wealth from.
The founder of Subway recently said that he could not have started up his company today. Similar messages have come from the founders and heads of other major companies. That isn't to say that companies will cease to exist. What we think of as business has been changing for some time.
In most countries, starting a business does not begin with a great idea. It begins with connections. Knowing the right people is still important, but in most places it's the most important thing.
Under the current American model, a company becomes successful and then begins to lobby Washington to gain a competitive advantage or to avert hostile lobbying directed at negating its existing competitive advantage. That is a perversion of free enterprise, but in much of the world companies begin lobbying first and then become successful. This is the model that has evolved under Obama. And it's a familiar model to anyone doing business in Russia or China. Political connections come first and then the business becomes feasible.
Oligarchy is the inevitable outcome of an economic climate where the governments acts as a gatekeeper to the country's customers. Measures that began as limited safety and fraud regulations have become a comprehensive political economic system that controls every aspect of every economic transaction.
The government creates markets. It creates companies and customers. It sets prices and taxes industries that it does not favor out of business.
Corporate lobbying isn't just about the proverbial 200 dollar screwdriver. It's about making it more expensive for some companies to make screwdrivers than others. It's also about forcing independent screwdriver manufacturers out of business. It's about government grants to make environmentally friendly screwdrivers and heavy taxes on companies that don't make environmentally friendly screwdrivers.
Tactics like these aren't new. The Esch Act eliminated white phosphorus matches through a punitive tax back in 1910. But a century later, the government wiped out the incandescent bulb industry, not for health reasons, but to comply with a trendy ideology. Microsoft, which had hardly bothered to lobby before, was dragged to Washington on monopoly charges that Google, the ultimate dot com insider, today laughs off. And Microsoft learned its lesson, investing in sizable amounts of lobbying capital.
The government is a bigger factor in business models for both large and small businesses than any other. Whether it's struggling against the mountains of paperwork or looking for ways to profit from the latest regulations, business has come to be defined by government. The tier of governments at every level have accumulated huge amounts of wealth and power. Government power is used to control how business is done while government spending makes political officials into the country's biggest consumers.
The fusion of business with government leads to oligarchy. The rich are not going anywhere, but wealth becomes a factor of their government connections, rather than skill or even inheritance. Government control over business began under the banner of combating monopolies only to end by creating government monopolies. The war against income inequality will end the same way and with the same results as the oligarchies in Russia, China, Mexico and everywhere else.
The future of Obamerica is a country full of corrupt government officials and tycoons. The future is an aristocracy of union bosses running their own guilds, corporate monopolies that change with each election and government officials with mansions and armed bodyguards.
Income inequality will be huge with oceans of poverty and small islands of wealth locked away behind gated communities. Populists will promise power for the people, only to make the system even more corrupt. One company or one boss will be brought down, only to be replaced with the favorites of another party.
Everyone will despise the tycoons and the government. The government will promise to protect the people from the tycoons, even as it works closely with them, and the tycoons will lavish money on certain areas in exchange for loyalty. Both the government and the tycoons will be closely tied up with organized crime which will launder its drug profits through the tycoons and use its political connections to gain protection and sanctions against rival organizations.
This three-sided war between government, tycoons and organized crime will involve members of all three groups using each other against their own rivals. The distinction between all three will be vague at best. Government officials will profit from their business connections and use their power to aid organized crime. Organized crime will have its own businesses and politicians. And the tycoons will run for office and have clean 'white' businesses, dirty 'black' businesses and 'gray' businesses.
Most of the money in the country is in the hands of one of these three groups. The tycoons control the white market. Organized crime controls the black market. Government controls the monetary supply and collects tribute from both markets, officially and unofficially. This is a closed system with very little room for dynamism except through outside intervention.
In an oligarchy, walking in and starting your own business is not really an option. The first bar that any new business has to meet is that of connections. The second bar is the interests of the oligarchy. You don't start a car company if the oligarchy's titans have a lot of money invested in a buggy monopoly. The car company will be either burned out or legislated out of business. Conversely, if you pick your moment, you can get a monopoly on that new foreign automotive technology if you know the right people and spread the right amount of bribes around.
The oligarchy safeguards established interests. It is a mafia whose goal is to control and profit from all wealth. Even when it comes to power as the result of a revolution, it very quickly discovers its own established interests. Its members will knock each other off, but they all agree that the basic nature of the system should not change. What they fear most of all is the collapse of that system.
There is plenty of money to be made in an oligarchy, but there is very little forward motion. New things do not emerge out of an oligarchy of union guilds, politically connected tycoons and politicians who derive their power and influence from their connections to both. Once a new thing exists, then the oligarchy will find ways to profit from it and even improve it, but there is no progress from within the oligarchy.
There is also very little social mobility. Human ingenuity can allow people to become wealthy under nearly any set of circumstances, but it's a good deal harder to do it under an oligarchy. Oligarchies have enough instability that it is possible, but those individual stories of making it up from the slums are usually isolated incidents. The majority of slum-dwellers stay in the slums and become involved with a political faction if they want to improve their lives.
In the oligarchy the wealthy form a natural aristocracy, but it isn't an aristocracy of talent, it's the accretion of closeness to power. This aristocracy changes in composition with revolutions, but its nature remains the same. It is a collection of the people with the best lobbyists, the best bribes and the closest cultural ties to whoever is in power. Any member of the oligarchy can have his wealth and influence stripped away in minutes at the behest of the regime.
Even as American Exceptionalism declined, the remaining free enterprise aspects of the country kept the American Dream alive. For a while that American Dream, the ability to enter the country and move up the economic ladder became the sum of the nation. Generations of politicians reduced the meaning of the United States to a nation of immigrants where any new arrival could launch his own business and make money.
The rise of the oligarchy is foreclosing that dream leaving only the nation of immigrants struggling within a complicated political hierarchy for government handouts from a political movement that denounces some tycoons at the behest of other tycoons. It's the oligarchy at war for control of the dead present, even as it kills the past and the future to accommodate its plans.
It is the end of America and the rise of an Obamerica. Obamerica will still have great reserves of wealth, but on average it be far poorer and far less productive.
Obamerica will be known as a party country, a good place to buy the good things if you are one of the sons of the rich or are a tourist from a rich country. Obamericans will be described as sensuous and spontaneous pleasure-loving people. Obamerican cities will be violent, dangerous and exciting places full of decadence. Its slums will be full of drug dealers and child prostitutes. Most Obamericans will not believe in the future, but will cheerfully accept the misery of the present. They will hate the rich, but long to be in their place so that they can stomp on the poor. The old prosperous nation will be gone and in its place will be the oligarchy.
Did you hear the big news from the world of small business? Jewish delis are closing in both Los Angeles, and New York City.
The trend has been a long time in the making, especially in New York City where Jewish delis’s used to number in the thousands and now total less than one hundred. Yet the Los Angeles Times reported this “news” just this past week, and the details that the report included – and the details that were ignored– point to some far greater problems.
The article, written by Journalist Tiffany Hsu, notes that the decline of the L.A. area Jewish delis “seems to be accelerating partly because of health concerns over the schmaltz-spread fare...” This may very well be the case – certainly American adults are inclined to being more “health conscious” with their dietary choices, rather than less, and food categories of all types that are perceived to be un-healthy are probably headed for a declined in consumption.
From there, the article suggests that “skyrocketing” food costs have driven some delis out of business. That may be true, too, but what has caused that to happen? The article suggests that “mass exports” of food to Japan is the culprit on the price spike. The story also blames the decline of LA-area Jewish delis on “the recession,” “too much competition” from other restaurant sectors, and the notion that younger consumers “don’t understand delis and comfort food.”
It was only one small news story in the LA Times. But let’s think through some of the ideas in this news story – ideas reported as “facts” – and consider what they mean from an economic standpoint. Consider, for example, the notion of “too much competition.” What exactly does this mean?
Obviously the more competitive a marketplace is, the more difficult it is for any particular business entity to survive and thrive. But how do we know when the level of competition is appropriate, and when it is “too much?”
Americans are accustomed to fierce competition in other arenas – in sports, especially, and even in the arts and entertainment. Similarly, most of us would never say “my favorite team didn’t make it to the Super Bowl this year because there was too much competition in the NFL.”
But when it comes to local small businesses, we often succumb to this vague, un-defined notion that there is this magical amount of competition that’s “just right,” and if our favorite business can’t compete, then therefore there is “too much” competition.
Yet in our free market economic system, we understand that competition is a good thing. If competition means that certain business entities or entire business categories decline because of the competition, then so be it. It is fairer and more just to allow businesses to rise and fall according to the market demands of consumers, rather than imposing artificial “limits” on the number of people who are to be permitted to participate in an industry.
But what are we to make of this idea that the delis’ failure is because consumers “don’t understand?” If a consumer chooses to “not understand” any particular business, and therefore chooses not to patronize it, then that consumer has made their choice – haven’t they? We’re all better-off if, win or lose, we honor and respect the choices of consumers, rather than presuming that they are ignorant if they make a choice that we don’t like.
And guess what the LA Times article about the delis completely ignored? The impact of government policy on small businesses. Nowhere did it reference the expansive and onerous mandates placed upon business via Obamacare, the impact on business owners of the President’s payroll tax hike, or his income tax increases on “rich people.”
No, the LA Times apparently wasn’t interested in how the President’s income tax hikes have taken money away from what the I.R.S. designates as “Subchapter S Corporations” (sometimes abbreviated as “S-corps”), and how this has effectively taken money directly out of small corporations, many of which operate small businesses. Likewise, the article made no reference to the fact California voters approved an increase in state income tax rates for “rich people” (thus leading to even less revenue in Subchapter-S Corporations) on their ballot last November, nor did it acknowledge that California has for years been on a trajectory of higher and higher unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation mandates for businesses.
It is perhaps more comfortable to pretend that our current government policies are not problematic, and blame the struggling economy on “too much competition” and consumers who “don’t understand.”
But how many more delis must fail, before we get honest and acknowledge that government is our problem?
It’s not just an out-of-control IRS or EPA. And it’s not merely the punitive demands and restraints of the new federal healthcare law.
American enterprise is being stifled and squelched by state and local governments, in ways that most Americans don’t even see. With increasing propensity, elected officials nationwide are at times suffocating private businesses with regulations, and at other times competing directly against them – and it happens among both Democrats and Republicans.
A striking reminder of this emerged last week, when it was reported that Democrat San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was contemplating some sort of “ban” on alcohol sales during the Super Bowl. Drunken vandals got out of hand last year in “the City by the Bay,” when the Giants swept the World Series. The same thing could happen on Super Bowl Sunday this year, with either a 49ers win or loss. So, therefore, the city should step in and try to keep the booze away from the bad guys – at least that’s how the official reasoning went.
The news first emerged with local newspaper and radio websites reporting that the Mayor was seeking a ban. By the time global publications like “International Business Times” had picked up on it, the Mayor had tempered his rhetoric a bit, saying that he was “seeking input from business owners” on how to prevent alcohol-induced vandalism.
The irony here is obvious. This is, after all, San Francisco, a place where, in terms of social and cultural “norms,” almost anything goes. It’s the city where elected officials almost did not pass a ban on public nudity for the first time last November, and yet city officials now want to control liquor consumption.
But here’s the part of the story that nobody reports: such mandates by local governments, arbitrary and unexpected as they often are, damage businesses. Restaurant and bar owners all over the country are naturally banking on steady foot traffic and lots of food and beverage sales on Super Bowl Sunday. No doubt some owners craft their monthly or quarterly budgets around an expected uptick in sales on that day. When politicians disrupt this, they hurt small business owners.
But travel northward some 1200 miles or so from San Francisco, and a less imaginable, more difficult to understand phenomena is happening with private enterprise the worse for it. The state government of Idaho has actually developed a voracious appetite for buying and owning for-profit small businesses of a variety of sorts, and competing against private owners.
Language in that state’s Constitution declares that the land originally granted from the federal government for the creation of Idaho must be managed “in such manner as will secure the maximum long term financial return to the institution to which granted.” From that language, Idaho politicians down through the ages have determined that they have a “fiduciary responsibility” to produce investment returns. So once the first of the original endowment lands were sold, a trust account was established, and state politicians have been “investing” the money in for-profit businesses ever since.
In the past four years alone, the state government of Idaho has purchased everything from a neighborhood beer pub to commercial office space, all under the leadership of Republican Governor C.L “Butch” Otter. This controversial practice came under national criticism back in 2010 when the Idaho government bought “Affordable Storage,” a small self-storage business in the capitol city of Boise, and then began telling would-be customers that “our rates are lower because we don’t have to pay taxes.” Ask residents of “red state” Idaho what they think of President Obama’s forced acquisitions of General Motors and the Chrysler Corporation, and they’ll likely tell you it was wrong. Yet most are unaware that their own state government is doing much the same as the President has done, and is competing against their business-owning neighbors.
While it’s hard to find an American politician who will tell you that they are anything short of “supportive” when it comes to small business ownership, it’s even more difficult to find one that really understands what it means to be that type of leader. The change in government policies that our nation needs won’t begin to happen, until American voters start paying attention and making better choices on election day.
Glenn Beck looks at the impact of this election on the country and where we need to go from here.
“Alan Grayson is back in and Allen West is out,” Glenn told listeners this morning. “Elections have consequences.”
“Elections have consequences,” Glenn repeated, “and here they are: The dollar fell last night. It fell against the Euro. That’s the place with Spain and Italy and Greece. It is, of course, the chiseled monument to stability. The Euro that they said would break up, possibly soon, the dollar fell against that. Inflation is still on the rise. Ben Bernanke, good night for him. That’s why the dollar fell: Because your dollar is going to be worth less because Ben Bernanke is going to be printing more.”
Timothy Michael "Tim" Kaine is a Virginia politician. Kaine served as the 70th Governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010, and was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011.
The political conventions have passed, the August jobs report is out, and many Americans are said to be “giving up hope.”
So how can we jumpstart our greatest engine of economic growth – the American small business market – and get our economy growing again?
Regardless of which presidential candidate wins this November, in 2013 Americans will have to focus on saving, and expanding, the small business marketplace. The sector of our economy that makes up nearly 60% of the entire American private sector workforce, and creates between 60 and 80% of all new jobs, has been under attack over the past few years by politicians who have created lots of bad laws.
And if Americans are serious about expanding actual employment (rather than merely expanding government welfare and entitlement programs), then we will have to make better choices at the ballot box, and hold our elected leaders responsible for making serious changes. To start, let’s consider consider this harsh reality: the so-called “fiscal cliff” is real, and President Obama’s proposed solution to it is potentially lethal.
Under current federal law, both income tax rates and Social Security tax rates are set to rise dramatically on January 1st of 2013. Along with these tax increases, a dramatic reduction in government services will take hold at the same time.
This confluence of private citizens having more of their money taken away (higher taxes), and a reduction of government services (which means that private citizens will have to fill the gap and spend more of their own money) is expected to trigger a new recession next year. As a means of preventing a “double dip,” both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress have proposed that taxation rates be frozen where they are at, and held steady in 2013.
But President Obama has insisted that taxes should be raised on so-called “rich people” next year, and has refused to do what most economists and many members of his party have said is the one thing that could save us from another downturn.
And with the President polling as well as he is, it seems apparent that millions of Americans are far more excited about his “make the rich pay” rhetoric than they are aware of the consequences of his proposals. Obama supporters may get their wish in November, but it will come at a painful price – a price that all of us will pay.
And here’s another harsh reality: Americans need to get comfortable with other people’s financial successes. Since the early days of his first presidential campaign in 2007, Barack Obama has been pouring fuel on the fires of resentment and envy towards the wealthy. As a political strategy this has worked well for the President, but as government policy this has been bad for all of us.
The President’s tax-hike push is a perfect example, as many of America’s small businesses are set-up under the I.R.S. code as “Sub-chapter S” corporations. These are businesses wherein the company profits are reported to the I.R.S. directly as personal income by the business owners and are subject to personal income tax rates – and many of these business owners are being targeted by President Obama for an income tax-hike.
If the President gets his wish, and the government begins confiscating more money from the owners of Sub-chapter S corporations, by definition this leaves less money in these corporations for hiring and expansion. Thus Americans have a choice to make – do we want to employ our President for another four years so he can satiate the hatred some of us have towards “the rich” and take away more of their money? Or would we like private business owners to have money available to employ more of us? From the way things appear right now, we probably can’t do both.
And here’s harsh reality number three: Americans have to stop Obamacare from wiping-out small businesses. A central feature of this law is the mandate that businesses provide healthcare insurance to their workers. It sounds great – workers will now be “guaranteed” health insurance – but once again, the “make somebody else pay” approach is heaping more weight on the shoulders of small business owners.
Americans must decide how serious they are about job creation – even if it means that some jobs won’t include health benefits. If we honestly want employers to employ more, we must force the Congress and the President to fix this devastating component of Obamacare next year.
And here’s yet another harsh reality: Americans must stop making small businesses a scapegoat on illegal immigration. Roughly two-thirds of Americans want our national borders secured and a coherent immigration policy, yet for over a decade Washington has refused to do the former and has scarcely attempted the latter.
Amid the frustration, businesses have become the target of Americans’ wrath. If business owners would simply quit hiring illegals -so the reasoning goes -the illegals would go away.
Mitt Romney has pledged that, if elected, he will seek to require American employers and workers to register with the federal government’s “e-verify” website, as a means of policing the problem. But this adds even more bureaucratic burdens to small business owners, and ignores our failed immigration policies and un-secured borders.
Do we want politicians who merely tell us what we want to hear? Or do we want leaders in our government who can actually enable businesses to grow? Americans must become more discerning-and face some harsh realities.
Is there a critical difference in ideology between the presidential candidates? Romney thinks families and communities assist in individual achievement. President Obama thinks it is government and dumb luck. Who is right? Find out as Trifecta shows you footage of Mitt Romney's 2002 Olympic comments and compares them Obama's recent comments on government.
Class Warfare is what it's all about and this soon to be released film takes on the President's rhetoric with specific factual examples. Steve Doocy sits down with Director, Stephen Bannon, and Author Peter Schweizer as they discuss the film and how it explores the job creation process and the Government's role in business.
According to President Barack Obama, entrepreneurs and small business owners cannot take credit for their inventions or business success because their accomplishments were only made possible by the government's investments in infrastructure.
Mr. Obama not only missed Business 101, but has made no attempt to understand the first thing about how business and freedom work together to create a synergy that government can never hope to emulate.
I guess Franklin and Edison were inspired to discover and harness electricity by all of those telephone poles installed by the government that were going unused.
And how could Ford have created the Model T in 1908, if it were not for the Interstate Highway System? (Interstate Highway Act of 1956)
Originally posted at American ThinkerCampaigning in Roanoke, Virginia, the President of the United States floated a new pitch to garner votes. The theme? All the credit for individual achievement goes to collectivism. Obama tossed a hunk of red meat to the ravenous and received an enthusiastic response when he declared, “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
No longer is Obama attempting to portray successful Americans merely as selfish rich people unwilling to share the fruit of their labor with the less fortunate; his newest approach is to argue that indeed there are those who have done well in America, but that those successes could have only been attained through communal effort.
Instead of choosing to advocate for the two important pillars of liberty, individualism and independence, Barack Obama is now making the toppling of individual achievement part of his campaign stump speech and doing it by tying prosperity to group dependency.
At the Roanoke rally, Obama emphatically stressed that “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own.”
At present, Barack Obama’s influence on America has helped transform it into a place where formerly free people are being denied the “inalienable right” to live as individual entities with individual hopes, dreams or goals. Neither are Americans any longer free to pursue personal success or happiness without government interference or censure. And if they do, those successes are now being publicly put down as not really personally achieved.
So, according to Barack Obama, “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.” In other words, Barack Obama is of the opinion that the qualities of pluck and fortitude coupled with individual resourcefulness are now insufficient to achieve success.
Using the analogy of a fire department putting out a fire, the President told the cheering crowd full of fainting fans and lifesaving “paralegals” that in order to attain success, teamwork is imperative. Obama then said, “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.”
One wonders whether the fire department analogy is Obama’s standard for success. Because if success is unattainable for a single individual, then Barack Obama is finally admitting he’s an abysmal failure and raises the question of whether the lone cowboy/Executive Orders option he seems so fond of contradicts the teamwork ideology he pushes for everyone else.
Nevertheless, the President haughtily reminded those who might take pride in individual achievement that humility is in order when he told them, “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.”
Unable to defend his own record, it’s clear that what Obama is attempting to do is to debase the business successes of Mitt Romney. The President is trying to make the point that without the support of the collective and some government backup for good measure, men like Romney would never have accomplished what conservatives believe is attainable by everyone.
In short, Obama’s clever tactic advocates for collectivism versus individualism, maintains that individual effort is insufficient, and that if by chance a person does manage to surmount government-imposed obstacles and reach the summit of success, Obama is about the business of convincing the public that those achievements would not have been possible had it not been outside assistance.
In essence, Barack Obama is asking individuals to sacrifice the merit of personal achievement to communalism in order to further an ideology to which he is firmly committed, as well as remediate the reputation of those who’ve never exerted commendable effort or achieved anything at all.
Let’s not forget, this is a man who shamelessly took credit for and accepted the proceeds from a best-selling autobiography that may have been written for him by Bill Ayers. Clearly, Barack Obama had no trouble letting “somebody else” contribute to his literary success, nor does he appear uncomfortable accepting kudos for an effort he never made. So maybe in the spirit of fairness, the President is just extending the same respect to those eager to find value in being the recipient of government largesse, as he buys votes by painting individualism and personal achievement as something weak, pathetic, and undeserving of disproportionate monetary reimbursement.
And yet, as the President travels the country promoting continued “hope and change,” what he fails to recognize is the dichotomy of begging for money from the successful and then going to Virginia to preach that the people financing his bid for reelection have achieved nothing on their own.
However, do not be deceived – there is a method to Barack Obama’s stump speech madness. Besides revealing the true nature of his core beliefs, it seems the President is hoping to convince America that the successful couldn’t have had succeeded without the village initiating and sustaining those successes. This way Obama can then justify the use of higher taxes to deliver the fruits of someone else’s labor as recompense for the phantom participation he claims has enabled successful, hardworking Americans to rise above the ordinary and accomplish something to be truly proud of.
From the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, to the central bankers of China, the U.K. and France, to the specialists on Wall Street, some of the presumed “best and brightest” among us are expressing concerns over a global economic slowdown. And the fussing got a little louder after last Friday’s employment report here in the U.S.
These presumed geniuses, including the IMF’s Christine Lagarde, in particular, need to understand something. Their friend President Barack Obama has become nothing short of an enemy to one of the world’s greatest economic engines – American small businesses.
It’s insufficient to say that President Obama isn’t helping small businesses, or that the President isn’t “trying hard enough.” The Obama Administration is proactively attacking small businesses, as though they were domestic terrorist cells – while at the same time they seem genuinely surprised that “job creation” is so weak.
Small businesses and their respective advocacy groups have no idea how to cope with the mandates placed upon them by Obamacare, nor how vicious the President’s army of 50,000 new I.R.S. agents will be in auditing and penalizing them. And since 2010’s “banking reform” laws came to pass, banking and lending institutions have been in a state of shell-shock trying to figure out how to continue doing what they do – lending – without getting penalized for allegedly violating the all-important reforms.
What isn’t so widely known, however, is the increased frequency with which individual businesses are being confronted and threatened by governmental agencies other than the I.R.S. For example, U.S. Congressman David Schweikert (R-Arizona) tells a horrifying story about a small business owner and his government- and it’s a story that helps explain why the economy isn’t growing.
While visiting a local coffee house in his hometown of Scottdale, Schweikert is confronted by another patron who asks “can you please help me?” Turns out this other patron is the owner of Zoe Inidustries, Inc., a small, local company that designs and sells custom plumbing fittings and supplies (see their website at ShowerBuddy.Com).
As Congressman Schweikert sits down to listen to the man’s story, the sickening details emerge. This small, private business has been employing people in Scottsdale since 2000, and has earned itself an “A+” rating from the Better Business Bureau, but is now being told that it must pay $447,000 to President Obama’s Department of Energy.
Why would the D.O.E. know anything at all about Zoe Industries? The Department of Energy regularly, and randomly tests new plumbing fixtures that are bought and sold in the U.S., and a particular shower head product that Zoe Industries designs allegedly didn’t measure up to federal standards.
The U.S. federal government requires all new shower heads to possess what is known as an “O-ring” flow restrictor mechanism within the shower head that - as its’ name implies – reduces the flow of water and presumably reduces water consumption. And while all of Zoe Industries’ shower heads have the proper O-ring mechanisms in them, the Department of Energy believed that, in one particular case, the O-ring was “too easy to remove” during a test.
Schweikert got to work, investigating the D.O.E.’s case against Zoe Industries. Fortunately, Zoe Industries was able to recently “settle” the complaint against them by their government, by paying a much smaller fine – just slightly under $30,000.00. But this happened after the company had engaged in over a year’s worth of “discussions” and “negotiations” with the D.O.E., and after the company had accrued over a year’s worth of legal bills to defend themselves against the D.O.E.
For his part, Congressman Schweikert also shot-back legislatively, authoring and passing an Amendment to a Department of Energy funding bill that would forbid the D.O.E. from spending any of its funds on testing shower heads. This restriction on how the D.O.E. spends its’ money likely won’t hold up in the Democrat-controlled Senate, but it nonetheless got the D.O.E’s attention-after its’ passage the D.O.E. was on the telephone to Congressman Schweikert expressing “concern” that there had been a “misunderstanding.”
So did the D.O.E. extort Zoe Industries? Clearly, an agency of our federal government used its own brute force to extrapolate money out of the pockets of a private citizen. And the growing fear among business owners is that instances like this are only a “sneak preview” of things to come, when the I.R.S. begins policing individuals and companies for alleged Obamacare compliance violations.
And the word “alleged” is very important here. One need not have violated the law at all – but if your government alleges that you have, you either must pay the fine that your government is demanding, or be prepared to run-up potentially massive bills paying Attorneys to represent you and fight on your behalf.
This is why our economy is stagnant right now. The President who claims he is saving us from oppressive healthcare bills, is the same President whose Administration is comfortable fining a small plumbing supply shop owner nearly half a million dollars. American businesses are living in fear of American government, and businesses owners are not in a position (financially or otherwise) to take more risks and try to grow and expand – they are “tapped out” just trying to survive.
Barack Obama does lip service to the concept of entrepreneurship and small business ownership and, as he moves full tilt into election campaign mode, repeatedly cues up small business photo ops in an effort to become all things for all people. Like a shape-shifter from a sci-fi film, Obama’s primary skill is to appear to be something he is not, as he repeatedly masks his full-tilt assault on entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Consider the many, small business photo-ops that Team Obama has staged in the past few months, in New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Florida. At the same time, the regulatory costs and burdens of Obama’s policies have fallen heavily on the small business community, even as the net worth of Americans has plunged 40% in the past three years under the Obama Administration.
Barack Obama has, arguably, destroyed more wealth during his three years in office than almost any other individual in the history of the United States. And much of this destruction has occurred because Obama is anti-small business and anti-entrepreneurship. Much of this destruction of the economy has occurred because Barack Obama does not understand that business owners and risk takers are what grow an economy, and when the government creates an environment of instability, uncertainty, scapegoatism, topped off with draconian tax regulations, businesses and the economy suffer.
To Obama’s thinking, small business owners are considered part of the “rich”, and thus have become the whipping boy of the Obama Administration. The group labeled “rich”, earning $200,000 or more annually, whom Barack Obama believes need to be taxed at 40% or higher is mainly composed of small business owners, sole proprietors and entrepreneurs, who file their business taxes on Schedules and addenda to their personal income taxes.
Consider, too, that the group hardest hit by the mandates of Obamacare is the small business community which will be required to provide government-legislated healthcare options to employees, regardless of business size and profitability. The new rate hikes due to Obamacare may result in businesses facing a 9% increase in the cost of healthcare premiums. For many small businesses, 9% oftentimes represents the business' entire profit that year, so the Obamacare mandate could wipe out the fruits of an entire year's effort, or even worse, put a small business in the red.
The sad story goes on, as the group hardest hit by the reporting requirements of the Obama Administration policies is the small business community, where the SBA estimates that the cost of the various reports now required by the federal government cost approximately $10,000 to $20,000 dollars—often more than what the average small business makes in profit annually.
The proof that the small business community is the hardest hit by the Obama Administration’s anti-business policies is evidenced in several surveys that have been released this past month.
Small businesses are the biggest employer for minorities and teenagers. But, hiring by small business has slowed to the lowest point ever measured over a ten year period—which also helps to explain the disastrous unemployment numbers for minorities and teens. (The Administration has been trying to posit that teen hiring improved in May, but studies show that teens are discouraged and, thus, there are fewer teens in the market looking for jobs.)
Since small businesses are not hiring, they are also not borrowing as much—which affects the banking industry. Business lending to small business has slowed. Small loans to business of $1 million or less have been shrinking consistently since June 2008.
Average monthly pay for all small business employees decreased to $2,688 in May, a decrease of 13 percent.
The construction sector which has a large proportion of small businesses is, as a direct result of Obama’s anti-business assault is also in serious trouble. Construction sector revenue stopped growing at the beginning of 2006, began a slow decline in mid 2007, and then continued a more dramatic decline starting in mid-2008
“The most common source of startup capital for immigrant-owned businesses is personal or family savings, with roughly two-thirds of businesses reporting this source of startup capital”. But, the devastation within the economy over the past three years means that there’s a lot less “family savings” available for use as startup capital.
The belief that one person can make a difference, can create a thing of value with no help from the government is antithetical to everything that Obama believes. Furthermore, the entrepreneurial ideology scares Obama because business owners act in direct opposition to the kind of government-doled out opportunities that Obama wants Americans to think is the best they can do.
The 2012 election is all about the government and its relationship to the American people and American business. That’s it. That’s all. Whether the issue under discussion is the economy, strengthening the capital markets, the bloated entitlement system, the military, American involvement overseas, Greek debt, healthcare legislation, attracting talented and educated workers, the tax code, or the risks and rewards of being an American, there’s just one degree of separation from these issues and the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed, regulatory overreaching into the lives of Americans.
Barack Obama’s policies cannot and will not work, because the Obama Administration does not truly believe that the economic success of America is intrinsically tied to the success of the American small business community.
And so, our shape-shifting president hopes to disguise his antipathy towards business, entrepreneurs and small business leaders, as he moves skillfully around the country in one staged photo-op after another. Each carefully orchestrated to mask the economic destruction caused by his policies.
Americans should watch how effortlessly Obama shifts his shapes, how effortlessly Obama dons whatever mask is calculated to disguise his intents and best serve his reelection efforts. Americans better say a prayer for the small businesses and entrepreneurs pitted against Barack Obama—a most formidable foe, capable of destroying vast amounts of wealth, ushering in even more restrict regulations, and killing off job creators.
Acts of faith are performed each day in this country, and we are all the better for it. But sadly, Barack Obama does not seem to have faith in the American system, nor does he believe in American exceptionalism, nor does he believe that Americans can make it on their own without government handouts.
In short, Obama doesn’t have faith in us.
Faith has become an inflammatory topic in the 2012 election. In policy, speeches and campaign ads, the president has used faith as a means to demagogue his Republican opponent. Faith has been used by the left-wing extremists as a diversionary tactic, to attack Catholics and divert attention from a floundering economy. Faith has been used by Democrats as a political tactic to try to turn women against the Republican party. But, faith plays an even bigger role in the 2012 election than Democrats may realize because every day, the president shows a lack of faith that reveals his disdain for America.
For example, Barack Obama does not seem to understand that every small business that opens its door is the result of a profound act of faith. An entrepreneur believes in himself and his idea enough to take the risks, sometime to use his life’s savings, to create a better life.
Each time a business hires a new employee, it is an act of faith shown by both parties—the business believes that it can support the increased staff costs and will grow enough to make the expense worthwhile. The employee shows faith that the business will keep its doors open and offer opportunities for upward mobility.
But each small business also shows its faith when it counts on its government to create a climate with policies that support and encourage that growth.
Obama has shown that he doesn’t have faith in small businesses or the judgment of entrepreneurs. Instead he believes that only the government can make wise investment decisions or hire the unemployed.
Obama has shown that he doesn’t have faith that investors will do the wise things on their own. And so, he urges his Administration to invent even more restrictive mindboggling regulations al l designed to further the government’s ability to manage, direct, and ultimately control private enterprise.
Obama has shown that he doesn’t have faith in his fellow American to provide charitably, despite decades of evidence that Americans are the most generous people, the most philanthropically-inclined people, on the history of the world.
We are a nation of faith. America was first discovered, in a profound act of faith, by an explorer, Columbus, who sailed west at a time when most people believed the world was flat. Columbus’ belief, that the world was not flat, was an act of faith that made our great nation possible.
The colonists who came to America had faith that the new world would be different than the old world. They had faith that with hard work and perseverance, they could build a better life for themselves and their family.
Our founding fathers showed their faith in the principles that founded this great nation—to the point where they were willing to lay down their lives to break from England in a belief that the American system of government that they were creating was worth the sacrifice and would stand the test of time. But, Obama doesn’t seem to have any faith in the founding fathers’ belief in limited government.
Abraham Lincoln had faith in the union of the states and fought harder than any during the civil war to keep the nation together, insisting on pardons for Confederate soldiers and determined to move the nation past the great divide of the civil war.
Our nation showed its faith when we sent men to the moon, in an act of faith, so daring, so breathtaking in its scope that it is heartbreaking that our current, faithless presidential leadership has now cancelled the program.
Faith in the future, faith in our children, faith in a better life, faith that one man can make a difference—these are some of the immeasurable gifts that our country gives to the world each day. Our country, its origins, its innovation and its continued success inspire others to action and offers hope to the oppressed throughout the world. Our country is a beacon that attracts people from countless nations to our shores in the hopes of a better life.
Our great leaders and past presidents understood that America is a nation of faith and called upon that faith to bolster the nation during times of hardship.
On the eve of the D-Day Invasion, knowing that America was involved in a great struggle President Roosevelt prayed not for a quick victory, but for faith:”Oh Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled."
There is a wide and growing gulf between our current president and the American people, and that chasm is all about faith, for clearly, Obama has little faith in Americans as a people, capable of all things great and good.
Faith is frightening to Obama because with faith comes hope, and with hope comes independence and a belief in the future, a belief that difficult deeds can be done, and frontiers can be conquered. In sharp contrast, Barack Obama believes that Americans should place all of their hope and faith in the government rather than in themselves.
America is a faith-based nation, and whether the president likes it or not, our country is all the better for it.
The Obama Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has requested all federal agencies to cut their FY2014 budgets by 5%. Not too surprisingly, these “cuts” are being heralded as an example of new, fiscal prudence by every Democrat seeking office. If only. What the President is conveniently forgetting is that these cuts, if actually implemented, will only impact discretionary spending, and avoid the much bigger and more problematic entitlement spending that is the primary cause of our economic problems.
The president’s Simpson-Bowles commission told him more than a year ago that entitlement spending was the problem, but Obama and all other Democrat office seekers continue to ignore the facts. Worse yet, they continue to champion policies that will further erode our economy, pile on even more debt, and throttle the engine of growth and innovation.
Clearly, the White House doesn’t understand, and doesn’t care, that federal spending is bloated and can’t continue to grow at the pace urged by Team Obama. Instead, Obama continues his curious set of campaign stops where he consistently promises different interests groups more than the government can possible deliver.
Barack Obama seems to believe he has an infinite supply of goodies and benefits to shower upon his favorite constituents, for which no one ever will have to pay. And yet, the president’s merry, 2012 election campaign carnival continues, with a never-ending stream of unfulfillable promises, economic delusions, and further government support for bad habits and cultural rot.
The White House refuses to understand that every additional dollar our country borrows comes at a cost to our own weakened economy, our own weakened political clout and ultimately strains the economies of the other nations who buy our bonds and loan us money.
Nor does Obama understand that our debt has grown too high to be long sustained and annually running a $1 trillion dollar deficit is reckless. Instead, Obama is fully and completely focused on winning his next election. Obama’s campaign strategy consists of buying votes by promising the impossible, then taking money from one group of Americans to give to others.
In what will likely figure as the most irresponsible administration in the nation’s history, Democrat leaders in the White House and in congress have decided to ignore common sense and, instead, indulge their every pseudo-philanthropic whim—providing largess and preferences through expanded entitlements, all at the expense of the nation’s future economic viability.
Team Obama is equally inept at encouraging economic growth and innovation. Interestingly, this past week was National Small Business Week, which went largely unheralded by the Obama White House. Not too surprising, since the Obama Administration has been hostile to business from day one, and has been especially hostile to small business.
Why? Because a vibrant, small business community creates jobs. Private sector jobs grow the economy. A vibrant economy means affluence, and affluence means choices—which is what America is all about. But, Dems don’t get it.
The president’s lackluster speech, nominally giving the nod to risk takers and innovators, touts the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, a piece of legislation which might be more appropriately called the Small Business Strangulation Act, since the number of reporting requirements--not to mention their intrusiveness into the intellectual property and proprietary information of businesses--made the proposed government-backed loans unattractive as a business expansion option. Drafted by bureaucrats, the Small Business Jobs Act has been a failure. (Witness--continuing 8+% unemployment for the past three years).
Team Obama does not understand that access to capital is not the only factor in growing a business. Small business owners need regulatory freedom to innovate and an environment of predictability and opportunity that encourages a small business to expand—all of this is best created by less (not more) government interference.
President Obama seems determined to eliminate options for American independence and innovation and increase Americans’ dependency on the government. This, in turn, increases the size of government.
Democrats don’t understand that a small government will operate more efficiently, and at less cost, on behalf of the American people. Instead, with each new rule implemented by Team Obama, and each new piece of legislation, additional government entities are created that must be funded with more and more taxpayer dollars.
What is essential--a strong defense, a strong currency, low taxes, less regulation and policies that encourage the growth of free enterprise—can be accomplished better with a limited, rather than a bloated government.
Democrats, especially Obama, talk poignantly about WTF (Winning the Future). But the Democrats’ political pablum is all lip service.
Burdensome taxes to pay for bloated federal spending have crushed the rosy future of our nation’s youth. Democrats, led by Barack Obama, have resorted to manufactured conundrums, diatribes on student loans and access to birth control, to successfully divert the attention of inexperienced college students from the trillions of dollars of growing federal and public debt which they, as the nation’s future generation of workers (if they can somehow get a job), will be required to repay.
Democrats don’t seem to care that entitlement spending has ballooned out of control because so many of those receiving the entitlements vote Democrat. Promising an ever-expanding roster of federal entitlements is the only way that Democrats can garner the votes necessary to stay in office.
If Democrats cut off the federal entitlement spigot, the votes would dry up. Taxpayer dollars, in the hands of Team Obama, are the biggest source of “get-out-the-vote-money” and it’s completely legal (albeit unethical).
Unfortunately, the American taxpayer is a shrinking base, doomed to extinction under current Democrat ideology. Democrats have grandiose social engineering-philanthropic ideas that always seem to require someone else to foot the bill, so Democrats have no compunction about raising the debt ceiling, and raising tax rates to increase the amount of money the federal government can spend.
What Americans taxpayers have learned--from the wasteful spending scandals at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), from the scandals with the Secret Service, from the revelation that almost ever federal agency in the executive branch, as well as the legislative and the judicial branches of government have indulged in self-aggrandizing, over-the-top conferences, at which members of government, public servants, were themselves the major recipients of the largesse--is that their taxpayer dollars are being wasted.
Team Obama has created, within the government, a culture of excess and indulgence, wherein public service has become self-serving rather than serving the people of this country. That’s not the American way.
Almost 180 years ago, Alexis de Toqueville wrote: ““Americans are taught from birth that they must overcome life’s woes and impediments on their own. Social authority makes them mistrustful and anxious, and they rely upon its power only when they cannot do without it”.
America is a grand country, achieved through great dreams, built through hard work, innovation, frugality and self-reliance. These are the characteristics that make America the envy of the world. These are the characteristics that Democrats fear. Something sure smells bad in Washington—methinks it’s Obama’s economic cowpies.
In her CPAC speech Friday morning, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said that Obamacare is one of the "things that keep me up at night."
