—California Democrat Maxine Waters to oil company executives in congressional hearing 2008
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
—Milton Friedman
3: OBAMA OF ROANOKE VERSUS THOSE “WHO DID THAT”
If you credit road builders and firefighters for successful businesses but blame incompetent management for business failures…
The great thing about President Obama when he goes off teleprompter is that he is much like a fraternity freshman on too much tequila: You get the real truth, unvarnished. And by the unvarnished truth, I mean a crystal clear gaze into the liberal soul and how they view America, the economy, business, free enterprise, successful people and their own role in society. That’s precisely what was so startling about President Obama’s now infamous Roanoke speech. It was a living, breathing, ‘you might just be a liberal’ one liner—one right after another. Obama did the nation a great service in this regard, by defining beyond any doubt what the two visions of America are that are competing not only in the 2012 election cycle, but in society at large.
He also did us a service in that, post-Roanoke, the pundits in the so-called conservative media now have to admit that this is what is going on inside Obama’s head about free enterprise. I’m guessing you probably realized what was going on in there years ago. One such media luminary is Brit Hume—who, in my opinion is the best network anchor of our time. Anything Juan Williams has managed to learn about reality, he learned by being lectured on the Fox set by Mr. Hume. And yet, shortly after Obama’s Roanoke speech started circulating, Hume said in a commentary that “it is certainly fair to say that we know more tonight [after the Roanoke speech] than we ever have about the President’s view of business and the economy.”
With due respect to Mr. Hume—and he is due a lot—I don’t think that’s fair to say at all. I learned nothing from the Roanoke speech that has not been absolutely obvious to me since the first day I heard Obama speak. Obama himself gave radio interviews back in 2001 talking about “redistributive rights” missing from the Constitution. And, as Fox News’ Sean Hannity and others exposed in 2008, Obama attended a church based on a racially charged socialism—Black Separatism—for over 20 years, and his personal mentor is one of the leading scholars of Black Separatism. Black Separatism has nothing to do with Reformed traditional Christianity but has a lot in common with traditional Marxist economics. Amen and pass the plate.
While Mr. Hume and many others have been reticent to catch on—or to admit to it—Obama of Roanoke has been out there for all to see for years. What might be “fair to say” is that Obama let slip in a momentous way what many of us have known all along about him. Him and his ilk.
I submit that Ayn Rand saw Obama of Roanoke coming way back in the 1950’s, before Barry Sotero was even born. Her writings perfectly describe those who are of the mindset that “you didn’t build that.” Eerily so, in fact. And Ronald Reagan saw him coming in the ‘60s and ‘70s—and was especially prescient on how he would use the medical industry to advance his goals—even though our current President was but a choom boy “doing some blow” back in the day when Reagan was penning and speaking the truth behind socialized medicine.
Obama of Roanoke, understand, is not merely a specific person named Barack Hussein Obama. Obama of Roanoke is also Van Jones. He is Elizabeth Warren. He is Valerie Jarrett. He is Steven Chu and Cass Sunstein. He is Jeremiah Wright and Frank Marshall Davis and Karl Marx and many others. Obama of Roanoke is not some benign elegant speaker. Obama of Roanoke is a malignant mindset. His fingerprints are all over the biggest disasters in world history. For this reason, he was and is utterly predictable long before the Roanoke speech. As such, many utterly predicted him, though for some reason they are not, for the most part, among the elite pundit wizards of smart or among elected Republicans.
As you might recall, all through the campaign of 2008, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Andrew Wilkow, Hannity and Joe the Plumber saw him coming. This is why Rush said “I hope he fails” almost immediately after he was elected and the predictable formulaic media meme was whether or not this young messianic figure would be successful. Truth be told, many millions of folks were ahead of the media and saw him coming. These include all the small businessmen and women who laid off workers and hunkered down with their business strategy to try and ride out the four year storm. These folks were among the millions who flocked to see the “Atlas Shrugged” movie.
So sure were my wife and I of who Obama of Roanoke was that we systematically removed ourselves from a business we had run for over 20 years, and shut it down to a large degree. Actually, we started that process when the two choices for President in 2008 were the economically illiterate and lousy capitalist John McCain, or the very good socialist Barack Hussein Obama. McCain, like Bob Dole, is yet another out of touch Republican who has never cashed a paycheck that you and I didn’t pay for. Folks who are life long government employees—even if that career started in the military—are not economic conservatives. They have no reason to be. They have no ability to be.
Yet back to our business shut down. People ask why we did this, and how did we know it was the thing to do? The answer? Succinctly, Obama of Roanoke. That’s why. It mattered not at all that he waited until the summer of 2012 to give the Roanoke speech. It mattered not that he was not even in office yet. Obama of Roanoke is exactly who he has always been, and he has done exactly as many of us expected him to do. The Roanoke speech was not a contextual problem nor was it an aberration or a teleprompter misprint. Roanoke was Obama, and Obama is Roanoke.
Before the inauguration, we already had in place plans to avoid those who naively think that “we didn’t do that” in our business. We were not alone and we knew it. Why do you think almost 2 million jobs were slashed by businesses between Election Day and inauguration day? Obama of Roanoke!
Atlas had shrugged all over the country. Like many business owners, we were no longer willing to take all of the financial and legal risks and put up with all of the aggravation of owning and running a business. Not with the prospects of even higher taxes, more regulation, more litigation and more emboldened bureaucrats on the horizon. And all of those prospects, of course, have come true.
It was no secret that owners circulated endless emails leading up to election day 2008 discussing lay off plans were Obama to win. Entrepreneurs instinctively understood the danger posed by larger liberal majorities in all branches of government. Human nature is what it is, and the risk-reward equation and fierce independent spirit of start up businesses are anathema to the class warfare, equality of outcome, and spread the wealth mentality of the left.
We had very little appetite to have our lives and businesses run by elected or un-elected officials like Barney Frank and Jamie Gorelick. We had no appetite to be taxed even more by the likes of Charlie Rangel. These are the same clowns who destroyed Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and our entire economy. Congress, by their own admission, could not even run their own damned dining room with a captive customer base! In a panic, they outsourced it. And, of course, we know now that some of them refuse to pay their own tax burden. Why in the world would we subject ourselves to their ilk, armed with the unchecked powers of the Oval Office and both houses of Congress and a massive army of bureaucrats?
We got into business to be independent. We virtually got out for the same reason. We, and many others, who learned nothing new from Roanoke.
The fact that Obama was not in office yet was irrelevant. Businesses must see “around the corner” and plan accordingly. In late 2008 and early 2009 business owners saw a huge anti-business shift in motion and they started making self preserving preparations at that time. Entrepreneurs simply refuse to allow business illiterates like Chris Dodd to dictate their decisions from the comfort of his home, made possible by a quid pro quo Country Wide mortgage. And of course, these dictates have multiplied and gotten worse with the new Dodd Fran
k bill, named after two of the financial sorcerers who are most responsible for the entire economic meltdown to begin with. Dodd and Frank and other liberals who were in power are the ones who “drove this car in the ditch” just as sure as it was Ted Kennedy who sent Mary Jo Kopechne into the drink.
Now in 2009, all of the businesses that started to pull back in fear of an economy run by Obama, Reid and Pelosi had not met folks like Jones and Chu and Sunstein. It did not matter one bit. We all knew Obama of Roanoke, and we knew exactly what kinds of people would be put in charge of our lives without having to know the specific names. Roanoke may now become synonymous with the moment that others figured this out too. And not just about Obama, but perhaps about what liberalism is and what liberalism means to free enterprise and businesses and liberty.
Yes, history has a way of soft-morphing geographies into events or even speeches. I suspect that the term ‘Roanoke’ will cease to mean a small town in Virginia populated by Virginia Tech football fans and will instead live throughout this entire campaign, perhaps longer.
It may well be the moment that the official Washington Republican pundit class finally had to admit that this particular Emperor has not a stitch of proper economic or even pro American clothing. It may be the moment where on some level, the elites in Washington and Manhattan had to come out of the closet of ideological denial and join the enlightenment that so many normal average folks had from the get go.
It may also be the moment that the independents and the moderates finally ‘got it.’ It may be a turning point of realization that their problem is not what Mitt Romney was doing with his money—but is what Obama of Roanoke is intentionally and systematically doing to their dreams to ever earn and keep some of their own money. It could be the time where they say to themselves, “frankly, I hope I can have enough of my own money one day to send to the Caymans, too.”
People who start and run businesses are, by definition, trying to opt out of depending on anyone else—be it a large corporation or government—for their welfare. They take on tremendous risks and responsibilities. And they do so expecting a better than average return. Since they often require nothing from government, most of them deeply resent and resist being pestered by government, which includes being told “you didn’t build that.”
For nearly 30 years, I was one of these business people. It was an amazing journey and literally involved blood, sweat and tears. But now I am done with that particular chapter of my career. The 2008 election screamed that we were going to see a deterioration of the risk-reward equation and the ability to be left alone. And we certainly have. Apparently, any appreciation of entrepreneurs’ crucial place in the economy was lost on over 50% of the voters, as well as those they elected.
Maybe Roanoke will be the term that defines the moment that the “over 50%” tide started to turn. Maybe it will be the day the beltway Republicans realized that, while Obama of Roanoke is many people, he is not the same old Democrat Party of Tip O’Neil. It may be the day that Obama’s electoral coffin, and the coffins of many other statist liberals, were nailed shut by a rare act of candor.
YMBAL’S #3
If you’ve ever been in a dispute over your neighbor’s trees blocking your roof top solar panels…7
If you love Hugo Chavez but have no idea who he is or where he’s from…
If you have ever found yourself in an intellectually even debate with Mika Brzezinski…8
If you’ve ever gotten a trophy, and have no idea why…
If you’ve ever applauded for a trophy in an “everybody gets a trophy” league and have no idea why…
If you’ve ever been invited to the White House to “flip off” a portrait of Ronald Reagan…
If you have the entire Jeremiah Wright sermon collection on CD…
If you have ever played “black basketball” and had to ride the bench because your high school coach coached “white basketball”…9
If you’ve ever complained about four dollar gas on your way to protest a new power plant…
If you have ever bumped into Bill Clinton in the back of an Arkansas State Crown Victoria late at night…
If you think that cheating at the polls is a right granted to all minorities…
If you ever went to the store to buy a thing-a-ma-jig for your furnace…10
If you are one of President Obama’s phantom “sons”…
If your definition of an economic recovery is that millions of people gave up looking for a job…
If you have ever supported extending unemployment benefits while complaining about the prices and service at a local restaurant…
If you think that having your fifteen year old daughter spend the night with her boyfriend in your house is somehow safe sex…
If you think having your fifteen year old son spend the night with his boyfriend in your house is somehow safe sex…
If you’ve ever responded to a question in a job interview with “…dude…”
If you have ever voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake or voted for Ralph Nader on purpose…
If you’ve ever worn an Obama tee shirt to something called ‘Trayvon Martin day’ at an elementary school named after Malcom X …
...you might be a liberal. (YMBAL)
“We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot. But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans… Before the Recovery Act, we could build just 5 percent of the world’s solar panels. In the next few years, we’re going to double our share to more than 10 percent.”
—Barack Obama
“When you see that trading is done, not by consent but by compulsion, when you see that in order to produce you must obtain permission from men who produce nothing. When you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods but in favors, when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you, when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.”
—Ayn Rand
4: THE LAW LIBERALS ALWAYS BREAK
If you thought Starbucks canceling that corporate Gulfstream jet was a good idea…
There’s a law that liberals always shatter. And no, I’m not talking about tax law, though our liberal Treasury Secretary and liberal House Ways and Means Committee Chair shatter that, too.
Rather, it’s the law of unintended consequences. Actually it’s not so much that liberals break it, as much as it seems that liberal thinking, by definition, always runs afoul of this law. Leftist policy always hangs itself if given enough rope. After the 2008 election, with ownership of the White House and super majorities in the House and Senate, they certainly had more than enough rope.
The liberals had the entire stage, with a very liberal President, extreme leftists in control of Congress, and the mainstream media. Liberal failure had nowhere to hide and no one to hide behind, except MSNBC. So, as the Obama administration attempted to attack the country’s economic woes, they found themselves stepping in one pile of liberal policy doo-doo after another. You might say that the left hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. The world watched as liberal policy for problem A destroyed Obama goals for problem B and so on.
Consider: With Obama, Reid and Pelosi screaming for the country to accept a ridiculous stimulus package to create jobs, jobs, jobs, liberals in Chicago were standing in the way of a WalMart Super Center that would bring in construction and retail jobs to the messiah’s hometown. By the way, liberals were also keeping the lowest cost provider of food and clothes and home goods from being accessed by hurting Chicagoans, including congregants at Jeremiah Wright’s church. The reason? The liberal principle of protecting union jobs at all costs. Remember, behind every economic disaster is a powerful union. And sometimes a community organizer.
Which leads to anoth
er example. Union jobs at the big three automakers have been supported for years by high priced and high profit SUVs and pick up trucks. Of course, liberal environmentalists have long made the SUV a target, while also limiting domestic energy production. Greenies have been doing everything they can to destroy the SUV, and with it, many union jobs, and almost succeeded during the last energy price spike.
Oh, and should we mention the fact that those oil rig jobs that pay a ton of money to mostly union members cannot be had here thanks to drilling restrictions in this country? The Russians and Venezuelans send their thanks to American liberals.
But it gets better. This contradiction, which has been predictable for anyone with some linear thinking ability, has escaped the minds of millions of Michigan voters educated by the liberal-controlled public school system. They have, for decades, voted for politicians illogically holding pro-green yet pro-United Auto Workers (UAW) positions simultaneously. Voters of that very liberal state have no one to blame but themselves. They voted themselves out of an economy over a period of years. Interestingly, this is the state where Obama went to pick up a good share of his economic advisors. No wonder it is home to the Detroit Lions.
You Might Be a Liberal Page 3
