It's no wonder that the Chamber of Commerce didn't do its best Nancy Pelosi cheerleading impression during yesterday's speech by Barack Obama. Flashback: Remember when Nancy Pelosi sat behind PrezBO at his State of the Union address and it appeared as though there were springs in her seat? She kept popping up and clapping with that fake grin plastered on her face. Well anyway .. that is entirely the opposite reaction that Obama got from the Chamber of Commerce yesterday. Apparently he was only interrupted by applause twice during his 35 minute speech. I have a sneaking suspicion that that the Chamber could not have applauded, even if it wanted to (though it didn't want to) .. because they were just stunned by some of the words billowing forth from our dear leader, the Community Organizer.
"If we're fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line."
You read that correctly, folks. "They have to be shared by American workers." How do you like that?
Now ... let's do a quick Cliff Notes review of this man as it relates to commerce and the private markets.
Barack Obama is a man who has:
- Never had to write a business plan
- Never had to review a business plan to determine its worthiness
- Never had to create a budget for a private business
- Never had to calculate the economic worth of an existing or new employee for a business
- Never had to worry about the cost of benefits provided to a business employee
- Never had to worry about whether or not a business was making a profit
- Never had to explain to a boss or to shareholders why a business was losing money
- Never had to file a business tax return
- Never had to talk to an accountant about business matters
- Never had to hire an attorney to deal with business matters
- Never had to worry about the effects of government regulations on a business he owns or operates
- Never had to tell an employee that he was being let go because business was slow
- Never had to place a "help-wanted" ad looking for a new worker
- Never had to look at a list of revenues and expenses to determine how much a new employee can be paid.
- Never had to face competition from a new business down the street
.... And most importantly:
Barack Obama is a man who has referred to the private sector as "the enemy." And don't think that these men and women of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce didn't remember that line while he was reading his teleprompter in front of them yesterday.
In short ... this is a man who has no idea in the universe what it means to own and operate a business, yet there he is telling businesses that they have to go out there and figure out how they can hire more people? Is he serious? In what parallel universe does it become the purpose and overriding objective business to simply try to figure out how to hire more people?
Let's look bad at some of Obama's previous utterings:
- "At some point you just have to admit you've made enough money."
- "You need to spread the wealth around."
- And one of my all-time favorites: You have to raise taxes not to increase government revenue, but "out of fairness."
That's right! It's just not fair that you are earning that much money ... se we have to take it from you and spread it around.
We have an avowed enemy of the private sector .. a man with zero business experience himself .. standing up in front of a room of businessmen and telling them that they are actually in business to hire people and share the wealth. WRONG! They are in business to make money for their owners and/or shareholders. To do that they hire people who can help produce wealth, and they pay those people a competitive wage to keep them on the payroll. This, of course, is completely lost on someone who considers the private sector to be his enemy. That's OK though ... the private sector looks at him the same way.
I am reminded of that Russian Newspaper article that appeared right before Obama was elected. The Pravda newspaper ran an article, "American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper" for a title? Here's a quote from the article:
"It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people."
This article had it exactly right. Obama is the result of a "sheeple" population that was more interested in his coolness than they were in his policy or experience. We are sliding toward Marxism whether we like it or not because of our own failure as a nation to educate our electorate, allowing them to understand for themselves the danger of a man like Barack Obama in the White House.
