Except this time he wasn't so even handed. He first went after the Republicans for going after President Obama for his channeling of Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren, but he left out the key sentence. Here is the unmentioned offending sentences:
If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.♠Is that to say that small business came out of nowhere, ex nihilo, so to speak, and the business founders were mythical characters from the past who then passed the businesses on to the new owners?
OK, I get it. He was carried away by the moment, but still, this is not something to mock the Republicans for mocking. Mr Keller missed it on this one.
And to be clear, I don't think of Mr Obama as a Socialist. I am sure he understands Capitalism, in a Keynesian sort of way. But, he needs to be clear that small businesses are important and that they are created by the hard work and long hours of citizens with the entrepreneurial spirit.
Quoting from Wikipedia:
In the US, small business (less than 500 employees) accounts for around half the GDP and more than half the employment. Regarding small business, the top job provider is those with fewer than 10 employees, and those with 10 or more but fewer than 20 employees comes in as the second, and those with 20 or more but fewer than 100 employees comes in as the third....Most of those small business owners think they did it themselves.
Regards — Cliff
♠ For the original quotes (Obama and Warren) click here.
10 comments:
So are you going to thank Al Gore for inventing the Internet, so you can share your thoughts?
Societies are built out of foundations. Foundations matter, without them individuals and their businesses don't succeed.
Yes; thank you to former Senator (at the time) Al Gore, for inventing the Internet. And to Guglielmo Marconi for allowing me to hear the traffic report "on the threes", as I was driving down the 93. But can I blame Mr Marconi for Mr Keller trying to deceive me?
I give you that societies are built on foundations. Some foundations seem to have been better than others. How do the outcomes reflect those foundations? And then there is geography. I recently read where nations that are longer East/West do better than those that are longer North/South. Maybe.
In my mind, given that the People are sovereign, the People agree to certain infrastructure improvements, which benefit them. It isn't that some Government has donated those improvements to the People. And because individuals exert themselves and create things we have a tax base. And, as society became more complex, and we broke the stranglehold of guilds, we went from mostly small businesses to half and half.
I think it is a question that is at the heart of the difference between the American and French Revolutions. As Ann Coulter said recently:
QUOTE
Both revolutions are said to have come from the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers, the French Revolution informed by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the American Revolution influenced by the writings of John Locke. This is like saying presidents Reagan and Obama both drew on the ideas of twentieth century economists — Reagan on the writings of Milton Friedman and Obama on the writings of Paul Krugman.
Locke was concerned with private property rights. His idea was that the government should allow men to protect their property in courts of law, in lieu of each man being his own judge and police force. Rousseau saw the government as the vessel to implement the “general will” and to create more moral men. Through the unchecked power of the state, the government would “force men to be free.”
As historian Roger Hancock summarized the theories of the French revolutionaries, they had no respect for humanity “except that which they proposed to create. In order to liberate mankind from tradition, the revolutionaries were ready to make him altogether the creature of a new society, to reconstruct his very humanity to meet the demands of the general will.”
UNQUOTE
Ms Coulter isn't always wrong.
Regards — Cliff
I think it is important to note that Obama was not speaking magnanimously about social unity. In fact, his point was just the opposite, to chastise business owners for "keeping too much" of the fruits of their labors and not "spreading a little more around to those who have less." The entire purpose of his ridiculous statement was to attempt to gain popular support for MORE income redistribution via targeted tax rates that he claims are "fair." Notice too that at no time in any of his term in office has he entertained any notion of a flat tax.....perhaps the fairest of all taxes on earned income. And while chastising businesses for their supposed largesse, he is quietly rewriting welfare law that currently requires someone on welfare to have a job....ANY kind of job. But.....because of minimum wage, folks have figured out that it is far cheaper for them personally to just take the handout rather than search for meaningful employment. In short, we are breeding a larger and larger population base entirely dependent on government support. Since Obama took office, the number of people on welfare has grown exponentially.
The essence of this election comes down to one single issue.....who is responsible for individual security and success......the individual through hard work with others in society...or the government. Romney is for the former...Obama clearly represents the latter.
One is market capitalism and the other is Marxist Socialism.
And....that is why Obama will likely get his second term to finish fundamentally changing America...forevermore. The guy who promises free ice cream, fun days, a nice house, a cheap car......is always going to beat the guy who says, "You have to cut spending and do more for yourself." No work vs. hard work.
Of course, in his rant, Neal forgets that the game is rigged. The Obama I'm voting for is leveling the playing field.
For someone who brags on his prowess with american history, Neal seems blatantly determined to repeat the history, just prior to the election of Teddy Roosevelt.
I can't afford my own congress-critter. Shame on me? I'm not "American enough?"
Foundations, in the plural, matter.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303933704577533091220914750.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
Cliff,
I was reviewing some notable quotes from the President. The tone has evolved. I didn't vote for Obama in 08', but I could find more then a few things I agreed with. Now I have a hard time listed off 5 things.
For instance a quote from " The Audacity of Hope" and what is stated at the very last line.
"I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manfuacturer's lobby. But I also believe that when a gangbanger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels someone disrespected him, we have a problem of morality. Not only do we need to punish that man for his crime, but we need to acknowledge that there's a hole in his heart, one that government programs alone may not be able to repair."
Renee,
Mike Judge, of Beavis and Butt-Head, figured this out in 2006.
Watch the clip, please.
Part 2
The good news, Neal. They will vote Republican.
Above, I'm referring to Renee's "Foundations" point and this quote from the article:
As we noted in March, marriage rates have remained high among college-educated Americans, who tend to marry each other, even as they have dropped precipitously among the less-educated. Low sex ratios among college graduates today are likely to result in lower marriage rates among educated Americans in the coming decades.
I had a feeling it would be a clip from the movie, Idiocracy.
I saw it 5 years ago on DVD. Laughing then, not now. Depressing.
Sounds like Trash Talking is a local phenom as well.......Sigh............
Post a Comment