A few responses to Obama's attack on business owners [updated]

ICYMI: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Charles Krauthammer:


Examiner editorial:

Only someone who has never signed the front of a paycheck could make such an ignorant comment. Government research may have helped create the Internet, but entrepreneurs made it useful and profitable. And as with most, if not all of the basic infrastructure that modern governments provide, business entrepreneurs have paid for the Internet thousands of times over through the tax revenues they created through increased sales and employment over the years.

Obama repeatedly claims his tax hike proposal will only hit 3 percent of small-business owners. To put his statement in context, the U.S. Census Bureau reports more than three-quarters of small businesses have no employees. (Example: An employed journalist who freelances for pocket money.) The 3 percent of small businesses that Obama wants to squeeze produce more than half of all small-business income and account for a hugely disproportionate share of small-business jobs.

It isn't easy to understand what it takes to create jobs while making money, but Obama has proven himself extraordinarily obtuse on the subject.

It's the obtuseness of ideology. Read the rest.

Rep. Paul Ryan:

We believe in free communities and this is a statist attack on free communities.

He’s deluded himself into thinking that his so-called enemies are these crazy individualists who believe in some dog-eat-dog society when what he’s really doing is basically attacking people like entrepreneurs and stacking up a list of scapegoats to blame for his failures.

As all of his big government spending programs fail to restore jobs and growth, he seems to be retreating into a statist vision of government direction and control of a free society that looks backward to the failed ideologies of the 20th century.

How does building roads and bridge justify Obamacare? If you like the GI Bill therefore we must go along with socialized medicine. It’s a strange leap that he takes. … To me it’s the laziest form of a debate to affix views to your opponent that they do not have so you can demonize them and defeat them and win the debate by default.

It's lazy and dishonest. Sorry, but that's the man we elected. More at the link.

See also: I Am Offended by Obama’s ‘You Didn’t Build That Business’ Comment

I don’t want a handout from the government. I want the government to get the hell out of my way so I can prosper.

Sometimes I feel like I am trying to make a difficult three point shot to win and you are the point guard in my face doing everything you can to make me miss.

It is so painfully obvious you are not on my team and not on the team of businesses.

RTR. Hat tip: Doug Ross @directorblue.

***
Paco is exactly right: 

Obama is making the mistake of reasoning from the particular to the general. He, himself, is a gaudy butterfly that was nurtured in a cocoon of anti-American radicalism, and who benefited his entire adult life from the assistance of ideological mentors, bent on living out their totalitarian fantasies vicariously, and Democratic Party apparatchiks, who greased the skids for his rapid political advancement. In other words, he is largely the loving creation of his handlers, who smoothed his path and did practically everything but carry him in a sedan chair to his current residence on Pennsylvania Avenue. So, devoid as he is of genuine learning, real-world experience and the habit of critical thinking, Obama assumes that this is the way it works for everybody. He - in spite of his inherent greatness! - might still be ineffectually haranguing small groups of neighborhood malcontents had it not been for the small army of helping hands that shoved him up the career ladder; therefore, you (poor schlep!) must obviously need similar assistance –and, truth to tell, far more, because, let’s face it, he’s special and you’re just, you know, you.

That captures him perfectly. Read the rest.

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