I Built My Business, Mr. President (No Thanks To You)

Entrepreneurs don’t ever stop. We never take vacations. When a man or woman is building a business from the ground up, he or she doesn’t have the luxury of taking anything for granted. It’s one hundred percent all the time; the plucky small businessman goes everywhere with the burden of his company on his shoulders. The entrepreneur doesn’t take time off, she has no “down time;” even if she’s sitting in front of the television she’s working, thinking of how to expand her biz, how to add more income streams, how to better serve her clientele, how to expand her product and service portfolio.

Contrast this picture with the following: A national organization that shall remain nameless gets the meals it provides funded by the federal government. If one were to travel through the line for one of those said meals, getting a dollop of slop plopped on one’s plate, and if one were to attempt to bypass, say, the milk, one would be told, “You have to take the milk. If you don’t, we won’t get credit for using our allotment and our federal funding will drop. Take it, and if you don’t want it, drop it in the box at the end of the line and we’ll re-use it.” I shouldn’t have to belabor this illustration, but this is where backward federal baseline budgets have taken us. If you don’t see how this is dishonest at its best—and theft in truth—you might as well stop reading this, because your mind is dead. But baseline budgets are de rigeur in the house that capitalism built (and socialism is actively eating).

At no time does the thought I feel secure because I know the government is helping me enter the mind of the bootstrapper. If anything, anyone who has ever tried to start up their own business feels the government is antagonistic to everything he is trying to do. The entrepreneur must beware of all kinds of tax regulations—some of which are written to be ambiguous on purpose, like the weird way the Idaho State Tax Commission allows businesses to “voluntarily” (you’ve gotta read the fine print to discover this) pay more taxes on internet-based sales. Does the ISTC not know that taxes are kryptonite to prosperity? Why on earth would any sane person volunteer to pay more taxes? But now the leftist brainiacs are spouting the lie that somehow paying higher taxes is morally superior. The Catholic church had a similar program (the paying of indulgences for the forgiveness of sin) before the Reformation. There’s nothing new under the sun. How ironic that those who proselytize us about the religion of recycling are themselves recycling a concept that’s a thousand years old: guilt as a motivator. My wicked step mother tried raising me like that, and I hate her to this day. Almost as much as I hate how the Obama government operates. But I digress.

The entrepreneur must beware of producing too much, lest he commit the sin of moving into a higher tax bracket and thereby suffer the sting of the long arm of the tax law, which punishes production. I know a guy who was forced by logic at the end of his fiscal year to plunk down a large amount of money on office equipment he didn’t need—because, the way the income tax brackets work, he could either spend money on something functional or write a check to the IRS for the same amount. That was a no-brainer. The government has too much already, and they don’t deploy it efficiently. Exhibit A would be the story about the milk above.

I know another couple that had a great year working their butts off only to find that it was all for naught—their tax bill went through the roof. They decided the subsequent year to reduce their production so they could make more money, which is backward as hell. This is how things are in the real world right now, and worse. Question: if we live in a consumer economy, why do we not then tax consumption, instead of doing things backwards? But still, I digress.

I’ve lately been brainstorming ways to better build my business. Being that I live and breathe by Web-based sales, I don’t have to volunteer to pay the Idaho sales tax, which is six percent. And trust me, I minimize my tax obligations ruthlessly. That’s the American way. The government ought to earn the right to take my money, but instead it’s the other way around: I have to earn the right to keep it; the onus is upon the business owner to navigate the treacherous bevy of legislation, regulation, and taxation that assaults us from all quarters. No wonder so many of us were outraged by what our sitting president said about all our work being nullified by the very presence of infrastructure in our lives—a crazy ass thing to say. It’s clear what our president believes in: government, not God. Marxist redistribution, not hard work being its own reward. But again, I digress.

Trust me, if you’re a hard working entrepreneur (is there any other kind?) you’re not alone. We are the majority in America today. With the uncertainty in the workplace, why not strike out on your own and take the risks of being self-employed? At least then if you’re downsized out of a job you’ll know who to blame (you). With the volatility in real estate and on Wall Street, why not make your primary investment in you, rather than sending your 401(k) to the gamblers in NYC? At least then if you utterly fail and your retirement is wiped out, you’ll know who to blame (you). As it stands, with the government engaging in a hostile takeover of the entire world, the central planners amongst us just might be unwittingly stoking the fires of an enormous backfire—that will explode in their faces—because if the government is responsible  for everything, guess who gets blamed when everything goes wrong? Bingo: BHO is his name-o (and friends, Republican and Democrat).

This is not an endorsement of Obama’s opponent, in November, Romney. Far from it. As one of my friends might say, we really have no options anymore. The powers that be have propped up the candidates they want us to choose from, and frankly neither one of them is what I want. We are being told who to vote for. For me, Romney is milquetoast. I don’t know him from Adam. I do know to a certainty that I do not want Obama to win a second term. Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with race. He is a known quantity that has been measured and found wanting. He’s more of a punishment than anything else. His tenure in office is like God’s judgment against a wayward nation. Will we wake up? Who knows. Obama has told us who he is and we know what he wants to accomplish. Basically that is the castration of America. And it’s nothing new; the French invented revanchist politics hundreds of years ago (which begs the question of why Barack Obama is so angry, and what he wants revenge for—I leave that to you).

In the end, the entrepreneur has enough opposition working against him. We don’t need the government lecturing us, acting morally superior (which irritates the hell out of me). Federal bureaucrats haven’t the slightest clue about the real world. I know of a couple who both work for the federal government—they live in a $500k house and drive Cadillac Escalades. This guy’s home theatre is like his own personal IMAX—and they do it all with my money, your money. They don’t live in the real world. They live in a fairy tale, and nothing is real to them—especially the price we pay in order to pay them. Are they grateful? I can’t say. But I don’t see them volunteering to pay higher taxes. If that’s the measure of holiness these days, these federal employees have fallen short of the goal. But sadly, we the people who are paying their salaries are encrusted with ambivalence. “Meh,” we say. It’s sad. Because things could still change. America could still heal; it’s not too late. But it won’t—not, at least, with people like Obama in power.

Tyrants

Megalomaniacs are all the same. They all share certain vanities.

Hitler, for instance, never considered any views but his own. Everyone else’s opinion and analysis was invalid. Unfathomably and against all evidence, he regarded his Fascist ally Mussolini as a staunch and resolute warrior. But the Italian Duce proved to be a slimy opportunist, moving in on the French only after the Nazis had defeated them, attempting to grab a slice of the pie for Italy. And Hitler, among his many other faults, did not understand why Britain and America would never buy his lies and sue for peace with him, not ever, no matter what, no matter the cost, and no matter who tried to convince him otherwise. As a result, when the Third Reich was utterly annihilated by the Allies, the Fuhrer probably also failed to see clearly how ironic it was that his Nietzschean political philosophy (the survival of the fittest) if it were true, singled out Germany as utterly unfit in the end. How bitter a pill, to have wagered so much on a base lie, and to lose all in the end. How sad it must have been to have believed it and found it, finally at the depths, to be false.

It’s interesting, too, how the power-mad man lies in turn, and so smoothly. This interest becomes dark and perverse when one thinks about how those lies are taken at face value by so many. The Germans were no doubt shocked, for instance, when Goebbels’ propaganda machine was disrobed by the cold truth of British bombs falling over Berlin—over Berlin!—impossible!—in 1941. When this was going on, and Nazi diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia were beginning to sour as well, Hitler still insisted that he had only to tighten the noose around the pesky Brits; they were finished, that they only had to acknowledge the fact. Molotov, the Soviet ambassador to the Third Reich and in conference with the Fuhrer, was purported to have rejoined Hitler in this moment, “Then why do we sit in this bomb shelter, and whose bombs are these which shake the very ground?”

Dictators and tyrants are always ridiculously out of touch with reality. This is how we know them, and—one would hope to high heaven—root them out and defang them. This is how we might remove them from power. Hindsight is always quite bitter. I’m sure there were many Germans who wished in 1943 and 1944, when their cities were being firebombed by Allied sorties, that they would have resisted the Nazi warlord. After all, Hitler was just a man. Demoniacal yes, but still just a man. A man who should have and could have been resisted, had anyone had half a spine.

It is the same with murderous pirate plunderers like Obama, theocrats like Ahmadinejad. They speak words skillfully wrought by handlers, maybe even by themselves, with sweet tasting lies interwoven throughout. Obama talks about “fairness” for the middle class. Anyone with any sense knows that he is driving a wedge between the producers and those on the dole in this country, attempting to provoke anger, stoking hatred, cultivating division. He’s not bringing unity. Leftists like Obama always do the opposite of what they say they’re doing. He speaks of “reproductive rights” for women (a tortured and doltish line of newspeak logic to be sure), all while endorsing the killing of newborns. On this position he has never even attempted to double back. As for Ahmadinejad, he protests, a little too much to be really believable, that he seeks nuclear power only for peaceful purposes. Never mind that in the theocracy of which he is one of the horns of power women are debased, swept aside, muzzled, relegated to subhuman status. There is nothing to see here. “Peace, peace,” the warlord hisses like a prostitute, bloodlust trickling from the corner of his mouth as he plots and schemes. With guarantees and promises from men like this, one cannot help but be mindful of Chamberlain shaking hands with Hitler at Munich, smiling broadly at the Nazi warlord as the doom of Czechoslovakia was arbitrarily sealed, and by well-meaning backstabbing traitorous appeasers with no understanding of consequence.

After so many of Obama’s promises, for instance, to balance the budget (when none has yet been produced for three years), to provide “choice” in healthcare coverage (while actually destroying both choice and healthcare in America), to strengthen our position in the world (while playing the sniveling role of a coward and bowing to evil men across the globe), and to bring us “hope and change” (if that’s what we’re supposed to call the second Great Depression), why would anyone believe a single word he speaks? Still, fools persist in their folly, and propagandists use the tools that come scurrying to the sound of their music.

The same kinds of tools and fools reside at the top of the political world order right now; they staff the IMF, the UN, the IAEA, they trade and barter in the lobbies of Washington D.C., and they rub elbows with bigger and more selfish idiots like Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Vladimir Putin, that other totally discredited jackass global warmist from the University of East Anglia, and Jimmy Carter—and the scent of inevitable doom is becoming overpowering. These are the precise political conditions that led, if one studies history, to the worst cataclysms in the history of the world, those two Great Wars of the Twentieth Century. We’re told Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon. Really? When so very like Adolf Hitler in his published manifesto Mein Kampf, Ahmadinejad has already told us in his own words that his chief desire is to wipe Israel off the map, that he believes the Nazi-induced Jewish holocaust is a hoax, and also that, oh yeah, he only wants nuclear power for peaceful purposes? If you wish to believe that, go right ahead, fool. Our enemies have told us what they plan to do because they cannot help but megalomaniacally brag and boast; it’s who they are. But I am on my knees calling upon my God to intervene because He is all I have left. I’m surrounded by the naïve, the foolish, the simpleton, the party line voter, those do not know history, and my government no longer even cares to represent me; only to bribe me with backward redistributionist Keynesian centrally planned stupidity.

But really now, what do we have to fear from madmen? You may justifiably ask this question. I will entertain it: not much. Most of the damage a madman can do is limited to himself—that is, until he achieves real power, and that’s the wrinkle. It was the same with Hitler in the bierhall putsch of 1923 (his attempted violent overthrow of the Weimar republican government), which was an embarrassment even to his enemies for how badly it came off. But madmen too can learn from mistakes, provided their drive for power is strong enough. Hitler was not to be feared until he had weaseled his way into the Wilhelmstrasse and the Chancellery. Then he was fearsome for his people to behold, then a nightmare for the entire globe to look upon, as evidenced by history. I wonder at the madness of Ahmadinejad as well, at least right now. Would he really go so far as to undermine the very lifeblood of his power—vast amounts of first world wealth pumped into Iranian treasuries in trade for OPEC oil—by threatening nuclear war in the Middle East? Surely he doesn’t think he could bring the West to her knees with the one facecard (oil) he now holds—and surely he doesn’t think he will be allowed to acquire another (nuclear capability)—unless the keeper of the flame of liberty is herself snuffed by evil men on the inside like Obama. But that’s the thing about madmen. They’re absolutely insane. And they will do anything to quench their lusts.

These three men have other commonalities frightful to behold. They are always on the offensive in some way. Hitler was quick to strike first. That was one promise he continually made that could be counted on. So too Ahmadinejad wishes to provoke, to instigate, and he proves as much with his hateful mouth. Obama is not to be left out either, going on the offensive in ivory tower fashion, waging a carefully calculated war of executive order and caustic rhetoric on states’ rights, the US Constitution and most of its amendments, traditional American values and faith, our right to keep and bear arms, even on our children, both born and unborn. It was clear who he was and who he would be when he declared shortly after inauguration, “America is not a Christian nation.” I shudder even now. That is who he was, who he is, who he will remain to be. There is no hope for unrepentant men! What, you thought otherwise? This he does and more, all in the name of fairness too, in the name of equality, the dead-horse liberal punching bag of good intentions mixed in a witches’ brew with guilt aplenty. Not Obama’s, naturally—ours. Of course. This barnacle upon the hull of the ship of state will whine at us that he needs yet one more term to battle in the abatement of some trumped up crisis, you watch. But scrape him off, America, and discard him. It has been and will be a continuous crisis, one created by the very people who protest, again a little too loudly that no, they are the ones who are trying with all their might to lead us out of it, to peace. “Peace, peace,” the totalitarian whispers. And history replays itself, tiringly, yet again. Need I remind you that Congress has yet to pass a budget in three years? It’s telling, I say. I reached my fill of it years ago, and I have no more tolerance for totalitarian intolerance disguised, perversely, as tolerance, and loudly self-trumpeted, purportedly beneficent and allegedly magnanimous at that. Test the fruit of this man and tell me the label thereon affixed does match.

Authoritarians are all the same. Their traits are to be studied and identified so that these monsters can be exposed and rooted out. They cannot be changed. They can rarely even be stopped. Look at history. The two World Wars of the Twentieth Century, especially the first one, then known as The Great War for its utterly unprecedented scale and barbarity, were preventable. If not for the great weakness human civilization has had at times to place its most stupefyingly evil simpletons at the switchboard of society, the world might indeed be a better place. If only We the People would but realize our power. Wake up. Think. Reason. Wage war not against your brother who lives and works and dreams under the same storied colors. Wake up from your slumber, America, as your fathers did on December 7^th, 1941, to defend liberty. Wake up as you did in 1776. Awaken in the realm of thought, of the mind, to wage war where it really counts. Awaken to wrestle and contend with the evil now surrounding. Charge unafraid at the darkness with the light of righteousness in hand. Resolve to change the heart, the mind, and pray for the God of the universe to intervene for us. America, realize the enormity of your mistake in placing a megalomaniacal tyrant like Obama into office and turn from this wickedness. There’s no talking sense to utter fools like Obama, Hitler, and Ahmadinejad. Their lot is hopeless, evil, unrepentant. All that remains, having won the battle for reason, is to remove them before it’s too late. Rise up, America.

Rise. Up.