The Authority Disconnect, Part 1: Obama v. American Business

I'm not what you would call much of a political aficionado. I used to be big into the political game back when Bush was fighting off Gore and Kerry and people still cared about 9/11. But since I graduated high school and moved to college, I've been swamped by engineering work and just haven't had much time or desire to wade into the morass of current events and political debate. Especially with Obama's election and the unyielding, entitlement-loving, spending-crazy Democrats taking the country in dark directions, there didn't feel like there was anything I could do to make much of a difference in the outcome. So I retreated into my world of college homework, video games, and Ohio State sports teams.

Don't get me wrong, either. I love my country and care very much about anything that affects its well-being. When I'm not bleeding Scarlet & Gray, I'm bleeding Red, White, & Blue [Side note: I have weird colored blood]. Seeing the flag waving in the wind fills me with pride; singing the National Anthem gives me chills. Anything or anyone that threatens my country earns my enduring hatred, including the increasingly idiotic clowns that call themselves politicians.

Recently, I have had a bit of time to dedicate to news and keeping up with the elections (if you read my last post - no, not the Fourth of Urb-ly post - you'll understand why this is so) and I've begun to see a disturbing trend in the authority figures of this country. I've decided to call it "The Authority Disconnect" because I feel like that encompasses the heart of the issue here: there is a severe disconnect between the people that run this country and the people that lie under their authority. The government doesn't understand its own citizens anymore.

The biggest demonstration of this disconnect occurred Friday, when Obama made the following remarks in a speech in Roanoke, VA [Side note: I thought that town disappeared in the 1700's?]:

--- "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." ---

The sheer hubris and disrespect of these comments was glaring to me, particularly because I've grown up with parents who have worked extremely hard to build up their business. My dad is an orthodontist who has put years of effort into building his practice into a profitable business. He still puts in long hours each week to improve others' lives through his work, and he does it through no help from the government. In fact, I would say that due to the thousands of taxes, laws, and regulations, the government has actually been a hindrance to the success of my family's livelihood. The "fair share" of taxes that my parent's pay [I would give numbers, but I don't want to give away financial information. Suffice to say it's ~(292/5.84)%] alone have prevented them from investing as much back into the local economy or from hiring more employees to help reduce that ubiquitous unemployment percentage. So it's safe to say in our case that the government isn't doing anything to benefit our business.

 Strangely I would almost agree to Obama's central point, in that anyone who has ever made it to the top in the business world received help from others along the way. But the two implications he made - 1) that business owners deserve none of the credit for their work and 2) that the government had a hand in the success of American business - are completely ridiculous and illustrate how out of touch the leadership of this country really is with its people.

This story, which inspired this post, particularly resonated with me. The author's story - typical of many small businesses in America - serves to convict Obama even more. Obama is a man hell-bent on destroying capitalism. He is determined that the poor, oppressed masses be dependent on him, his party, and the government for survival, in order that he can obtain their votes for his reelection bid.

According to this article on CNN, one in three Americans is dependent on Medicaid, food stamps, or some other type of government assistance. Factor in Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment, and "nearly half of the nation lived in a household that received a government check". To me, that is an absurd number, one that shouldn't even be close to that high. And what does it all mean? That the government, Democrats in particular, has created a nation comprised of dependents. And if Obama can succeed in breaking down the other 50 percent, then he will have the entire nation beholden to governmental power. America will once again become a totalitarian state, a step way back to the times before the country's beginning.

 If Obama really believes the comments he made - that business in America owes its success to the government - and if he really is dead set on destroying American business, he is as loony as he appears in this picture. At the very least, it is apparent that he never really paid attention in his elementary history class. And, as the saying goes, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana, Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense).

The American Revolution did not start for petty reasons. The people of the American colonies decided to throw off the British government because of the heavy-handed rulings handed down by the king. Dating to the 1730's, the kings of Great Britain began passing successively more restrictive legislation, designed to wring the wealth from the colonies with taxes and levies. Parliament and the king continually discarded their citizens' wishes as unimportant and pilfered the riches of America, denying the colonists the fruits of their labor. All of it, of course, came without the consent of the colonists, who eventually decided that they had tolerated the abuse of their rights long enough. In July of 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed and the rest is history; the colonies won their freedom through hard fought battles, until the British were defeated and fled. From there, America grew on the backs of its citizens' determination and ingenuity in building industries and commerce from the wealth of the country. Yet, more than 200 years later, here we stand in a strikingly similar situation as that which birthed this great nation.

Our nation's government, led by the pro-tax, pro-entitlement Democrats, seems poised to pass even more taxes on American business owners. Not only is this unfair (Obama calling on top earners to pay their "fair share" is borderline imbecilic, as this graph shows) due to the uneven division of the taxes among the classes, it is unwanted by the American citizens. People do not want to be taxed. As I've experienced over the past six weeks of having a job, there is nothing more demoralizing than getting a pay check and seeing how MUCH of it is being taken by the government. And I'm not even a "top earner"! It horrifies me to think of how much those "top earners" are paying in taxes. Yet, in spite of this, the Democrats insist on continuing to pilfer the pockets of hard-working Americans everywhere, while distributing those earnings to their government-addicted constituents.

I call Obama and his cronies disconnected because it seems to me they don't realize how this country was founded in the first place. While America does owe some of its freedom to unfair government legislation (Old Obi seems to stick on this part), in that the unjust tax laws of Britain incited the colonies to revolution, which in turn won American freedom, the majority of the credit goes to the individual citizens who rose up to fight tyranny. It was on the back of the individual that this nation grew to be the greatest country in the world, individuals like Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Sam Walton, and Bill Gates, who worked and struggled and built up the American economy through innovation and ingenuity and business.

Even in war, it wasn't the government making the sacrifice, it was the individual, the soldier in the trench, slogging through the mud and bullets, sacrificing themselves to keep our country safe. I highly doubt that Obama would argue that because the government supplies their equipment that soldiers should give more of their lives to serving in the military. So, why do the same to the people who are, in more ways than one, working to bring about the betterment of our country. Its strikes me as ridiculous that you would penalize the hard work of the American people by taxing them to death, when it was their work that built the country in the first place.

Obama would take more of American's money simply because the government built the roads on which they drive to work. Instead of encouraging success, he's empowering laziness and breaking down the very foundation on which our country was built. By threatening to oppress the nation's businesses, Obama has spit in the face of American freedom. All I have to say is,

Disconnection complete.

Happy (Late) 4th, Buckeye Nation!

A Belated Happy Fourth of July from OSU Coach Urban Meyer!

Go Bucks!

Bored at Work: July 9

"What to do?... What to do?..."

That is the quandary that I find myself in at the moment. I'm currently trapped in one of those dead periods at work when there is not a whole lot to do. Nothing new has come along yet and everything else has been done already. And so I sit here wondering how to fill the gaps between nothing and something. Which, of course, led me to write this blog post nearly 10 months after my last posting.

A little update then: it is currently summer vacation for this guy, and I happened to secure a summer internship at Honeywell Process Solutions. I got hired as a summer intern in their engineering division and am currently involved in setting up and recording testing procedures for different types of gas meter measuring and reporting devices. This requires a lot of email sending, meetings, and waiting for parts to come in, periodically broken up by moments of intense activity when actual testing gets done.

Now, Honeywell is a large company, but this isn't one of the big offices. I work in a small building of maybe 50 people, and of those I see maybe 3 or 4 on a busy day. This bears a lot of responsibility for my mostly uneventful work schedule and, like I said, unless something critical comes up, there are large amounts of down time between projects. Still, the atmosphere is very relaxed and casual, and the freedom to get work done how and when I want (deadlines notwithstanding) is a blessing. Plus, I can come in and leave work whenever I want to, provided I get my 8 hours in. Lunch is even flexible: I can take one early or late; it doesn't matter! So instead of being tied in to rush hour traffic like the 9-to-5-ers, I can come in at 7:30 and be done by 4:00. Not having to deal with the slow death that is highway traffic is another relief.

The people here are nice to work with, not very uptight at all, which makes it better to work here. The other interns (there are 3 of us here) are pretty cool, too, and hard workers. Overall I'd say the atmosphere here is a good one, not at all unpleasant. The pay is good, the hours are good, the people are nice; what more could I ask for from a summer job?

And at the very least, I have a job, where some people have been without one for a very long time. I get to work in my field of choice and get paid to do it. And for that alone I have to thank God.

I'm not just saying that, either. Without God's provision, I would not be working where I am right now. In fact, I probably would not be working at all. The story of how I got this job is still so crazy to me, and it will probably be crazy to you. Here's how things went down:

It was maybe a month or so before I came home for the summer and my dad was bugging me again about looking for an internship. I had dilly-dallied on looking for a job (admittedly the job market intimidated me and I didn't feel like I had much to offer a big corporation) so I opened up OSU's Engineering Career Services site one Monday evening and browsed through the job postings, most of which didn't really apply to/interest me. I came across Honeywell's posting, which was very brief but seemed promising, and sent in my resume on a whim.

The very next day (Tuesday) I got an email from my current supervisor asking if I wanted to set up a phone interview on Wednesday. Seeing as how I hadn't had ANYONE bite on my resume before, I happily agreed to do the interview the next day, then spent the next 24 hours in nervous anticipation at what was my only shot at a job to date.

Wednesday came and I set up my computer and phone for the interview. The time came and the phone rang and I was off. We did the standard interview things: intros, what I knew about Honeywell, what classes/labs I had done, what I wanted to do with my career. Things went really well and I felt like I had gelled with the interviewers (plural; there were two people interviewing me. No pressure, huh?). This was my chance to snag a real job. They told me as we hung up that they would be making final decisions by Friday and let me know sometime the next week.

Well, Thursday came and classes along with it, so I was busy for most of the day, but when I got home there was an email in my inbox from my supervisor. I opened it up, read the words, then proceeded to do a victory lap around my house, fists held high in triumph and joy. They had offered me a job! In the span of 4 days, I went from not knowing at all what I was going to do this summer to having a clear (and lucrative) plan. And I honestly can say I had nothing to do with it. All I did was submit a resume and then answer questions during the interview. I believe it was only by God's plan and blessing that I ended up with a job.
 After all, even the stuff on my resume, I owe to the talents and abilities He has given me.

It still seems crazy to me how I got this job. Mind = Blown. Just because of that story, I am thankful so much for this job, including those down times where I just don't know "what to do..."