July 4, A Day of Mourning?

It was Friday and evidently Billy Roy Mitchum came into the cafe in a really bad mood.  Maybe approaching the 4th of July holiday it occurred to him that current Americans are consenting to lose  freedoms that earlier Americans shed real blood to gain.  BM just gave what some might call a speech.

"It's the same old question. Is Obama stupid and screwing things up because he doesn't know better or is he dumb like a Fox and hellbent on destroying the United States of America? While we can argue about motive, what is not in question is the fact that the US, under his leadership, is getting our ass kicked by other nations in the World Economy. An economy that was created through this nation's leadership based on  principles of capitalism and free trade."

"For companies to compete in today's environment they face battles over the harnessing of technology, access to scarce resources such as energy, precious human capital, and favorable business environments (that would be low tax rates and reasonable government regulations)."

This week's press pout by Obama touched on these subjects. Our President was so immature, partisan, and deceitful that even an MSNBC commentator said, 'he acted like a Dick'. Among other arrogant remarks the President who acts like a young punk when not reading a teleprompter said, 'that the business community is always complaining about regulations. When unemployment is at 3 percent and they're making record profits, they're going to still complain about regulations because, frankly, they want to be able to do whatever they think is going to maximize their profits.' Barack Hussein Obama obviously believes that evil American busy leaders, if unchecked by his wonderful administration, would drop all ethics to 'do whatever they think is going to maximize their profits.' As Obama has shown with his budget management his hatred of  profits is only exceeded by his hatred of successful business people.  You know the kind of producers that have made the US the greatest country in history."

"In the same set of socialist rants, Obama credited his administration with having undertaken an 'unprecedented' effort to review the country’s regulatory structure – including both proposed rules and those 'already on the books' – to determine, as the president put it, whether there is 'a tangle of regulations out there that are preventing businesses from growing and expanding as quickly as they should'.  What crap!"

"A bit later, while discussing Boeing’s battle with the National Labor Relations Board over the site of a new plant, Obama said he hopes 'everybody steps back for a second and says, look, if jobs are being created here in the United States, let’s make sure that we’re encouraging that…at a time when we’re competing against Germany and China and other countries that want to sell goods all around the world'.  Who does he think the NLRB reports to?”

"Well at least Obama does recognize there's no question today that almost every business is global. So the whole question about outsourcing is: Where's the best business environment? I'm sure that corporations don't sit around…and think, ‘Where can we make our investments in other parts of the world, just because we want to?’ It's all about the business environment, the taxes and regulations.”

So how is Obama doing in his efforts to make the US more competitive?  One guess. It ain't pretty. In 2010 the World Bank’s annual 'Doing Business' survey, which ranks 183 economies on key aspects of regulation for domestic firms, found Singapore to be the world’s friendliest regulatory environment, followed by Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. This fifth-place ranking represented a decline for the U.S., which in the 2009 survey ranked third – and it showed America bucking a worldwide trend."

"That trend has seen 85 percent of the world’s economies take steps over the last five years to make it easier for local entrepreneurs to operate. Yet separate studies by the World Bank and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor show we are in the 15% who are making it harder for entrepreneurs.  Both concluded that American entrepreneurs are facing a trend of more and more red tape.  And Obama is just getting warmed up.  Add to that the tens of thousands of pages of regulations still being written as a consequence of the Obama administration’s enactment of legislative reforms to Obamacare and financial service sectors, and the American regulatory structure would appear only to be growing exponentially (that is real fast for those of you in Mr. Calm)."

“Even the academics admit we are in trouble and on the wrong track.  'If you had asked me this ten years ago, I would’ve told you, America is the place to start a business,' said Veronique de Rugy, an economist at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. 'It’s not true anymore today. I think the gap, basically, between even European countries and America has shrunk dramatically in the last ten years, and in particular in the last three years. I cannot tell you how badly we will fare once the financial regulation that was passed last year will all have been implemented.' Remember, Republicans lost control in 2007.  Give Obama four more years and it could be game over.”

"What is unbelievable is that even admittedly Socialist Countries are beating us.  Among the world’s fastest surging economies are those of the so-called BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia (Commies), India, and China (More Commies). Those last two nations rank among the top forty most-improved countries, in terms of their regulatory climate, over the last five years."

“If you're a businessperson thinking of investing, you may look at China and you say, ‘Well, there's some regulatory problems (Commies), there's some intellectual property problems (the government steals your secrets); but boy, this market is growing at 10 percent a year. I'm going to invest [there].’ Whereas the only things growing in the US are our regulations and debt…China and India start to look like very attractive markets.”

And all the folks at the Cafe on this day said, "Damn."

Think about it,

Jim