Our View: The anti-American president

He just leaves you breathless, dumbfounded … enraged.

Barack Obama is now incessantly demonstrating and articulating his disdain and hatred for free enterprise and capitalism at every turn.

His words and actions are anti-American, anti-individualism. He is pure despotic, the poster boy for government dependency and centralized, Marxist control.

It’s really scary. Call-to-arms alarming.

With every dictatorial decree — the latest his arbitrary executive order to wipe out portions of Bill Clinton’s welfare law without congressional approval — Obama increasingly resembles the Third World socialist, anti-capitalist despots in the vein of Hugo Chavez and, dare we say, the Castro brothers. Capricious, confiscatory tyrants.

Too extreme of a characterization?

Sample portions of Obama’s Friday speech about entrepreneurism and success in the accompanying box. Judge for yourself.

The underlying, and yet clearly blatant, message there is “the government” is responsible for everyone’s success.

As Obama sees it, individuals — with their own rational minds and choices and effort — never achieve or build or grow without the hand of the government. They never do it without the government hand that takes wealth from one and redistributes it, munificently, to another.

Tell that to Murf Klauber, to Harry Christensen, Ray Arpke, Ed Chiles, Alan Moore, Michael Garey, Robbie Ball; to Maria Sharapova; to Michael Saunders, Barbara Ackerman, Roger Pettingel, Cheryl Loeffler; to Lee Scott, Samir Raghib, Claude Engle, Weldon Frost, Woody Wolverton; to the Jenkins, Barnett and Rollins families …

We could fill this page and more of names of successful people on Longboat Key who made their achievements happen, who built businesses because of their individual efforts, not because of government handouts.

Yes, many of them received help along the way. But in the vast majority of those instances, that help came in the form of a fair exchange, because one helped the other. Business success in the free-enterprise system is always built on the free, peaceful, mutually beneficial exchange between two parties. Two parties acting in their own, rational, self interest.

Take that alleged “great teacher.” If you had one, you were not given that teacher. You paid for her or him — through taxes or tuition. You may have learned great lessons from that teacher, but that teacher was not responsible for what you learned or the actions you took to succeed. Those were your actions, your effort.

If you’re an entrepreneur who obtains startup capital for a business, you are not given that capital. It is a free, peaceful, fair trade — the investor’s capital in exchange for what he believes will be a fair return on his capital. And that return is contingent on the entrepreneur’s ingenuity and ability to make his business a success, his own effort.

“Somebody invested in roads and bridges,” Obama said. Those roads and bridges came out of the sweat and toil and labor of every taxpayer. They didn’t come from “the government.”

To hear the anti-free-enterprise, the anti-individual, the anti-American words come out of this president is beyond belief, especially so for those of us who believe the tenets of the Declaration of Independence — that we, as individuals, are endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That is, the right to live free and the right to our property, by our own effort.

It is un-American for the president of the United States to say what Obama says. Indeed, the president of the United States should be, must be this nation’s biggest champion for the American Dream, that you can go as far and as high as your efforts will take you.

Believers in free enterprise and the American Dream, this is a call to arms.

ANTI-CAPITALIST,
ANTI-INDIVIDUAL,
ANTI-AMERICAN

“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own … “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. (italics added)
“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.”

— Barack Obama

+ Beach parking: Bond it now
There simply is no solution to Siesta Key beach’s parking shortage.

There are only choices.

Nary a day or week or month goes by on Siesta Key when the subject of beach parking or Village parking doesn’t enter a Siesta Key conversation. It’s like the weather; it doesn’t go away.

That’s not for lack of trying, though. There is, of course, the big $17 million, 12-year plan to redevelop Siesta Key beach’s parking lot, landscaping and amenities.

But 12 more years?

How many more Siesta Key Village Association and Sarasota County Commission meetings are going to occur with someone complaining about parking code violations? It’s seemingly futile.

The latest came 10 days ago when Sarasota County Commissioner Nora Patterson received email complaints about a few residents on Avenida Del Mare engaging in pay-for-parking on their properties, a code violation.

“The whole street looks like a parking lot,” Patterson said at a commission meeting. “It’s just wall-to-wall cars.”

What’s a commission to do?

We had to chuckle over the fact that enforcing the ban on pay-for-residential-parking was difficult to achieve — primarily because the code-enforcement staff doesn’t work weekends, when, of course, the violations are most prevalent.

You’re kidding, right?

But instead of county officials taking responsibility and making the obvious choice (i.e. reschedule staff time to match violation time), there was talk about not having the money to hire more people, yada, yada, yada.
Talk about an easy choice: Re-do the code-enforcement staff’s work hours.

The bigger issue is much more complex. Capsulate it this way: You have a free product in high demand (the beach) and a shortage of space (parking), in a residential community that doesn’t like traffic and crowds and in a high-value, real-estate destination. To complicate matters more, the beach also serves as a high-value export for the greater area’s economy. In other words, it attracts visitors who spend money in the community, fueling local businesses, real-estate values and the coffers of city and county governments.

In sum, the beachgoers are good for the economy and community; you don’t want them to go away. But if you don’t make it attractive and convenient, they won’t come.

As we said, there is no solution, only choices. The trick is finding the most effective choice.

The $17 million beach parking redevelopment choice appears to be an effective one. Funding it, however, presents more choices.

At this point, the 12-year timeline is the working plan, largely because of the availability of funding. We were lukewarm earlier when Commissioner Joe Barbetta urged his colleagues to go for a bond issue to expedite the project. There was gnashing about how the whole project at once would dampen tourism and might adversely affect the county’s borrowing limits.

But this reminds us of another choice: You can live with your toothache for 12 more years and be miserable, or you can get it yanked, borrow to pay the price and live pain free for the next 12 years.

We’ll yank the tooth. Choose the parking project now. It’s worth the cost.