John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He’s also the son of a Greek immigrant. After hearing Barack Obama’s attack against businesspeople the other day, he decided it was important to respond:
There was no federal bailout money for us. No Republican corporate welfare. No Democratic handouts. No bipartisan lobbyists working the angles. No Tony Rezkos. No offshore accounts. No Obama bucks.
Just two immigrant brothers and their families risking everything, balancing on the economic high wire, building a business in America. They sacrificed, paid their bills, counted pennies to pay rent and purchase health care and food and not much else. And for their troubles they were muscled by the politicos, by the city inspectors and the chiselers and the weasels, all those smiling extortionists who held the government hammer over all of our heads.
Well of course Obambam missed the lesson on business development. According to the all school records available for public scrutiny, Obambam never went to school.
That is a great column and the last couple of paragraphs paints a perfect picture of what Obama has now revealed about himself.
Obama’s changed.
~John Kass
No he hasn’t changed, John.
He’s the same guy who as a community organizer lawyer in 1994 shook down Citibank Chicago, threatening them with public accusations of racist redlining if they didn’t issue subprime loans to people who would never pay them back.
Same guy, same schtick, same goals.
A good piece, but this kind of honesty and realistic assessment of Obama means nothing to the HopeyChangey masses.
I just saw this-“I Got Me Here”. In my opinion, if the Republicans don’t capitalize on Obama’s recent reveal (can’t really call it a gaffe) to the maximum, they are total idiots. This statement was a campaign gift.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/18/an-obama-defying-slogan-for-entrepreneurs-everywhere-i-got-me-here/
Agreed Laura
If Romney doesn’t come out today swinging for the fence with this bat today, he’s a loser, and Obama will cake walk in November.
This is a gift.
This being Chicago, the family business of Clan Daley, no prizes for guessing what quarter of Europe vomited up the government thugs who hit Mr. Kass’s father up for free steak. Always plenty of work for lads from the bog, with or without a visa, whose skills and wits didn’t go far beyond digging turf and shooting the good men of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Think of the money they must have saved on groceries—money that I’m sure the Democratic party, the Church of Rome and the IRA (via a Plastic Paddy club) could all have put to good use. I’m sure all got their cut.
I wonder how many Protestants were killed with those bullets.
(Oh yes—please read the article. Then, never say another word about lazy Greeks.)
Team Romney released a very good and effective web-ad today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4Lr49t4-2b8
Hopefully they start playing these on television. Maybe make a whole series of them.
Dick Slater at July 19, 2012 10:55 AM
Yeah what you said….
Somebody once asked why I get more than a bit prickly when I hear a Brit accent (other than Viscount Monckton of course).
My answer….my folks came from Britain, with the shirtsd on their back in ’29, lived poor worked hard and had a successful farm, raised a family….to get told they screwed somebody to do it…while these same critics, who loathed getting their hands dirty, lived and died on the dole…..
I guess I got an ugly on fer working class Brits whose main ambition is to pub crawl….be a cop or a dogcatcher….
I call ’em pig and whistle Brits…….
Barack Obama is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people.
It’s a brilliant column. However, for each small business owner who reads that and celebrates, there are 1.2 government employees who sneer dismissively at it.
Larry-but that’s what they wanted. I don’t even know if he is a “fraud”. I think he always completely transparent and obvious. Affirmative action poster child, product of a single mother who ‘went native’, chippy, socialist, unqualified, practically illiterate, liar, thug, pro-abortion (infanticide actually). It was all out in the open. That’s what Americans chose.
He’s not even right about who paid for the infrastructure.
In AB and SK, oil companies foot the bill for all infrastructure improvements, when they develop a field in an outlying area. They build the roads, which then become public. They build the 3 phase power lines, which then become accessible to land owners. More often than not, oil companies take over maintenance of existing roads, when they begin using them. Local municipalities have a motto, you touch it, you own it. When you see a grader anywhere near an oil facility, chances are, he’s invoicing an oil company.
In the town of Hardisty AB, about 20 some years ago, PanCanadian Petroleum built an entire subdivision to make room for an office structure. They paid the whole shot, surveying, water and sewer, power. They did the same thing in several small towns, in an attempt to keep key people closer to the production areas. The plan was a failure, but these towns still own this infrastructure.
It’s like these people never had an actual job. I guess it isn’t like it, they actually haven’t had a real job. Even a summer job in the private sector would have given them enough experience to recognize the stupidity of this line of reasoning.
You say it well Laura. Got to leave now for the dog show which will be fun.
A beautifully written column. The last paragraph has all the economy and effectiveness of a well-placed stiletto:
And he [Obama] offers an American dream much different from my father’s. Open your eyes and you can see it too. He stands there at the front of the mob, in his shirt sleeves, swinging that government hammer, exhorting the crowd to use its votes and take what it wants.
Mitt will NOT come out swinging.He gets his bucks from the same gravy train as the Zero.He is a politico.He will bend over and suck whatever to keep his cash following in.Mitt is a RINO.
There are probably more examples of private businesses building the infrastructure than is known. In Windsor, ON–a neighborhood known as Walkerville was built from the sewers up by a man named Hiram Walker the owner of the distillery that makes Canadian Club Whiskey. This includes houses for the workers, the executive staff, the parks and the church. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Walker
Obama and the left plan on robbing more from businesses, to do that he has to convince the Occupiers and his other greedy leftwingers supporters that they are entitled to the profits of those businesses.
So he is telling them that they helped build those businesses.
More class warfare from the so called community organizer.
favill- It would shock many people to discover how many towns were built with capital from various industrial projects. Even if their was no initial investment, you can bet many more were paid off, within a decade, by taxation. The main reason infrastructure is crumbling, corporations no longer see the long term value of investing in American society. With an unreliable workforce, and an unstable political situation, investment is sure to dwindle. On a smaller scale, you only have to look at Cape Breton NS. There were attempts to bring industry there, in the 50s and 60s, that were sabotaged by union interference. The jobs disappeared, and will never return. SK was lucky. After 30 years of oil company boycotts, they’ve finally rejoined, and are thriving.
I’m surprised the Chicago Tribune ran that article.
My Dad did much of the same as far as hard work and sheer grit building his business. I could fill pages on my experiences growing up helping out. This was small town Alta in the ’80s, when the AB advantage still existed. However, in the beginning the town clowns (Municipal gov) tried to tell him how to run his, so he ran for Council, won and preceded to tell them how to run theirs (LOL)
Anyways, my point is that Obama is the biggest “town clown” in the world, and needs to be replaced by a Businessman.
dwright
I just listened to Rush read this entire column on his show today. (good pick Robert)
“If you got a business, you didn’t build that — somebody else made that happen.” – remark made by Obama off-teleprompter in Roanoke, VA, July 13.
This quote was not part of Obama’s set speech that he did read off the teleprompter, so it unquestionably expresses his true views of small business.
Isn’t his remark just a modern day rephrasing of Marx, who said that business profit was the wrongfully expropriated labor of the proletariat?
Our family’s experience echos many of the experiences mentioned above. Lots of hard work, will power and drive is what it takes.
The kernel of truth in this Big Lie is that successful people got help from others along the way to success.
The Big Lie is that more taxes are needed to allow Government to provide more help to enable people to be successful. The U.S. Government has enormous revenues. They just waste most of it in stupid attempts to establish “legacies”, pandering to their “friends” and trying to force cultural change on the population.
Come to think of it, that sounds like most politicians everywhere.
I knew it was a matter of time before Dick Slater brought up the “Church of Rome”.
Anyway, this guy shouldn’t be surprised that Obama is a consummate liar and a communist. I’m sorry things were/are hard but that’s Obama’s America. Vote him out.
All hail the Chimp in Chief, and his Praetorian Guard enablers! How can anybody be surprised at ANY of his actions? Or those of his enablers?
The stench is overwhelming.