Message from Small Business to Obama and his Progressive Socialist Cabal: Your Meal Ticket is in Open Rebellion.
By Wayne Allyn Root, Small Businessman and 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential Nominee
I am a small business owner who graduated from Columbia University almost 30 years ago alongside my classmate Barack Obama. In those nearly 30 years, I’ve done everything my family, community, and country have asked. As a S.O.B. (son of a butcher), I am completely self-made. I’m a homeowner who pays his mortgage and taxes in full and on time. I’ve been married to the same woman for 19 years. I am the father of four beautiful children- including a home-schooled daughter now attending Harvard. We home-school our other children, aged 2, 6 and 10, paying for their education ourselves, even though we already pay for public schools with our property taxes. But, I don’t complain. I just work harder.
I’ve never done drugs, nor do I smoke or drink. I’ve never been addicted to anything, but hard work and entrepreneurship. I’ve started and owned several businesses and built my success with no help from anyone, but my entrepreneurial partners. I’ve never asked government for anything. Some of my businesses have succeeded, some have failed. Funny how the private sector works- no matter how much I lose, it never costs government or taxpayers a dime. But they sure take a big chunk when I win. The mafia has much in common with our federal government- except what the government does is called "legal."
Like most small business owners, I’ve worked 14 hour days, 365 days a year, for 30 years. My vacations are all “working vacations.” My work days never end (ask my wife). Unlike government employees, when I go home my workday doesn’t end. I toss and turn in my sleep worrying about how to pay my bills and taxes. That’s how it works when you pay your own bills, without bailouts from government.
During my career I’ve been broke, but never let myself think I was poor. Like most hard-working American taxpayers, I have never collected a dollar in unemployment, or other government benefits. As a self-employed business owner, I pay the full 15%+ for Social Security and Medicare taxes, yet I’ll probably never see a dime in return. Now, those who pay no taxes, are demanding the FICA cap be raised, so they can collect more. Others are demanding my taxes be raised so they can extend unemployment beyond 99 weeks. Government wants to dole out more handouts, bailouts and stimulus. Small business owners pay for all that, yet we never collect a dime. It seems surreal, doesn’t it?
In the old America known by my father and grandfather, small business owners were “preferred customers,” metaphorically wined and dined to create jobs and keep us in business. But in Obama’s bizarre world of progressives, socialists, unions, and big government, we’re demonized as evil and greedy, singled out for punishment, and targeted. The harder we work, the more we succeed, the more they want to steal our money and redistribute it to others who don’t want to work as hard, or don’t want to work at all. Some of these people collecting entitlements, welfare, food stamps, aid to dependent children, free meals at school, housing allowances, free medical, and free education, aren’t even in the country legally. Small business owners like me are asked to pay for it all, yet we receive nothing in return. The system isn’t working anymore. It’s backwards. It does everything for the people who expect everything from government, and nothing for the people who pay for everything.
President Obama and his progressive, big government, socialist cabal are involved in a conspiracy to ruin small business, steal our money (they call it “redistribute”), and destroy our lives. At times it seems even many Republicans are in on this conspiracy. Together these D.C. establishment politicians have tried to damage or ruin our lives so many times, it’s becoming quite clear it’s no mistake, no coincidence. It’s a purposeful plan to wipe out small business owners by burying us in higher taxes and adding layers of oppressive rules, regulations, laws, and lawyers, until we can no longer survive. Every law they pass benefits big business- corporations rich enough to pay for armies of lawyers and lobbyists and compliance officers. Small business cannot compete- thereby allowing big government and big business to rule our lives.
Funny thing though…the more government targets small business owners, the worse the economy gets, the higher unemployment rises. It’s no coincidence. While the Government is spending trillions; and the Fed printing trillions more; and Obama’s voters are receiving never-before-imagined levels of unemployment, welfare and stimulus; and big corporations are getting billions in bailouts and corporate welfare; the economy continues to spiral downward, and unemployment continues to skyrocket. Obama and his elitist socialist cabal can’t understand why this is happening.
The answer is simple. Poor people don’t create jobs; unions don’t create jobs; the Fed has never created a single job; and the government can only kill jobs. Even big business doesn’t create any increase in net jobs. History proves that the only group that actually creates jobs is the same group that Obama is targeting, punishing, and demonizing- small business. Small business alone holds the key to our economic recovery. It is the work ethic of small business owners, along with our willingness to sacrifice and risk to create a better life for our families, that creates jobs and the income to pay the taxes that funds government, funds the public companies and banks on Wall Street, and the privileged lives of our elite detractors. Now they repay us by trying to wipe us out.
Small business is at the breaking point. We’re tired of being your whipping boy and meal ticket rolled into one. What if your meal ticket went away? What if we simply refused to pay your bills anymore? Fund your own government. Fund your own wars. Fund your own welfare system. Fund your own failing public schools. Fund your own retirement.
My message to Obama and his progressive cabal is to tread carefully. You have reached a crisis point. The only group who can save this economy is at the point of open rebellion. If you continue to punish and demonize us, we’re going to leave. We don’t work for a boss, we don’t work for government, and we certainly don’t work for you. We work for ourselves and our families. We fight for our individual dreams, not yours. We fight for individuality, self-reliance, personal responsibility, and economic and personal freedom. The same things that our ancestors fought for…and founded America for. If government wants to be our boss, we’re quitting and going elsewhere. And if we leave, I hope you have a backup plan. Because there will be no one left to pay your bills. I’d advise turning out the lights, because the party’s over. And so is the American Dream.
