Who said: I have never seen our government as hostile to free enterprise

[Markle]

Bernie Marcus explains here why our job market is so dismal and why so few businesses are starting. Lame Duck President Barack Hussein Obama's over and punishing regulations.

“I have never seen our government as hostile to free enterprise, especially small business, as it is today. It is driving over-regulation, over-taxation, over-litigation, and over-spending. These ‘overs’ are killing small businesses, which create the majority of new jobs in America.”

The above paragraph appears at the end of this essay by Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot. In a disclosure, I own stock in Home Depot.

“I draw even more from lessons learned when we founded The Home Depot in 1978 rather than from the contentious GOP primary of 2016. I genuinely believe that if we to started The Home Depot today, we would fail because of the hurdles government, especially the current administration, places in front of small business owners. I never forget The Home Depot’s small business roots — we started as a small business with four stores in Atlanta, Georgia.

“I think of the banker who nearly lost his job by taking a risk and giving us a line of credit when we started. He didn’t just look at our balance sheet; he believed in our character and determination. Government regulators don’t allow this under Dodd-Frank — a law Hillary Clinton wants to make far worse.

“And going public under Sarbanes-Oxley, a Clinton favorite? Not the company we built, nor thousands of other businesses like ours the nation will never know because they died at birth, strangled by faceless bureaucrats and politicians who erroneously believe that government ‘can do it better.’

“Yet the risks we took in the 1970s have resulted in millions of jobs — not just at The Home Depot, but at our suppliers, our vendors, and even our customers’ businesses. Investors believed in us, and the government did not stop us.

“We could not do this today, for the same reason why so many Americans have dropped out of the workforce, why their wages have been stagnant, why their health care is a mess, and why our economy has stalled. It’s Obama/Clinton-style government that’s getting in the way.

“I have never seen our government as hostile to free enterprise, especially small business, as it is today. It is driving over-regulation, over-taxation, over-litigation, and over-spending. These ‘overs’ are killing small businesses, which create the majority of new jobs in America.”

[...]

Read more: Bernie Marcus makes the case for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton | Kyle Wingfield

Why I Stand With Donald Trump | RealClearPolitics

 

[Rshermr]

Bernie Marcus explains here why our job market is so dismal and why so few businesses are starting. Lame Duck President Barack Hussein Obama's over and punishing regulations.

“I have never seen our government as hostile to free enterprise, especially small business, as it is today. It is driving over-regulation, over-taxation, over-litigation, and over-spending. These ‘overs’ are killing small businesses, which create the majority of new jobs in America.”

The above paragraph appears at the end of this essay by Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot. In a disclosure, I own stock in Home Depot.

“I draw even more from lessons learned when we founded The Home Depot in 1978 rather than from the contentious GOP primary of 2016. I genuinely believe that if we to started The Home Depot today, we would fail because of the hurdles government, especially the current administration, places in front of small business owners. I never forget The Home Depot’s small business roots — we started as a small business with four stores in Atlanta, Georgia.

“I think of the banker who nearly lost his job by taking a risk and giving us a line of credit when we started. He didn’t just look at our balance sheet; he believed in our character and determination. Government regulators don’t allow this under Dodd-Frank — a law Hillary Clinton wants to make far worse.

“And going public under Sarbanes-Oxley, a Clinton favorite? Not the company we built, nor thousands of other businesses like ours the nation will never know because they died at birth, strangled by faceless bureaucrats and politicians who erroneously believe that government ‘can do it better.’

“Yet the risks we took in the 1970s have resulted in millions of jobs — not just at The Home Depot, but at our suppliers, our vendors, and even our customers’ businesses. Investors believed in us, and the government did not stop us.

“We could not do this today, for the same reason why so many Americans have dropped out of the workforce, why their wages have been stagnant, why their health care is a mess, and why our economy has stalled. It’s Obama/Clinton-style government that’s getting in the way.

“I have never seen our government as hostile to free enterprise, especially small business, as it is today. It is driving over-regulation, over-taxation, over-litigation, and over-spending. These ‘overs’ are killing small businesses, which create the majority of new jobs in America.”

[...]

Read more: Bernie Marcus mak
es the case for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton | Kyle Wingfield

Why I Stand With Donald Trump | RealClearPolitics

Greatl A pair of opinion pieces written by right wing zealots. Anyone who would vote for a nutcase like Trump pretty much looses the vast majority of us.
Here is another of the far right wing nut cases, making the case that Obama is anti business. It is, of course, nonsense. But this time, it is checked for fact content by PolitiFact. Uh oh. Actual unbiassed consideration of the statements. That is likely to be bad for you:

"In an accompanying chart, Cembalest reported that in the Obama administration, fewer than 10 percent of the Cabinet appointees counted under those rules had private sector experience. (The chart has since been updated -- more on that in a second.) According to the chart, all other administrations going back to Theodore Roosevelt's had rates in at least the high 20s, with the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations approaching 60 percent. (Cembalest wrote in a footnote that the data came from a number of sources, including capsule biographies of Cabinet members posted on the website of the University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs.)

The chart — reprinted by itself, without Cembalest's accompanying narrative — circulated in the conservative blogosphere for a couple of days before eventually being picked up by Beck.

PolitiFact writer Louis Jacobson looked into Beck's claim back then, and found much lacking.

In Obama's Cabinet, at least three of the nine posts that Cembalest and Beck cite — a full one-third — are occupied by appointees who had significant corporate or business experience. (The Cabinet technically includes 15 department heads and Vice President Joe Biden.)

Shaun Donovan, Obama's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, served as managing director of Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., where he oversaw its investments in affordable housing loans. Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed the electronics research lab at one of America's storied corporate research-and-development facilities, AT&T Bell Laboratories, where his work won a Nobel Prize for physics. And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in addition to serving as Colorado attorney general and a U.S. senator, has been a partner in his family's farm for decades and, with his wife, owned and operated a Dairy Queen and radio stations in his home state of Colorado.

Three other Obama appointees had legal experience in the private sector.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke spent part of their careers working as lawyers in private practice. Clinton and Vilsack worked as private-sector lawyers at the beginning of their careers, while Locke joined an international law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, after serving as governor of Washington state. At the firm, Locke "co-chaired the firm's China practice" and "helped U.S. companies break into international markets," according to his official biography. That sounds like real private sector experience to us.

Finally, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm that advises international corporations on political and economic conditions overseas.

The occupants of the two remaining Cabinet posts cited in the chart do not appear to have had significant private-sector experience: Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Obama's Cabinet has even more private-sector experience if you go beyond those nine positions. Vice President Joe Biden, officially a Cabinet member, founded his own law firm, Biden and Walsh, early in his career, and it still exists in a later incarnation, Monzack Mersky McLaughlin and Browder, P.A. And Office of Management and Budget then-director Peter Orszag -- that position too has Cabinet-level rank -- founded an economic consulting firm called Sebago Associates that was later bought out by a larger firm. (Orszag stepped down in July and the agency is now being run by acting director Jeffrey Zients -- who has his own private-sector experience as a managing partner for an investment firm focused on business and health care services companies.)

Now Southerland used the term "administration," which has a much broader context than just Obama's Cabinet.

National Journal examined a larger group of senior Obama administration appointees in June 2009, and found that more than one in four have experience as business executives. That compared with the 38 percent the magazine found eight years earlier at the start of George W. Bush's administration. Still, the numbers for Obama are at least three times higher than the level claimed by Southerland.

The author of the chart quoted by Beck and requoted by Southerland, Cembalest, told PolitiFact that any effort to address the topic is heavily subjective, and he expressed regret that his work had been used for political ends, saying that it was not his intention to provide fodder for bloggers and talk show hosts.

Cembalest said he has "written 250,000 words in research over the last decade, and every single thing I've ever done — except this one chart — was empirically based on data from the Federal Reserve" or another official source. "This is the one time I stepped out into making judgment calls, and I assure you I won't do it again. ... The frightening thing about the Internet is that people copy one chart from what you write and then it goes viral. So I've learned a lesson here that these kinds of issues are best left addressed by the people who practice them day in and day out."

After the controversy in 2009, Cembalest updated his chart to reflect that more than 20 percent of Obama Cabinet appointees had private sector experience.

That brings us back to Southerland. He said that "92 percent" of Obama's administration has "never worked outside government." While rating someone's degree of private-sector experience is an inexact science, Southerland at the least is guilty of failing to keep up with Cembalest's own opinion on the matter. Cembalest now says that of Obama's Cabinet appointees that he studied, more than 20 percent have private sector experience. But more than that, the study itself is highly subjective, first because it cherry picks what Cabinet appointees to consider, and second because it unilaterally tries to define private sector work. On top of that, Southerland didn't single out the Cabinet, but instead said "administration," which is a far wider pool of people.

We rate this claim False."
None

So, how has he done:
"Obama's Presidency: The Facts
People have many perceptions of how the US economy or the country as a whole has done in recent years. Depending on your political views, you may think the country is doing exceptionally well or is teetering on the verge of collapse.

Listed below are fourteen objective facts, without interjected opinion, about the state of America under the leadership of President Obama. Every statement is followed up with a link to a reputable source where you can verify the fact for yourself.

1. We've now had 71 straight months of economic expansion.
That’s right: For seventy-one consecutive months, the US economy has gotten progressively better. That includes a new record for consecutive months of private sector job growth. Forbes magazine (which is no fan of President Obama) crunched the numbers and demonstrated how the economic recovery under President Obama has been better in just about every measurable way than the recovery under President Reagan.

Source: Obama Out-Performs Reagan on Jobs, Growth, and Investing; Forbesmagazine.

2. We are currently enjoying the longest period of private sector job creation in American history.
This statistic also comes from the Forbes magazine article listed above. In fact, we've enjoyed 68 straight months of private sector job creation. That is the longest period of job creation since the Department of Labor has been keeping statistics.

Source: Obama’s Claim That Businesses Are in the "Longest Uninterrupted Stretch of Job Creation": The Washington Post.

3. Unemployment has dropped from 10.1% in October of 2009 to 4.9% by early 2016.
Not only has the unemployment rate dropped significantly, but since the recession ended, the US economy has gained over twelve million new jobs. (You can refer to the Forbes article above or check the article below.)

Source: Democratic Presidents Bring It: Obama Shatters Clinton’s Record For Private Sector Job Growth: PoliticusUsa.

It is also worth noting that during the 2012 presidential election, Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney, promised to lower the unemployment rate to 6% by the end of 2016. President Obama succeeded at lowering unemployment to under 6% two full years earlier than Romney had promised.

Source : Romney vows to lower unemployment to 6% by the end of 2016: The Hill

4. The stock market continues to set new record highs since President Obama took office.
Since early 2009, there has been a steady upward trend in stock market growth. The Dow Jones Industrial averages reached an all-time high of 18,292 in May, 2015. Since most Americans have 401K retirement investments in the stock market, this growth benefits millions of middle class Americans.

Source: Dow Jones Industrial Average Last 10 Years: Macrotrends.

5. The Federal budget deficit is shrinking. It’s been reduced by two-thirds since 2009.
The $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit that Obama inherited in 2009 was in a large part due to the high rate of unemployment. When millions of people were put out of work in 2008 and 2009, it resulted in far less income taxes and less economic activity to generate federal revenue. As eleven million people have regained employment, there have been billions more tax dollars generated. As a result, the deficit has been shrinking each year. The 2015 deficit was $439 billion, the smallest deficit since 2007, and roughly 70% lower than it was in 2009.

Source: What is the Deficit?: USGovernmentSpending.com.

6. Under President Obama, government spending has increased only 3.3% annually, the lowest rate since Eisenhower was president.
You may have heard critics say that President Obama is spending money wildly and running up our debt. According to this article from Forbes, Obama has increased spending by 1.4% annually, far less than President Reagan (8.7%) or George W. Bush (8.1%). According to a more recent article from the Washington Post, Obama has increased spending 3.3% annually. In either case, Obama has increased spending less than any president since Eisenhower.

Sources: Who Is the Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama? Forbes magazine.
The Facts About the Growth of Spending Under Obama: Washington Post.

7. For 95% of American taxpayers, income taxes are as low or lower than they were at almost any point in the last 50 years.
After President Obama took office, thousands of Tea Party members all over the country held rallies protesting Obama’s tax increases. At that time, President Obama had actually passed several tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Most of the Tea Partiers who were protesting had only seen their taxes decrease under Obama, yet polls indicated that most Tea Party members wrongly believed their taxes had gone up.

In fact, the only people whose income taxes have gone up during Obama’s presidency are those making $400,000 per year or more. That's less than 2% of the population. Today, for the vast majority of people, tax rates are lower than or exactly where they were when Obama first took office. The article below from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains this in greater detail.

Source: Federal Income Taxes on Middle-Income Families Remain Near Historic Lows, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

8. Dependence on foreign oil has shrunk due to record domestic oil production and improved fuel efficiency standards.
While some claim that oil production has declined under President Obama, the truth is just the opposite. Oil production has reached record highs. The United States now produces so much oil that we export more oil and gasoline than we import.

Source: IndexMundi.

9. At least 18 million more Americans now have health insurance than before.
Depending on whose numbers you use, anywhere from 12 to 18 million Americans acquired health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act. Now that those millions of Americans have insurance, the rest of us are no longer on the hook to pay for their healthcare when they get sick. This saves the American people billions of dollars in the long run.

Source: Obamacare Helped Up to 10 Million Get Insurance, Gallup Finds: NBC News.

10. The Affordable Care Act has added years to the life of Medicare.
The Medicare trust fund had been on course to run out of money by the end of 2016. But due to cost savings from the Affordable Care Act and lower healthcare expenses, Medicare’s trust fund will now remain stable until the year 2030 without cutting benefits.

Source: Medicare, Social Security Disability Fund Headed in Different Directions;The Wall Street Journal.

11. Since passage of the Affordable Care Act, we are seeing the slowest rate of increase in healthcare costs since 1960.
Contrary to the Republican predictions, healthcare costs have increased at a much slower pace since the passage of the ACA.

Source: Trends in Health Care Cost Growth and the Role of the Affordable Care Act; White House Report.

12. We currently have fewer soldiers, sailors, and airmen in war zones than we did at any time in the last 12 years.
With the end of the Iraq war and the steady withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, we have fewer people in war zones now than we did at any time since 2002.

13. There have been zero successful attacks by al Qaeda on US soil since Obama became president.
Despite Dick Cheney’s warning that if voters elected a Democrat as president, we’d be “hit again and hit hard” by al Qaeda, we have actually been far safer from terrorist attacks on US soil in recent years than we were under the previous president. There have been several unsuccessful attacks against the US under both Bush and Obama, but under Obama, al Qaeda has been largely unsuccessful in striking the US on our home soil.

Source: Timeline of Al Qaeda Attacks

14. We now successfully catch and deport more illegal immigrants than ever before.
Despite the mythology being spread by President Obama's political opponents about our "open border" with Mexico, the numbers prove that President Obama has turned back and deported more illegal immigrants than any other president.

Politifact checked the claim that President Obama turned away more illegal immigrants than any other president, and they confirmed that under President Obama, the US has turned back or deported an average of 32,886 people per month. That's a far greater rate than any other president in history by far.

Source: Has Barack Obama deported more people than any other president in U.S. history? Tampa Bay Times.

But, con tools all think that this president has done nothing. Truth is, if you look at congress, you will find where nothing has been done. Look to the right side of the aisle.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Here is another of the far right wing nut cases, making the case that Obama is anti business.

Obama is obviously anti business communist. He had 3 communist parents and voted to left of Bernie Sanders who is openly communist.

Obamacare is prime example of being pro socialist govt not pro business. 1+1=2,

 

[Markle]

Source: Has Barack Obama deported more people than any other president in U.S. history? Tampa Bay Times.
But, con tools all think that this president has done nothing. Truth is, if you look at congress, you will find where nothing has been done. Look to the right side of the aisle.

 

[Rshermr]

Source: Has Barack Obama deported more people than any other president in U.S. history? Tampa Bay Times.
But, con tools all think that this president has done nothing. Truth is, if you look at congress, you will find where nothing has been done. Look to the right side of the aisle.

Watch it, me poor ignorant con tool. Laughing at things that are just facts is a normal symptom of being a congenital idiot. Which you are.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

But, con tools all think that this president has done nothing.

no, most agree he has crippled the economy with idiotic socialism.

Here's how Bill Clinton described it:

“The problem is, 80% of the American people are still living on what they were living on the day before the [2008 finnan*cial] crash. And about half the American people, after you adjust for inflation, are living on what they were living on the last day I was president 15 years ago. So that’s what’s the matter.”

 

[Markle]

no, most agree he has crippled the economy with idiotic socialism.

Here's how Bill Clinton described it:

“The problem is, 80% of the American people are still living on what they were living on the day before the [2008 financial] crash. And about half the American people, after you adjust for inflation, are living on what they were living on the last day I was president 15 years ago. So that’s what’s the matter.”

Which, considering his wife is running on the record of Lame Duck President Barack Hussein Obama, is pretty remarkable.

I'm curious if, since Bill says he does not use email, Hillary texted him a few choice words.