Find out in this great article by Michael Lewes entitled Obama’s Way. Honestly it’s amazing anyone wants to do that job.

A while back President Obama was giving a speech somewhere and stumbled while delivery of line and said:

“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.”

The “that” in that line was the roads and bridges, but when delivered sounded like he was referring to the business. IE, you didn’t build that business. Republicans have used this in ads and as a theme. This is very similar to something Elizabeth Warren said a while back too:

“I think the basic notion is right. Nobody got rich on their own. Nobody. People worked hard, they build a business, God bless, but they moved their goods on roads the rest of us helped build, they hired employees the rest of us helped educate, they plugged into a power grid the rest of us helped build,”

So why does this annoy the hell out of me?

Because it’s true! The United States is the greatest business platform in the world right now. And I’m lucky enough to be able to launch my business on that platform.

The USA is like the app platform you use with your smart phone. Apple/Google provide the hardware infrastructure that delivers your product to consumers. The USA provides the road, power, and other infrastructure that make commerce possible. Apple/Google provide the software that runs those apps and the standards that enable a good playing field. The USA provides the standards through the FDA, Health Department, FBI, etc to provide a good playing field to business. Apple/Google take ~30% to cover that infrastructure, and so does the USA (less actually).

I totally understand and love the independent vibe, its part of what makes us Americans. That raw wild freedom that is our hero story, the American who goes west, who rides off into the dark wilderness to tame, build, and master. Who creates something out of nothing. I personally have an incredible addiction to this image, it is a struggle for me to find and develop a community because I so value being highly independent.

BUT… It’s simply not true. The modern global world is one that is built on everyone’s strengths and is interwoven beyond everyone’s comprehension.

I’m a business owner and entrepreneur.
I work my ass off to create and built my business.
But, I didn’t build this all by myself.

PS.
Each year I pay taxes and invest in the American system. I’m not happy with a lot of the regulations on small businesses, and a lot of the licenses that states create, but it is idiotic to imply you are building this on your own. I’m embarrassed for Republicans, the Republican party used to have good ideas, I used to like parts of their platform, just like I only like part of the Democratic platform. But in the last 10 years the Republican party has jumped into the crazy pool. This really sucks because there is no real debate on a macro level any longer. And I find that worrisome as there are some really important macro problems that need to be solved. But the choice in most national elections now is to vote for crazy idiots who don’t say anything but soundbites, or the Democrats who are floundering because they have no one to debate real ideas with. Eeek.

The NY Times released this awesome tool that allows you to go through and apply different items that will help to fix the budget and shortfall for 2015 and 2030. Check out the tool here but be warned it is super addictive!

Here are my my choices! And a couple notes:

1. Farm subsidies, Joel made a convincing argument on these, and I left them only because i want the subsidies moved towards promoting better eating. So away from corn…

2. Reduce the federal work force, this one I’m a tad split on and left it unchecked. I think we need to lower it but do it smartly. There are some offices that need more resources and some that do not. Personal need to go towards areas such as education, energy policy, SEC and bank monitoring and investigation, and other protective areas. I did however cut the 250k in government contractors.

3. On military I reduced our nuke and space spending, duh. I feel strongly we should keep troops in Asia and Europe and really push that up, its good for the country and for our ability to project force abroad. Which is also why I didn’t vote for reducing the navy and air force fleet as they enable us to do that. I cut some of the terrible programs like the osprey, we need to drop the cold war race against our self. And not cutting veterans benefits as that seems insulting. And I voted to reduce the troops to 60k by 2015, I’d love to do 30k but I don’t think that is as feasible.

4. With health care I voted to cap medicare growth as I’ve read some on that and it makes sense, and to enact medical malpractice reform. I also wanted to vote to reduce tax breaks on employer provided health insurance, but this should be done once we have a base government provided health care or at least something that you buy yourself. Then the added extra insurance through your employer should be taxed.

5. Social security… I voted to reduce social security to those with high incomes and use an alternative measure for inflation. I’m not huge on increasing the retirement age just yet.

6. Existing taxes. This is a big one for me and I would vote for the most moderate one by Lincoln, the Obama one is good too as its the same as Bushes. Investment taxes, we need to go with Obama’s proposal. And on the bush tax cuts I want to allow expiration of taxes for incomes above 250,000 a year. And allow the payroll tax for those above 106k a year.

7. New taxes… The millionaire tax needs to happen. In terms of overhaul I’m very for the Bowles Simpson plan, we need to bring corporate tax rates down while cutting loopholes and other tax deductions. Plus reducing mortgage deductoins for high income households.

This puts me at 43% savings from tax increases and 57% from spending cuts… It puts me around 42 billion over the 2015 shortfall and it puts me 185 billion in surplus over the 2030 shortfall.

Now, I am very interested in a national VAT tax of 5%… I like consumption taxes as right now Americans just consume consume consume and this might break that a bit and bring in much needed money we could focus on doubling teacher saleries and redoing our energy grid…

So here are my results to view.

Here is a nice dueling paragraph:

Health insurer WellPoint blames the Great Recession and rising medical costs for its planned 39 percent rate increase for some California customers. To President Barack Obama, however, it’s Exhibit A in his campaign to revive the health care overhaul.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who received the company’s explanation in a letter Thursday, said “it remains difficult to understand” how premium increases of that size by can be justified when WellPoint Inc. reported a $2.7 billion profit in the last quarter of 2009.

Read more here.

Of course their CA subsidiary could be loosing money but the MAIN POINT HERE should be that insurance companies are good businesses in that they are TRYING TO MAKE MONEY. I don’t blame them for that, I blame our government because they either need to slap some draconian laws down or they need to take over the health care industry. Health care is a right not a profit making industry.

Fantastic, what a strong person to go to them and call them out on their bullshit as well of some of his own parties bs. I’m so tired of the rhetoric on both sides, but especially the republicans as they seem to just want to do nothing when they don’t have the presidency. As if their job when they are in the minority is just to stop all forward progress, and to deny that the majority of Americans want universal health care!

As a lot of friends know I love someecards, they crack me up. I had to post this one when I saw it this morning.

The functionally idiotic people of the USA have joined together and decided that Obama is a number of things, and as always I am amazed at how awesome Obama is to have mastered so many ideologues. Truly the man, nah the second son of Christ is a genius! I hope the liberal third reich arrives soon so that I can sacrifice small children to my new overlords.

What is wrong with these people? When did Republican start meaning crazy? When will the normal republican people start distancing themselves from these crazies? I would never want to be called a democrat, and that is like 10x better than what the republican party has become. Where are the logical people who want smaller government, to balance our budget, and who can focus on real issues? Instead we get stupid people who think Obama is not a citizen, disrespect him during his speeches, and think that he is a secret muslim/socialist/nazi. This shit weakens our country and makes Canada look like a good place to live (just kidding Canada).

Myself and Joel are heading out to Denver Colorado tomorrow to find a place to live and setup an office. We are 99% done with this new business deal, once we actually close I’ll post some more info :). We are going to be staying with Dmarsh while we are out there! Looking forward to cold weather, snow, and starting some work!

In other news I voted early yesterday so that is all taken care of. I really hope Obama wins, I think he is going to be way better for the global economy and the foreign perception of what America is about. Plus that Palin women is just fraking crazy and since statistically McCain should probably die of natural causes during his first term in office we would be stuck with Bush in a skirt.