THE ENTERPRISE--A WHOLE NEW WORLD
HOW ONE STRUGGLING SMALL BUSINESS OWNER SEES IT
"Page one of this week's KIPLINGER FORECASTS foreshadows an enormous cost increase for our business due to our Congress' agenda on climate change.
"The cost of fuel and electricity will soar, despite swift growth in alternative [*] sources of energy, such as solar, geothermal and wind power. New regs will add 20% or so to electricity rates by 2020…and that’s over and above any increases anticipated from changes in supply and demand. All told, the average cost for residential, commercial and industrial users may be 50% higher than today… more in areas such as the Midwest and Southeast, where coal fired power dominates. There…a 100% hike. As for gasoline prices: About $2 a gallon more..."
Focusing on climate change when our country is a financial economy in intensive care, seems to be similar to a patient starting a light exercise program while they are bleeding to death!
Later on KIPLINGER shares the emerging DB(k) program that is, in their opinion, good for business. The last sentence: "The employer must match at least half of that 4%." WHERE DO THEY THINK THE MONEY COMES FROM FOR THESE THINGS? Congress has killed OUR customer's ability to move into retirement/Florida. For the first time, we have had a net loss of people from Florida.
The National Health care focus is misguided. It should focus on increased quality of thinking and treatment and increasing market COMPETITION for services. That is what brings prices down. Just look at Wal-Mart in dental, eye glasses and prescription medicine. That same competition CREATES jobs. Jobs for the people that need to spend on glasses and medicine as well as food/essentials.
Insurance and mandated care for the uninsured drives up our costs. Medicare pays 83% of all dollars charged. However, insurance gets 135% of all dollars in care (source: Glenn Beck radio show guest). So who really pays for care? We, the privately insured, do.
As if we (the company) don't have enough problems, the current bill states that employers with more than $250,000 in payroll will have to provide healthcare or pay the 8% penalty (i.e. FEE). WHERE DOES THAT MONEY COME FROM? I can't get it to cover our current expenses, let alone health care for 20 people! And it makes me wonder if the 8% is a % of PAYROLL? Holy crap batman... that is a big number. Even for a tiny business like us.
Without a dramatic improvement in the economy and our business, the above legislation an easily put us out of business. Result: Costs will far exceed market's willingness to pay prices to cover the costs. And for no fault of our own.
This is UNBELIEVABLE. Has everyone in Washington lost their freakin' minds?"
HOW AN ECONOMY WORKS: RICHARD SCARRY'S children's book: WHAT DO PEOPLE DO ALL DAY... is a simple enough illustration (see attached). The farmer uses his seeds and prepares the feed...he grows and harvest it. Sells it at the market in which the market sells it to food bakers and manufacturers, the farmer uses that money to buy food at the food stand where they pay the baker for the bread. The farmer buys clothes for family by paying the sewer who got his clothe from sheep farmer. When the farmer has covered his expenses, with the money leftover (that so called 'evil' profit) he buys a trikes and toys for his kids... which pays the manufacturer and its employees for building those toys.
How HARD IS IT TO SEE WHEN YOU HAVE GOVERNMENT TAKING 20-40% THERE IS NO MONEY LEFT OVER TO SPEND. Government does not create value. It simply redistributes.
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THE ABOVE IS THE SPONTANEOUS REACTION OF A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
But what it says is not limited to small businesses; a large part of this applies to many larger businesses too. The PROBLEM is that most of the new jobs in the USA are created by small businesses, and added as they grow (If they are allowed to grow). Existing large businesses are more often replacing labor with capital investment, or moving jobs offshore to lower cost labor markets. That means their challenge is a different one: to "shed overhead" quickly enough to keep pace with the rate that productive work (which the overhead was there to manage) is leaving their US operations. It is not easy to get ahead of the curve and cut OH fast enough when jobs start moving out. Few companies can swallow the bitter pill of cutting far enough, fast enough, and as a result, they don't make it. Globalization is here to stay, so let's deal with that. What's hard to deal with is that our so-called czars and experts and government leaders don't seem to understand the fundamentals of business as well as the late author of a children's book series.
HOW OUR ENVIRONMENT IS CHANGING--AND I DON'T MEAN GLOBAL WARMING
This week, I had already decided to take a "world view," even after I read that small business owner's plight. Globalization has changed the world in which we do business. It is more competitive, more diverse and in many ways, far more complex and challenging than ever before. That is no reason for alarm, at least not in the general sense. Global change affects most businesses, and thus only changes the balance of competition if it is discriminatory--or if the country in which some businesses are located is misguided, and pus its businesses at a disadvantage (sound familiar?). Global shifts have occurred before--from Europe to Japan to Taiwan/Korea to China and now to Vietnam, Indonesia and so forth. These are all somewhat to be expected. The rate of changes has accelerated, driven by the easy portability of information and knowledge--including the technical knowhow to compete in heretofore "insulated" markets. That is the challenge facing management today, but with that challenge comes opportunity as 4-6 Billion NEW consumers come into the global marketplace in locations we only previously knew from geography class.
HOW OUR WORLD IS CHANGING--IN THE USA
Our country is putting American business at a global competitive disadvantage and the trend will only make it worse. Businesses go out of business. Jobs go away in spite of DC/Obama rhetoric about "jobs saved." People suffer. No wonder a revolt is smoldering. We have a President, an administration, and a majority in Congress that is trying to use the current circumstances to reshape America into a European style, Socialistic government--in which the government controls much more--and doles out help to the poor, funded by taxing the wealth creators. This approach has made most of Europe into a struggling society, currently being overtaken by Muslim immigrants and suffering from birth rates so abysmally low that the native European populations will disappear in a few generations. The high birth rates of the Muslims will overwhelm natives in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, England, Belgium and the Netherlands--at first. Read the speech attached to see what one Dutch official said recently.
HOW WILL WE AMERICANS REACT
Certainly European companies still exist and do business, employing whatever combination of racial demographics they find, choose and hire. American companies with locations over there must do the same. A problem we have here in the USA is that our current tax rate on business is almost the highest in the world--exceed only by a small margin by Japan--another economy in decline with a very low birth rate and an aging population. But Japan is a small island, that has, historically, been over-populated for its size. It will, perhaps, be able to erect barriers to sustain its native culture. The USA is a very different story. We are a large country (geographically) and the world's largest economically (for now--until China catches us a decade or so in the future).
AMERICA HAS BEEN A LAND OF FREEDOM
Some would say that any good thing taken to excess may become a bad thing. They could be describing the USA. Our civil liberties have been commandeered by special interests--a vocal minority overwhelming the silent majority. Our political future is in question as a revolution is simmering. As the elected officials struggle with the effects of the recent recession, a wide array of alarming consequences are emerging.
Many states are broke! Many have spent themselves into the problem, but now the decline in tax revenues and the burdens of pension plans for aging retirees are worsening the problem dramatically. No one has an answer--at least not one they want to say out loud. When there is not enough funding to pay for everything, something must be cut, no matter how distasteful that is. The alternative is to raise taxes on an already overtaxed populace.
The Federal Government is technically insolvent (bankrupt)! With a deficit now at FOUR TIMES the already "too high" level when George Bush left office, the USA is in a deep, deep hole. To get a perspective of this, the projected deficit for this year along, is greater than the combined taxable income of the richest 5% of Americans! Clearly, taxing the rich is not going to fix this problem.
Entitlements are economically unsustainable--Social Security is bad; Medicare/Medicaid is worse! The figures vary by source but all sources cite more than $50 TRILLION in shortfalls. In case a Trillion is getting to vague, it's a MILLION MILLION. The only way to fix these is to raise the taxes that fund them AND reduce the benefits they provide AND raise the age at which those benefits are provided.
Social Security was created in the 1930's when life expectancy was 63! Here we are nearly 8-0 years later, and the retirement age is barely changed at all. I know, it is "creeping up" but way to little and way too slowly. Social Security retirement age needs to be raised by one year, each year from now until it equals the average life expectancy of Americans (which is 78). NO ONE WILL DO THAT. THERE IS NO CHANCE, ZERO, NIL, NADA. IF it was raised a year every two years until it reaches age 70, in 8 years from now, that would help. Combined with modest increases in taxation (removing the wage cap on contributions), Social Security would be solvent again--for as long as necessary.
Medicare/Medicaid is a MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM! That's why the debate about the overall health care, health insurance, etc. program is do important. President Obama is right about one thing: the health care system needs reform--desperately. He is also wrong in parts of how he's trying to go about that reform. That is what has so many people, especially older people, so concerned. First of all, any change will impact them more, sooner than the younger people. Second, most of the younger ones have given this area little thought, since it was not a problem for them. Third, many of them were who elected President Obama, and they trust him blindly and unquestioningly.
BACK TO THE NEW WORLD WE ARE IN
America is not competitive in many fields now, and it's getting worse. Manufacturing jobs are leaving here, although the USA is still the world's largest manufacturer, with China second but gaining rapidly. The current governmental directions will cripple the USA further. Reducing the cost of health care on employers would help except for the fact that it will be paid for by new taxes of one form or another. Cap & Trade, if passed, will do little to improve global warming (there is still no solid scientific proof that CO2 emissions really cause global warming--although other forms of pollution truly do). As usual the government solution is to treat an irrelevant symptom instead of the real problem. China, India and other world leading "polluters" will not play this game. They abhor doing anything that undermines their global competitive position. Wrong headed ideas like EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act) will flush further US jobs down the drain to Asia and other low cost labor markets.
THE TALENT SHORTAGE WE KEEP ENCOURAGING
For now, the US has one of the best university educational systems anywhere. That is why so many foreign students come here. In many leading schools, the classes are dominated by non-US students. We let them in freely. Then we don't just fail to try to keep them here. We force them to leave by letting their student visa expire. That is just the opposite of what we should do. Then we are so concerned about illegal aliens who are low income, indigent and lawless, that we curtail H1B visas which would allow exactly the skilled immigrants we need to come here. Is anybody thinking about this out there in Washington, DC? NO! As an aside, there is a projected shortage of 100,000 nurses in the USA--even if we figure out how to configure the health care system to pay them.
THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE--IT COMES DOWN TO A "TRUST ISSUE"
The reason the argument founders when it is based on what is in the "bill" is that whatever is in the bill's 1000+ pages now will probably change a dozen times by the time the Senate creates its version of it, and whatever President Obama says is or is not in there has about a 50-50 chance of being right. As it stands now, it doesn't matter what's in there. WE, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, SIMPLY DO NOT TRUST THE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS (especially the majority party doing writing most of the bill) TO COME UP WITH ANYTHING THAT WE'LL BELIEVE IN. Many Americans did trust President Obama, but since he abdicated his involvement in the job of drafting these critical laws, he comes across as a PR FLACK, whose job it is to "sell us on the bill, whatever it says." THAT JUST DOESN'T CUT IT. Send Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, and that bunch back home. Just don't let them write our laws any more.
TO CONGRESS & PRES. OBAMA: IRONICALLY, EVERYONE AGREES THAT HEALTH CARE "REFORM" IS NEEDED--BUT...
But most of us think the reform should be an improvement--not vice versa. Issues like "pre-existing condition" regulation are easy to reach agreement on. The so-called "death counseling sessions" were blown way out of proportion too--they were actually one of the better concepts in the bill--to help people prepare while they are lucid and rational--instead of dumping it on their families in time of crisis. The problems is that as much as we don't like insurance companies deciding on our health-care we like the government even less. The argument that Medicare works fine as run by the government is nonsense. Medicare waste and corruption is immense--in the billions of dollars. And, of course Medicare works better than private plans; the government only pays Doctors between 90-95% of their costs for services. And hospitals who care for the uninsured simply add a factor to their overhead and charge it to the insurance carriers who provide Medicare Supplements or regular health insurance. Finally, we just think you have gone wild on spending already, with no way to pay for it. Now you want to layer another one on top, and one which more likely than not gives the government more control over our lives, and less say-so on how we live them. NO THANKS. IF YOU DO PASS THIS RIDICULOUS BILL--OR ANYTHING LIKE IT--THERE IS A REAL CHANCE WE'LL THROW ENOUGH OF YOU OUT IN THE 2010 ELECTIONS THAT THE NEXT BUNCH WILL HAVE TO REPEAL IT AND RE-DO IT ALL.
A COLLEGE STUDENT OUTLINED AN INTERESTING PLAN (SEE BELOW)
I'm sure it would be hard to divide up the "land mass" but other aspects of this plan have merit. I once wrote a column entitled "The Coasts and the Chasm." I observed that the two coasts: East & West--and areas within about 50-100 miles of them are the largest concentration of news media, banking, investments, politicians and entertainment industries and their headquarters. Not surprising since countries are often settled from the coastal areas inward. The immense area in the middle--the Chasm-- from say, half of California and the Eastern 100 miles of New York, Pennsylvania, and so forth does rather mundane stuff like: manufacture most of everything made in the US, grow the vast majority of the crops and livestock for food, find, mine, pump and create most of the energy used, and so forth.
So just take the map below and imagine dividing off the outermost 50-100 miles of the East and West Coasts, leaving the Southern coast alone (stop at the Georgia border on the East coast). Yes, we'd lose Hollywood and Silicon Valley and Microsoft land, and Boston, Wall Street and Washington, DC, but what the heck. Something has to give. We could sell them food and energy and stuff in return for whatever of their services we wanted--IF they had any of their own money (taken from those of us in the "Chasm" left.
CRAZY--SURE--BUT...so it the "partisan divide" in our government now--and it's sure not getting any better. Remember: Government is supposed to work for the people; not vice versa.
Best, John
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YOUNG PERSON!!!
WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I'LL VOTE FOR HIM.
American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists
and Obama supporters, et al:
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this
latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I
know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future
generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.
Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on
what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and
chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each
taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our
two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be
relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly
divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate
tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are
welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and
war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are,
however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to
move all three of them).
We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical
companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved
homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot
Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles
and give you NBC and Hollywood .....
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right
to invade and hammer places that threaten us..You can have the
peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are
under assault, we'll help provide them security.
We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam,
Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N..
but we will no longer be paying the bill.
We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can
take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing
doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a
right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem.
I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the
World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.
We'll practice trickle-down economics and you can give trickle up
poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our
history, our name and our flag.
Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like
minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just
hit delete.
In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you Answer which one of us
will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara
Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.
P S. 2. And we won't have to press 1 for English.
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Eye-opening speech from the Netherlands
Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom,the Netherlands, at the Four Seasons, New York, introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem.
Dear friends,
Thank you very much for inviting me.
I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.
First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.
The Europe you know is changing.
You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.
All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.
There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.
Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.
In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.
Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.
In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.
In England Sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan.
Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run from the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.
A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.
Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. We have Muslim official state holidays.
The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept Sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.
Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators 'settlers'. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.
Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.
The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.
Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is Sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.
Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel because it is a democracy, and because Israel is our first line of defense.
This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Acehin Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.
The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.
Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a danger greater than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome,Athens and Jerusalem.
Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe, American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.
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I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -- Winston Churchill
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John L. Mariotti, President & CEO, The Enterprise Group, Phone 614-840-0959 http://www.mariotti.net http://mariotti.blogs.com/my_weblog/
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