Job Growth Is Stalled: Can Politicians Fix The Problem?

by Austin Hill 
The economy is sluggish and job creation is almost non –existent. That means it’s time for politicians and government bureaucrats to control yet even more of our money – right?

If you really believe that government is the entity from whom all blessings flow, and if you really believe that politicians and government bureaucrats do better things with your money than you do, then yes – it’s time for more government control of our economy. 

That’s what President Obama was calling for last week in his speech about “income inequality,” the buzz phrase of choice for 2014 among those who believe, as he does, that politicians can and do spend our money better than “ordinary” citizens.  And with the President having established the phrase, its now up to like-minded liberals in the worlds of academia, media, entertainment and government to repeat that phrase incessantly between now and November’s elections.

That’s why it was no surprise to see University of California – Berkley Professor and former presidential adviser Robert Reich combine the President’s “income inequality” phrase with the disastrous employment report from December in an editorial that calls for – “shocking!”- more control of our economy by politicians! Mr. Reich won’t be persuaded to rethink his views, but his ideas will be reiterated all year by people who have no alternative ideas of their own, so be prepared to hear both the President’s and Mr. Reich’s rhetoric to be frequently repeated.

Below is a list of some of Mr. Reich’s plan, with accompanying details that he, and other “government knows best” liberals prefer to ignore:

Launch a major jobs program to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure: Mr. Reich is correct, that huge chunks of our nation’s infrastructure are “crumbling.” What he ignores is the fact that President Obama and the previous congress already launched what was promised to be a “major jobs program” to rebuild our infrastructure – it was called the “Economic Stimulus Bill.”

Remember Senator Obama’s promises of “shovel ready jobs” once he took office? That’s what the President’s  stimulus plan, officially known as the “American Recovery and Reinvestment” Act, was supposed to have produced.  It began with a price tag of $787 billion and ended up costing about $831 billion (note: only government can get away with miscalculating by $50 billion, not private businesses). Our infrastructure is still crumbling, but current and future generations of Americans are nonetheless saddled with the $831 billion in debt (and that isn’t including the interest).

 Rehire all the teachers, social workers, police, and other public service employees who were laid off in the recession: This sounds and “feels” terrific – why wouldn’t everybody want full employment for teachers, cops, and so forth? The real question, however, is this: how badly were federal, state and local government workers actually hurt by the recession, as compared to us lowly people who work in the private sector?

In truth, huge chunks of President Obama’s “stimulus bill” funds were spent either on state and local government workers themselves, or on government programs that provided things for already existing government employees to do. The Obama Adminstration's “Race to the Top” program for public schools took $4.35 billion out of the stimulus bill fund, and gave employed teachers and school administrators lots of hoops to jump through.  The Administration’s “Booty Call” sexually transmitted diseases education program spent another $335 million of the stimulus funds, and gave government social workers lots of important things to do (although one can imagine that this program,  in particular, stimulated something other than the economy).

Indeed, state and local government workers (as well as federal employees) have done relatively well since the recession, as compared to the rest of us. Combine this with the fact that most all government employees receive a defined benefit retirement pension that is backed by taxpayers (where do you fine retirement like that in the private sector these days?), and a government job looks pretty comfortable in light of the frailties of the private sector.

Raise the minimum wage at least to its inflation-adjusted value 40 years ago — which would be well over $10 an hour:  Once again it feels good to propose such an idea, as long as you don’t look at the consequences – and higher wage requirements imposed by governments almost always bring about a decline in business and job growth. 

Worse yet, Reich makes no reference in his recent editorial to the actual source of genuine job creation: the local small business owner who is willing to work hard, take risks, and hopefully create genuine authentic wealth over time.  If liberals would listen to what small business America is saying, they might learn about the perils of a lack of small business lending, or the fear instilled in the hearts of business owners by an out of control I.R.S. and E.P.A. and U.S. Department of Justice.

But to acknowledge that government agencies and programs might be a part of our economic problem is incomprehensible to the government-centric liberals among us. Hopefully there are sufficient numbers of our fellow Americans who do comprehend this reality, and make better choices in the elections that lie ahead.

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Why No More Job Creation? Talk To The Twelve-Year Old

by Austin Hill
“So, what did you do during your summer break?”  If you happen to be a certain 12 year old boy from Pocatello, Idaho, you spent the summer being productive and successfully carrying on an entrepreneurial venture, and then experiencing your state government cracking-down on you for not being licensed and demanding a portion of your revenues.

The 12 year old son of Jason Weeks is who we’re talking about. Weeks’ son announced at the beginning of the summer that he wanted to acquire a motorcycle. Weeks had the good sense to tell his son to earn money and purchase one for himself. So the son took the father’s advice, and – presumably with some help from some adults – he launched a fruit stand, right near a Red Wings Shoe store in small town Pocatello.

But soon after Weeks’ son launched, the Idaho State Tax Commission lunged.  
“They confronted him first and he called me” Weeks told the Idaho State Journal newspaper.  “It was the second day that my son was in business.”


According to Weeks and the local newspaper, the state is demanding payment for a 6% state sales tax that they claim should have been collected by the boy from cash paying customers that bought his raspberries. Weeks would not return my calls prior to the writing of this piece, but, without commenting specifically about the incident, the state tax commission acknowledges that it happened and notes that they have to enforce the law with everybody.


Americans everywhere should make note of this situation and learn from it.  Lesson number one is that nobody should attempt to launch any sort of business in the United States without making certain that they are in full compliance with city, county, state and federal regulations.  That’s a tall order, but that’s how costly it has become to do business in America.


Governments nationwide and at all levels are almost universally on the hunt for money, and many of them are broke.  There is no limit to governments’ willingness to turn people upside down and shake cash out of their pockets, and they’ll even do it with children (the Idaho state tax commission had a similar run-in with a 6 year old back in 2010!).  If a business is being operated without the proper licensure and permitting requirements being met, and without proper taxation procedures in place, an operator no matter their age will likely be fined for being out of compliance, and fined retroactively for however long the non-compliance has been happening.  Business owners, beware.
The other great lesson in this situation is to realize that we live in an era of abusive government.

Agents of city, county, state and federal government often don’t know any limits to how they can and will exercise their powers over the lives of private individuals, and the cause of the problem is we, the people. With often less than 50% of the American population participating in U.S. presidential elections, voter turn-out for state and local elections is usually even smaller. Such ambivalence is emboldening to bureaucrats and politicians who have power and enjoy using it.


Abusive government won’t stop until Americans wake up and choose otherwise.  Hopefully the young Mr. Weeks from Pocatello – and others in his generation – will someday choose more wisely than today’s adult population.


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Profits! Hating Them When They’re High, And Panicking When They’re Low

by Austin Hill
Breaking news: some of America’s largest corporations have begun to report declining profits. For those that are offended by highly profitable corporations, this should be really great news.


But nobody is celebrating. In fact, the sagging profits reports are thought to be such a bad thing that some believe they sent the Dow sliding downward last week, for fear that a global recession has arrived.

If profits are such a terrible thing, why aren’t we relieved by their decline?

For the record, I have no idea whether or not a recession is eminent. And to the extent that economic activity is nearly impossible to predict with precision, nobody else knows either.

But regardless of whether the economy is moving up or down, Americans need to grapple with this “love-hate” attitude towards profitable enterprise. And let’s start with a couple of philosophical questions: Are profits always a good thing for a company to produce? And is it okay for one company to be really, really, profitable, even when other companies are not?

In some spheres of life – collegiate and professional athletic competitions, for example –Americans have no problem accepting the fact that with each match-up, some will succeed while others fail. Yet when it comes to business, success in producing profits is often seen as merely a necessary evil – and only acceptable if the profits aren’t “excessive.”

Part of the dilemma may well be that far too many Americans assume economics to be, as the term goes, a ‘zero-sum game.” Just as it is the case in many sporting events that one team wins and the other loses, so also it is assumed that if one individual or group is profitable, it necessarily causes somebody else’s unprofitability.

That, of course, is a false assumption. In our competitive free market economy, success with one enterprise often creates new markets in which other companies can succeed.

An easily understood example of this is the coffee house industry. In the 1980’s, Starbucks took the concept of the local coffee house where people meet and spend time together and drink beverages, and turned it in to a global business phenomena. And since the earliest beginnings of Starbucks, several other coffee house chains have been launched - Moxie Java, Tully’s Coffee, and Caribou Coffee to name a few - as an effort to capitalize on the burgeoning coffee house market. While today Starbucks remains the largest chain of its kind, these other newer and smaller companies have nonetheless benefited from Starbucks’ success, in as much as Starbucks essentially created the market for the modern-day coffee house in the first place.

But economic realities are one thing, and people’s perceptions are something different. And at present America is surrounded by an ever-present hostility towards profitable businesses – much of which emanates from the highest levels of our government.

Some of us saw this era of hostility coming. Back in 2008 while he was campaigning for the presidency, Then-Senator Obama made it a point to chastise American businesses nearly every time a robust earnings report was published. In the summer of that year, as an example, speaking to a stadium full of adoring followers, the President-to-be made it clear his disdain for the petroleum industry:

“First of all,” candidate Obama stated, “you’ve got oil companies making record profits…no… no companies in history have made the kind of profits the oil companies are makin’ right now…They..they…….one company, Exxon Mobil, made eleven billion dollars…billion, with a “b” ….last quarter….they made eleven billion dollars the quarter before that…makin’ money hand-over-fist…makin’ out like bandits…”

Imagine that! “Makin’ out like bandits” – that’s an amazing assessment of a successful business enterprise, suggesting that posting profits is tantamount to thievery. Of course at that moment in time, the early signs of a recession were appearing, and it was politically viable to send the message that “if we can’t all prosper right now, then none of us should prosper right now,” and his vitriol over the profitability of the Exxon Mobil Corporation played well with the crowd.

Yet Mr. Obama’s disdain for business “profits” has continued throughout his presidency. Fast forward to February 7th of 2011 when the President addressed an audience of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Speaking of the improving balance sheets that were emerging within many American companies at that time, President Obama stated: “The benefits can’t just translate into greater bonuses and profits for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that expanding trade and opening markets will lift their standards of living, as well as your bottom line…”

Of course, we’re talking here about our Ivy League-graduate President. Surely he, of all people, understands that profits aren’t simply “shared” - they are “earned.” And surely he realizes that when a company is profitable, it’s not merely the C.E.O. that benefits (investors, employees, and customers benefit from profitability as well). Certainly the President of the United States understands these most basic concepts of free market enterprise.

But we never hear that from our President. Nor do we hear much praise at all for successful, profitable enterprise from anybody in our government. It’s usually anger and disgust when profits are good, and promises of intervention and “stimulus” when profits are bad.

It’s a very self-serving and destructive game that our politicians play. And they will keep on playing, until Americans come to terms with profits.


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Equal Opportunity Destroyers: Politicians Of All Types Damage Small Business America

by Austin Hill
It’s not just an out-of-control IRS or EPA. And it’s not merely the punitive demands and restraints of the new federal healthcare law.

American enterprise is being stifled and squelched by state and local governments, in ways that most Americans don’t even see. With increasing propensity, elected officials nationwide are at times suffocating private businesses with regulations, and at other times competing directly against them – and it happens among both Democrats and Republicans.

A striking reminder of this emerged last week, when it was reported that Democrat San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was contemplating some sort of “ban” on alcohol sales during the Super Bowl. Drunken vandals got out of hand last year in “the City by the Bay,” when the Giants swept the World Series. The same thing could happen on Super Bowl Sunday this year, with either a 49ers win or loss. So, therefore, the city should step in and try to keep the booze away from the bad guys – at least that’s how the official reasoning went.

The news first emerged with local newspaper and radio websites reporting that the Mayor was seeking a ban. By the time global publications like “International Business Times” had picked up on it, the Mayor had tempered his rhetoric a bit, saying that he was “seeking input from business owners” on how to prevent alcohol-induced vandalism.

The irony here is obvious. This is, after all, San Francisco, a place where, in terms of social and cultural “norms,” almost anything goes. It’s the city where elected officials almost did not pass a ban on public nudity for the first time last November, and yet city officials now want to control liquor consumption.

But here’s the part of the story that nobody reports: such mandates by local governments, arbitrary and unexpected as they often are, damage businesses. Restaurant and bar owners all over the country are naturally banking on steady foot traffic and lots of food and beverage sales on Super Bowl Sunday. No doubt some owners craft their monthly or quarterly budgets around an expected uptick in sales on that day. When politicians disrupt this, they hurt small business owners.

But travel northward some 1200 miles or so from San Francisco, and a less imaginable, more difficult to understand phenomena is happening with private enterprise the worse for it. The state government of Idaho has actually developed a voracious appetite for buying and owning for-profit small businesses of a variety of sorts, and competing against private owners.

Language in that state’s Constitution declares that the land originally granted from the federal government for the creation of Idaho must be managed “in such manner as will secure the maximum long term financial return to the institution to which granted.” From that language, Idaho politicians down through the ages have determined that they have a “fiduciary responsibility” to produce investment returns. So once the first of the original endowment lands were sold, a trust account was established, and state politicians have been “investing” the money in for-profit businesses ever since.

In the past four years alone, the state government of Idaho has purchased everything from a neighborhood beer pub to commercial office space, all under the leadership of Republican Governor C.L “Butch” Otter. This controversial practice came under national criticism back in 2010 when the Idaho government bought “Affordable Storage,” a small self-storage business in the capitol city of Boise, and then began telling would-be customers that “our rates are lower because we don’t have to pay taxes.” Ask residents of “red state” Idaho what they think of President Obama’s forced acquisitions of General Motors and the Chrysler Corporation, and they’ll likely tell you it was wrong. Yet most are unaware that their own state government is doing much the same as the President has done, and is competing against their business-owning neighbors.

While it’s hard to find an American politician who will tell you that they are anything short of “supportive” when it comes to small business ownership, it’s even more difficult to find one that really understands what it means to be that type of leader. The change in government policies that our nation needs won’t begin to happen, until American voters start paying attention and making better choices on election day.

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What If Americans Treated Athletes The Way Our Politicians Treat Business Owners?

by Austin Hill
Are you ready for some football?

The Rose Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the BCS National Championship – and in a few weeks, the Super Bowl – are all coming soon to a television near you.

But what if we all displayed the same disdainful attitudes towards the accomplished athletes on our TV screen that Washington politicians display towards accomplished business owners and executives? And why is it that so many Americans celebrate the individual achievements of people who run fast, throw far, and jump high, but look with suspicion and anger at individuals who earn money creating valuable products and services?

It’s been almost six months since President Barack Obama delivered his now famous “Roanoke Rant,” an event that touched-off a brief debate about the merits of business. While campaigning for re-election last July 13th in Virginia, the President delivered a speech at the city’s “Fire Station #1” – which presumably meant that he had plenty of city government employees in the audience – and, in what seemed like an off-script moment, lambasted private business owners who were disagreeing with his tax hike proposals.

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” the President said of business owners. “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.”

After the speech, critics claimed that the President was displaying his preference for taxpayer funded enterprise – in this instance, government schools and transportation systems – over and above privately owned and operated enterprises. The Obama campaign shot-back with their own spin, claiming the President was merely arguing that private businesses are reliant on both the personal initiative and hard work of their owners, along with taxpayer funded public infrastructure. And days later a video popped-up on Youtube showing U.S. Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren in 2011 reciting the exact same rhetoric that President Obama had delivered.

The Obama campaign’s explanation would have been fine, if not for a couple of problems. For one, the President failed to acknowledge in the speech that businesses pay taxes – lots of taxes – and help fund public schools and transportation systems (it’s not just that “somebody” does these things on behalf of business owners). Likewise, the President never acknowledged the other half of his campaign staff’s “explanation.” Yes, it is true that all of us, including business owners, benefit from the government infrastructure that surrounds us. But the President said nothing in his speech about how much hard work and discipline and personal initiative are necessary to build a successful business enterprise.

The Roanoke Rant came and went, and it obviously didn’t hurt the President’s campaign. Yet, two days after the speech, the President welcomed the Baylor University women’s basketball team to the White House and congratulated the players on a stellar championship season.

Speaking before the media, with the “Lady Bears of Baylor” standing on a platform behind him, the President recognized the achievements of the coaching staff, and then stated that “If there’s one thing to describe this team…it was dominant. Last season, the Lady Bears scored more points than any team in women’s college basketball history…”

Never did the President suggest that being “dominant” was problematic for the basketball team members. Likewise the President didn’t suggest that being the scoring leader was a selfish or greedy type of pursuit, or that the points were accrued by some sort of corrupt means. The President made it clear that the Lady Bears were number one, and they deserved to be recognized as such.

But what if the President treated the college athletes with the same scrutiny with which he spoke of private business owners two days earlier? Might there have been some government-sponsored underpinning to the ladies’ success that the President could have noted? No doubt some of the Lady Bears are attending Baylor University with scholarship funds, some of which are probably generated from private donors, but others of which are no doubt provided by taxpayer funded agencies.

Yet President Obama didn’t single-out any financial aid recipients and tell them “you didn’t get here on your own,” nor did he bother to remind the players that they didn’t build the courts that they play on and that they didn’t design the basketball. Instead, President Obama chose not to malign the basketball players and coaches at all, but rather, gave them high praise for the success that they had each achieved for themselves.

So, is the President merely symptomatic of a society that celebrates individual achievement on the playing field, but resents it in the corner office or the local store? Or is Barack Obama enabling us to become more disdainful of business owners as he points out their obvious reliance of infrastructure, while ignoring the taxpayer funded benefits that sports heroes enjoy?

It’s probably a combination of both. The President has been preaching spite towards private enterprise since at least 2007, and it has paid-off nicely for him in two national elections. And most of us will not watch the accomplishments of our favorite football players and teams over the next few weeks and say “…but you didn’t do that…somebody else paid for the turf you’re playing on… somebody else designed your uniform….there was a good coach along the way that somebody else paid for..”

Americans must again realize that all the government infrastructure and taxpayer funded services amount to nothing, if individual initiative is absent. And until we stop making a mockery of marketplace merit, prosperity will remain elusive.


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Starbucks, The Tech Sector, And The State Of American “Progressivism”

By Austin Hill
Something exciting just happened in San Francisco. And it should pose an intellectual challenge for those who call themselves “progressives.”

Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee beverage giant, announced that they will soon allow mobile telephone purchases in their stores. Get the new app from San Francisco-based Square, Inc. on your smart phone, order your drinks in the store, and – presto! - pay the bill with your iPhone or Android.

Along with this new approach to sales, Starbucks is also investing $25 million in Square Inc., and Starbucks C.E.O. Howard Schultz (a bona fide “food and beverage revolutionary”) will soon join Square’s Board of Directors. This was all quite surprising news- especially the part about a coffee company buying into a tech company -but it was nonetheless a cause for celebration in the City by the Bay. Yet another local “tech start-up” appears to be on its way to big things – and this one will likely make mobile retail a mainstream phenomenon.

]In the world of business and technology this is certainly progress – consumers will soon be given more choices and convenience, while retailers will have more opportunity to sell their products and generate revenues. And those who choose to invest their money in either of these companies (both the private equity partners of Square, Inc., and the Starbucks stockholders) will likely reap financial benefits as well. But despite all this additional progress – for consumers, retailers, investors, and for San Francisco’s private sector economy - one nonetheless has to ask: can we really call this development “progressive?”

Along with being an epicenter for business development and economic progress (think Apple, Twitter, Cisco Systems, Facebook – and in a bygone era, Levi Strauss and Co.), the San Francisco Bay Area is also an epicenter of political and cultural “progressivism.” And while “progressivism” began in the U.S. as a humanitarian reaction to the social ills accompanying industrialization, today it has become an anathema to human achievement and private enterprise. The result of this bizarre confluence is simply this: there are lots of self-described “progressives” in the United States who enjoy the benefits of private enterprise and human progress, but who nonetheless support some of the most regressive ideas and attitudes that exist in our society.

Consider further the relationship between Starbucks and “progressives.” Few people in the world question the ethics of Starbucks, as their corporate mission statement has always included a quest for “a balance between profitability and social conscience.” Ensuring that farmers are paid reasonably for their coffee beans, investing in the communities where they operate stores, recycling and conservation initiatives, and extraordinary compensation packages for employees (the company provides health and dental benefits to many of their part time employees) - these and other important agendas comprise the way in which Starbucks has always operated.

Starbucks remained consistent with these virtuous-yet-costly policies during the worst of the “great recession,” even as its stock value was tanking (the company is now headed upward again and many portfolio advisors once again recommend it as a “buy”). Yet when it comes to “progressive” activism, Starbucks is treated like every other for-profit, publicly traded entity – the company is simply presumed to be “greedy” and selfish because it seeks to produce a profit, and thus is vilified and maligned.

For “progressives” who believe that vandalism is appropriate (if you don’t respect people’s rights to own private property- a core tenet of capitalism-then it’s easy to justify destroying somebody else’s property) Starbucks is a prime target. Since the days of the 1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle when “progressives” damaged and impugned the company in its hometown, Starbucks has remained on the “progressive” activists’ hit list, and even during the past year’s “occupy” uprisings Starbucks stores were frequently the first to get trashed when violence broke-out. The humanitarian and eco-friendly efforts of Starbucks don’t matter to “progressives” of this sort – all they know is that Starbucks is a successful American corporation with a trans-national footprint, and therefore they are to be hated.

More civil-minded “progressives” likely reject this type of vandalism and violence, and some may even acknowledge and support Starbucks for its socially responsible track record. Yet they also support a President who maligns and vilifies American corporations at every turn, and who has advanced a public policy agenda that has stifled the growth of free enterprise rather than encouraging it.

Other “progressives” may support tech companies like Square, Inc., yet resent the fact that many such companies only design their products in the U.S. and have them manufactured elsewhere. A thoughtful person would at least consider how government policies may have driven labor costs upward and made manufacturing unfeasible in the U.S. – but “progressives” generally prefer to just be angry at American companies and then push for more punitive corporate taxation policies.

And do “progressive” owners of Starbucks stock have any idea what their presidential candidate of choice has in mind for their dividends? Shares of Starbucks many produce nicely over the next several months, but unless the President is stopped in November, taxes on dividend income will skyrocket in 2013.

Self-described “progressives” – in San Francisco and elsewhere – can enjoy the benefits of private enterprise like everyone else. Yet if their deeply-held attitudes and ideas prevail in America long-term, they will successfully bring about a “regression” of things that are important to all of us.


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Athletes Yes, Business Owners No

By Austin Hill
Why is it okay to be a successful athlete, but not a successful business owner?

It’s been nearly two weeks since President Obama delivered his now famous “Roanoke rant,” wherein he noted to entrepreneurs that, among other things, “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Apparently the President’s spite and vitriol for business owners isn’t playing so well with voters. By the middle of last week, the Obama campaign was doing damage control with a new video advertisement explaining that the President had just been “taken out of context,” and he actually loves business owners.

But watch the “full context” of the Roanoke speech, and it becomes even clearer that the President was once again speaking the language of collectivist economics. While assuming the absolute worst about the motives of business owners, President Obama was again suggesting that wealth creation and material success are neither to be attributed to, nor enjoyed by individuals – only the collective masses can take credit for such successes, and we should all collectively share in the blessings of one-another’s wealth.

Call it socialism, call it Marxism, call it what you like. The President has made it clear throughout his professional life that he loathes the economic success of individual companies and business owners (unless, of course, such business owners are donating to his campaign), and regards their financial achievements as ill-gotten gain.

But would you ever expect the President of the United States – even President Barack Obama – to apply this kind of thinking to athletes? And after the U.S. Olympic Athletes return home from London, will the President invite them to the White House and lecture them on how “somebody else made it happen?”

It’s unlikely that President Obama would treat the Olympic competitors with the disdain that he shows to business owners. And if his recent treatment of a certain women’s college basketball team is any indication, then the U.S. Olympic athletes may be in for a real treat.

Two days after his “you didn’t do that” speech about business owners, the Baylor University women’s basketball team was welcomed to the White House for some time with President Obama. Speaking before the media, with the “Lady Bears of Baylor” standing on a platform behind him, the President recognized the achievements of the coaching staff, and then stated that “If there’s one thing to describe this team…it was dominant. Last season, the Lady Bears scored more points than any team in women’s college basketball history…”

Never did the President suggest that being “dominant” was problematic for the basketball team members. Likewise the President didn’t suggest that being the scoring leader was a selfish or greedy type of pursuit, or that the points were accrued by some sort of corrupt means. The President made it clear that the Lady Bears were number one, and they deserved to be recognized as such.

And might there have been some government-sponsored underpinning to the ladies’ success that the President could have noted? No doubt some of the Lady Bears are attending Baylor University with scholarship funds, some of which are probably generated from private donors and others provided by government agencies.

Yet President Obama didn’t single-out any financial aid recipients and tell them “you didn’t get here on your own,” nor did he bother to remind the players that they didn’t build the courts that they play on. Instead, President Obama chose not to malign the basketball players and coaches at all, but rather gave them high praise for their success.

In America we recognized the value of challenge – not just on the court or playing field, but in business as well. When everyone plays by the same rules, competition can develop human character, produce great products and services – and put lots of points on the scoreboard.

After the London games, our U.S. Olympic Athletes will likely get the “Lady Bear” treatment at the White House. But it is a disgrace that the President of the United States can’t understand the virtues of market competition, the way he understands the benefits of sports.


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