STOP OBAMA'S CHOKEHOLD ON AMERICA
   
Contact Craig R. Smith
 

2011-05-02

The anger is palpable. People are draining checkbooks to fill gas tanks. Federal payments are replacing paychecks, and the government is running corporate boardrooms by threat. While America struggles, Mr. Obama campaigns and raises millions for his 2012 re-election bid.

Last Wednesday I was a guest on "Your World with Neil Cavuto." Stuart Varney, filling in for Cavuto, asked my opinion on the Health and Human Services office demanding the resignation of the CEO from Forest Laboratories. HHS wants to exclude Forest from selling its products to Medicaid, Medicare and VA hospitals unless their CEO, Howard Solomon, is let go.

I told Stuart it was just another stunning example of Obama ideology trumping common sense. At a time when America needs to create 7 million jobs, the administration threatens the stability of a $4 billion company that employs thousands of people.

Forest Laboratories violated a law in marketing a drug that was ultimately approved by the FDA. Forest admitted the mistake and paid a $313 million fine. It complied with everything the Justice Department demanded. Apparently that wasn't enough for this anti-business administration.

The HHS still wants debarment of Forest for any business involving the government unless it fires the CEO – a man who took over a small vitamin company in 1977 and built it into a $4 billion laboratory that provides jobs, tax revenue and life-enhancing medicines to the benefit of millions of Americans.

If Mr. Obama gets his way, Mr. Solomon, at 83, will step down or lose his biggest customer. Those customers will be turned over to his bigger competitors – future Obama donors I'm sure.

It's extortion at its finest and a chilling example of Chicago thuggery politics. It's a shot across the bow of every medical company in America that would dare to not do as it's told by the all-powerful, bare-knuckle brawler from the Windy City, especially with Obamacare at risk of repeal. Medical CEOs better "love" Obamacare or pay the price.

It is almost as if Mr. Obama is deliberately killings jobs and intentionally attacking industry.

Take Boeing, for example. After years of being held to production of sold aircraft by the labor-union strikes, Boeing elected to move some of its manufacturing to a more business-friendly state. Not while Mr. Obama has favors to pay back. Oh no!

He sent the National Labor Relations Board to stop Boeing from building its 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina. Thousands of jobs are desperately needed in this hard hit area of the country killed once again by an anti-business government entity.

Why? To keep Mr. Obama's union pals in Seattle happy.

How many more times will the Obama administration interfere in corporate America before our businesses move operations to a more cordial country that encourages job creation and full employment, with a more favorable tax structure and without extortive union bosses?

Look at the toll this administration has inflicted on the auto industry. Mr. Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner and demanded GM produce more fuel-efficient cars like the Chevy Volt. Now GM is losing money again, hand over fist. It has now sold a whopping 271 Volts to date. No one wants them, even with skyrocketing gas prices.

Mr. Obama and his team of brilliant business experts took over Chrysler and wiped out secured creditors to make sure the union thugs brought home the bacon to the rank and file. So thousands of investors are now terrified to buy bonds necessary for growth in the auto sector for fear Mr. Obama, with the stroke of the pen, will steal their investment and give it to the unions.

This weekend during his radio address, the president took hard aim at those nasty Big Oil companies and all their billions of ill-gotten gains most countries call profit. What Mr. Obama forgot to mention was that most of those profits went to shareholders like retired school teachers' pension funds and investors who risk capital to make a profit. He neglected to mention less than 5 percent of the profit came from gasoline sales.

Of course, he neglected to mention the largest beneficiary of the oil companies' efforts is the government itself, as the bite to government on every gallon is almost 50 cents. Yes, the government makes almost 10 times what the oil companies make, yet it takes zero risk, invests zero capital and puts in not one hour of work to make billions. That's equitable in Obamaland.

This president has to stop or be stopped before he crushes the middle class he claims to be protecting. Watching our dollar fall in value like a lead weight while Bernanke fuels a rally in the stock market exploding yearly Wall Street bonuses doesn't feel like protection to me. If it is, then we need to have unprotected relations with our government going forward. Protect us not, Mr. O.

That is right. Bernanke is allowing your dollar to fall apart while enriching Wall Street as Obama puts a chicken in every pot of the people who don't work or contribute anything to the country. In the meantime, the middle class is being crushed at the pump and grocery store while helplessly watching the value of homes continue to drop.

How much more can the average, honest, hard-working American take?

It is time for the government to get out of the boardroom, get its hands off our health care and focus on creating jobs and cutting its wasteful spending. It needs to protect us against foreign threats such as terrorism, not the free market. The free market will save us from the Obama-controlled market that has been, by any objective evaluation, an abject failure.

If Mr. Obama continues in his pursuit of a socialist utopia where he and the bureaucrats run the country, he will surely be a one-term president – regardless of how much the "watchdog media" excuses or covers for his recklessness.

One term is just fine with me, and I don't think I'm alone. America has awakened to the ineptitude and folly of this president. As I said a few weeks ago, America is now fully engaged. Americans' attitudes for 2012 is like mine.

Anybody but Obama!

The only question left unanswered is how much damage can he do between now and January 2013. I suppose time will tell.


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