Consider the words of this CEO from an IBD editorial.
Excerpt:
T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, isn’t surprised. In an interview Thursday with Neil Cavuto on Fox News, Rodgers saw the move as part of a brewing corporate revolt against an overbearing government sucking the economic oxygen out of the room, tilting at windmills, imposing burdens such as the health care overhaul and environmental regulations but not providing the incentives or certainty that companies need to plan and survive.
“When we continue to put money into bad things, take money out of the productive sector, take money away from me to invest, take money away from families to spend on what they think is right, and dump it into these foolish government projects and blather about green jobs,” Rodgers said, “you know eventually the overall economy is going to get less competitive and some sort of recession or some sort of problem is going to set in.”
As a result, Rodgers continued, “I am not spending any money, I am not opening any plants and I am not hiring anybody, and corporate America is doing the same thing.”
And it’s not just CEOs who are affected by energy taxes:
According to the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, under cap-and-tax legislation, gas prices at the pump would increase 58%. Residential electricity costs would “necessarily skyrocket” by 90%. Total GDP loss by 2035 would be $9.4 trillion. Net job losses (after “green” job creation) would be nearly 1.9 million in 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Manufacturing would lose 1.4 million jobs in 2035.
If only Democrats could be affected by the laws that Democrats pass, while Republicans can be affected by the laws that Republicans pass. Let the Democrats live in bankrupt states like California and the Republicans can live in booming states like Texas. There are two different cultures – one that doesn’t understand economics, and one that does.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Great idea! Let’s extend that further to only Republicans being denied unemployment benefits for weeks on end due to the blockage by Republican senators and Democrats getting benefits because hey–Democratic senators were in favor of extending benefits. Also, let’s extend it to only small animals in red states being able to be used constitutionally for crush videos, since it’s once again your Republican congressmen who voted against that recent anti-animal cruelty bill.
You know, Wintery, you’re a Christian and Christ’s message was clear: we are to love our neighbors and our enemies and pray for them. I see little evidence of your understanding what this means, much less trying to emulate it. Yet isn’t that what you, as an avowed Christian, should be aiming to do in your daily life and in this blog?
You treat the president with disdain. How about praying for him? I hesitate to ask you what your wish would be: I suspect that it’s for his failure, yet how does constantly harping on Democrat’s weaknesses and excusing Republican ones going to solve any problem? Is this acceptable for a Christian?
No. It is not.
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Dude, your guy CAUSED the unemployment by taking money out of the job-creating private-sector for studies of Chinese prostitutes and turtle tunnels to nowhere, remember? My guy had unemployment below 5% before the Democrats took over the House and Senate in 2007. And as I documented before, the Democrats CAUSED the recession by forcing banks to make loans to people who couldn’t afford them, and block Bush’s attempts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Democrats are causing more misery and poverty than anyone since… Jimmy Carter. Democrats own the House, the Senate and the Presidency. It’s all on them. Their crazy waste cost us 8 million jobs lost and 3 trillion in deficits. Children not yet born will have a lower standard of living because Obama is stealing their money.
And what about the 45 million unborn babies who were killed for no reason other than the selfish desire for recreational sex (I’m more concerned about cruelty to babies than animals)? What about the children who will be raised without mothers and fathers because of single motherhood welfare, in vitro fertilization and same-sex marriage? What about the brown people (like me, not like you!) in poorer countries (like the one my parents came from, not like your parents!) who are poor because Democrats restrict free trade that prevents them from selling their goods to us and moving up in the world, like Chile and India have done? And what about the women in Muslim theocracies like Afghanistan used to be? Don’t they have a right to same liberties as you have? I think they do – and talking to the Taliban about it didn’t make them change their laws.
I know you mean well, but you have to realize that all the policies you oppose actually accomplish the goals we both share better than your policies. You can’t dispute the evidence.
You talk about liking my chastity, but you need to understand that my tax dollars, and those of every Bible-believing Christian, is being used to indoctrinate men and women in public schools to have sex early and often. Welfare money for single mothers ejects men from their traditional roles as protectors and providers. Not one day passes without a young woman losing her faith in men because she was sold a string of sex education lies. Not one day passes when a man degrades himself by giving up on traditional male behaviors because he is sold a string of lies about feminism. Democrats ruined romantic love and traditional marriage for life. That’s unforgivable in my eyes. Look at the state of marriage in the secular-leftist paradise of Europe – that’s where we’re headed thanks to the secular left.
Now don’t freak out and get all angry at me.
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McS, why can’t we love our enemies, pray for them AND criticize them? I think we should. We should pray for President Obama to change, to see the folly of the path he is pursuing, and to do what is best for his country. Further, we can pray that if he continues on a path that is harmful that he would lose the next election, so that someone with better policies may take his place. We should also point out where he is at fault so that people can choose a president with wiser policies. This can all be done without wishing the man himself ill. Our culture confuses being loving with affirmation and promotion of the recipient of love. God doesn’t.
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Lol! Most republicans (at least the conservatives) would rather get jobs using their own devices anyway, so they certainly wouldn’t mind not having the extra benefits!
How is criticizing failing liberal economic policy not showing an understanding of loving our enemies specifically? Here we go again with the liberal Christian leap of trashing conservatives for their views, essentially saying they are not Christ like. In my readings of the Bible, I have yet to come across any verses that explicitly advocate liberal governance.
In fact, it would rather seem like liberal governance prevents the true application of the Gospel, as it makes charity and love into compulsory acts, which violates our free will. Is it more moral to “give at the office,” as they say, or to voluntarily donate your time or money to charity? Which shows true fruit of the Spirit?
So, in my view liberalism essentially takes what God told *us* to do in places it in the hands of another authority, thus stripping us of the ability to be our own moral agents.
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I would opt out of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Unemployment Insurance in a heart beat. I would opt out of every flapping liberal social program I could. I would take the money, invest it, and use the interest to love the people who need me even more! White roses and William Lane Craig DVDs every day for all! Delivered by Fedex, not the US Postal Service, or even unionized UPS. That may sound frivolous, but it’s a lot better than taxpayer-funded abortions, taxpayer-funded sex changes, taxpayer-funded single motherhood, etc.
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Well you’re a strange bird. Seniors, even conservatives who decry “socialist” spending love their Medicare–and when I’m old, I suppose I will, too. Also, why would anyone opt out of Social Security when every paycheck takes money out of your earnings? After a lifetime of paying SS taxes, I’ve earned it (but of course haven’t taken a dime since I’m too young).
Also, conservatives love to hate the bailout and the healthcare plan, but they’re all lining up with their hands out, eager to disperse checks to their constituencies coming from the one they love to hate: the federal government.
Hypocrites, all of them. Even Koch Industries, one of the main opponents of healthcare reform, has applied for and gotten healthcare $$.
Also, W, I don’t believe you for a second when you say you’d opt out of unemployment. When’s the last time you got laid off?
Geez, you act like you’re immune from the same things the rest of us are in this country: job loss, illness, etc.
And layoff the taxpayer funding. It pays for the wars you love so much, the roads you drive on, and the schools that keep people’s children competing (just barely) in the world economy.
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We should absolutely pray for our enemies. But that doesn’t mean praying for a specific outcome as is popular in America, particularly on high school sports fields and in national elections dominated by big corporate interests, opposing values and quite a few media and blogs, including this one. The world is fixated on this way of thinking: My side is right and righteous! Your side is going to hell! If you don’t think this is happening right now, then read the New Yorker article by Jane Mayer in the August 30 issue about how a pair of billionaires is bankrolling the Tea Party’s campaign against Obama under the guise of different philanthropies whose specific aim is their own financial corporate enrichment.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
I’m not going to say that only corporations interested in conservative causes do this. I’m only saying that when you divide everything into pro or anti Obama, even in prayer, you accomplish nothing but the perpetuation of politics. And politics has nothing to do with God.
How many more wars and instances of economic/political do you think we can miraculously cure by doing what this blog advocates and simply replace liberals with conservatives? We did the reverse in the last election when the other half of the country wanted to get rid of the previous president and his policies. Democrats and republicans repudiated them leading up to the election that brought Obama to office. Bush was toxic not only to democrats but to candidates from his own party!
You know what I’m talking about. Wintery likes to demonize all democrats. He likes to blame President Obama for everything. I have huge problems I can’t articulate here with that, but one of them is, for example, this: our present recession is very much a problem of what happened over many years in our country (deregulation) coupled with more recent large economically traumatic events (9/11, which I witnessed, by the way, from three blocks away on my way to work downtown, including people leaping from the twin towers; two expensive wars, one of which the administration at the time wrongly claimed would “fund itself through Iraqi oil revenues”) coupled with a lack of understanding of the financial risks inherent in exotic trading of derivatives (Greenspan, Countrywide, AIG, Bear Stearns et al share responsibility) coupled with the meltdown in housing leading to the collapse of the financial system which has been exacerbated by American’s predilection for getting things they can’t afford and focusing entirely on their own needs to the exclusion of the bigger picture and a hell of a lot of corporate GREED. ANd I say that as someone who makes their living writing for precisely those companies. Yep, McSpinster writes for financial institutions and corporate America, and have for years through companies owned by conservatives you know and love, including Rupert Murdoch.
Our “new” president is dealing with that and his economic policies. Are they not working because they are wrong? How do you know that republicans are going to do better? This is very complicated stuff. Economists don’t even agree on it. Did TARP make the recession lighter? Many believe it did. Some don’t. Is Obama to blame for that? What about Bush’s hand in all of that? And other republicans?
God’s creation is not so black and white. That’s why we must pray for our enemies above and beyond the realm of politics. A lot of Christians don’t know how to do this. They are all about praying to change OTHER people. That’s God’s job. I personally trust God enough to know he’s got the job, he’s on the job, he’s doing the job.
So no, I don’t believe in praying for our enemies so that they can think more like us. I believe in praying for ourselves so that we can think more as God would have us do. Who knows what kind of solution we’d have? Perhaps I’d become more conservative (although I’m much more conservative than I get credit for). Perhaps Wintery would become more open-minded on issues relating to paying taxes and not just socking away dough for the wife and family he hopes to have someday.
Perhaps we’d become peacemakers, pure in heart, meek, seeking God’s will, which I guarantee you, doesn’t have the words “politics,” “republican,” “democrat,” in its vocabulary.
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“How do you know that republicans are going to do better?”
I thought he did give plenty of examples from historical data in other articles?
“Perhaps we’d become peacemakers, pure in heart, meek, seeking God’s will, which I guarantee you, doesn’t have the words “politics,” “republican,” “democrat,” in its vocabulary.”
What’s wrong with hating what God hates? Love your enemies, sure, but don’t love their ideology.
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I believe in praying for ourselves AND others. Naturally, I don’t believe that all Democrats or political liberals are going to Hell. But I see nothing wrong with Wintery correcting them when they are mistaken. I also think that it’s inconsistent if we don’t pray for specific outcomes in politics but we do other fields. If God has other plans, He has the right and the ability to say no to us. I will continue to pray for Obama to be stopped. His extremist pro-abortion policy alone is enough reason. And if his economic policies are also strangling the nation’s economy then people should be made aware of that too. When the man took the oath of presidency he knew he was signing up to be scrutinized like every other American president – as he should be. “With great power comes great responsibility.”
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So I guess you advocate also correcting Repubs, Tea Partiers, etc, when they’re wrong, too?
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