[Hoot Gibson]

This co-founder of Home Depot gets it. He should direct his accounting department to begin preparing for the upcoming IRS audit, which will surely follow his op-ed. While he is at it, he might want to put his legal department on alert.

Surely, President Obama's Justice Department can find grounds to investigate friends, family, and companies associated with Mr. Langone. I mean, Home Depot sells products for more than it costs to make them, so some members of a minority voting bloc or the gay community must be getting persecuted in the process.

[INDENT]

Stop Bashing Business, Mr. President

If we tried to start The Home Depot today, it's a stone cold certainty that it would never have gotten off the ground.

By KEN LANGONE

Although I was glad that you answered a question of mine at the Sept. 20 town-hall meeting you hosted in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, I must say that the event seemed more like a lecture than a dialogue. For more than two years the country has listened to your sharp rhetoric about how American businesses are short-changing workers, fleecing customers, cheating borrowers, and generally "driving the economy into a ditch," to borrow your oft-repeated phrase.

My question to you was why, during a time when investment and dynamism are so critical to our country, was it necessary to vilify the very people who deliver that growth? Instead of offering a straight answer, you informed me that I was part of a "reckless" group that had made "bad decisions" and now required your guidance, if only I'd stop "resisting" it.

I'm sure that kind of argument draws cheers from the partisan faithful. But to my ears it sounded patronizing. Of course, one of the chief conceits of centralized economic planning is that the planners know better than everybody else.

But there's a much deeper problem than whether I am personally irked or not. Your insistence that your policies are necessary and beneficial to business is utterly at odds with what you and your administration are saying elsewhere. You pick a fight with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accusing it of using foreign money to influence congressional elections, something the chamber adamantly denies. Your U.S. attorney in New York, Preet Bahrara, compares investment firms to Mexican drug cartels and says he wants the power to wiretap Wall Street when he sees fit. And you drew guffaws of approving laughter with your car-wreck metaphor, recently telling a crowd that those who differ with your approach are "standing up on the road, sipping a Slurpee" while you are "shoving" and "sweating" to fix the broken-down jalopy of state. MORE

Mr. Langone, a former director of the New York Stock Exchange and co-founder of Home Depot, is chairman of Invemed Associates.

[/INDENT]

[Old School]

"If we tried to start Home Depot today, under the kind of onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated, it's a stone cold certainty that our business would never get off the ground, much less thrive. Rules against providing stock options would have prevented us from incentivizing worthy employees in the start-up phase—never mind the incredibly high cost of regulatory compliance overall and mandatory health insurance. Still worse are the ever-rapacious trial lawyers."

I have never seen an administration as anti business as this one. It seems that through either regulations, financing and healthcare or some other form of government interference businesses are doomed to fail.

[Hoot Gibson]

"If we tried to start Home Depot today, under the kind of onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated, it's a stone cold certainty that our business would never get off the ground, much less thrive. Rules against providing stock options would have prevented us from incentivizing worthy employees in the start-up phase—never mind the incredibly high cost of regulatory compliance overall and mandatory health insurance. Still worse are the ever-rapacious trial lawyers."

I have never seen an administration as anti business as this one. It seems that through either regulations, financing and healthcare or some other form of government interference businesses are doomed to fail.

There have been more anti-business administrations than this one.
.
.
.
.
.
Pol Pot and Mao Zedong are just a couple of examples.

In case you meant to limit your comments to American administrations, I whole-heartedly agree. :biggrin:

Billy Beer would never have made off the drawing board (probably the back of a cocktail napkin) and into stores with Obama, Reid, and Pelosi running things.

It is going to take a lot of time to undo the damage that this administration has done to our economic base and Democrats will be fighting to stop the recovery process at every step of the way. Agencies like the EPA, FDA, MSHA, etc. are now staffed with many more people who have no understanding of our economy than two years ago- and there were plenty of anti-capitalists in those agencies under Bush's administration.

[Old School]

There have been more anti-business administrations than this one.
.
.
.
.
.
Pol Pot and Mao Zedong are just a couple of examples.

In case you meant to limit your comments to American administrations, I whole-heartedly agree. :biggrin:

Billy Beer would never have made off the drawing board (probably the back of a cocktail napkin) and into stores with Obama, Reid, and Pelosi running things.

It is going to take a lot of time to undo the damage that this administration has done to our economic base and Democrats will be fighting to stop the recovery process at every step of the way. Agencies like the EPA, FDA, MSHA, etc. are now staffed with many more people who have no understanding of our economy than two years ago- and there were plenty of anti-capitalists in those agencies under Bush's administration.

Yes, I was referring to American Administrations. My biggest fear is that most of Obama's damage will never be undone.

[SKINNYPIG]

Not only is this POTUS and admin anti-business, they seem to be anti-majority of American people. I worry about a POTUS that turns his back on so many Americans, and the way he looks down his nose at republicans and Tea Party members sickens me.

[Hoot Gibson]

Yes, I was referring to American Administrations. My biggest fear is that most of Obama's damage will never be undone.

The only American president in my lifetime that was unable to undo much of the damage done by past administrations was Ronald Reagan. Every other president has been too busy adding their own new programs, laws, and regulations to have time for damage mitigation. Things immediately took a turn for the worse when George H. W. Bush took office. (Remember Bush I's Secretary of Labor, Lynn Martin, and the dust sampling witch hunt?)

I hope that the coal industry in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia survives this administration. I can easily imagine a future where domestic steam coal in the eastern US gets displaced in the market by imported coal. The South Americans and South Africans will not regulate and tax their own coal producers out of existence.

I have not seen a break down between domestic and imported coal usage in the US in years but that would be an interesting stat. If domestic coal's market share has not already nose dived, then it will unless American voters wake up and clean house in Washington.