October 26, 2008
Mr. Obama,Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself. While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me 'Cory the well driller'. I am a 54 year old high school graduate. I didn't go to college like you, I was too ready to go 'conquer the world' when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80's oil boom. I didn't get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawn shop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start not a result of privilege. It is the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly. From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn't afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10 year old, 1/2 ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck).A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs. Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time... $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D.. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn't work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine. No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.Two years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business.A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so I and an employee (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers' pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers' product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow. No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that's ok, I didn't expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months. This should work out, but if it doesn't it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our countrys’ (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. You see, at the very time when I couldn't get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It's funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.You see, Mr. Obama, I'm the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I'm the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I'm the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn’t want to take a risk, and wouldn't demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I'm the guy you characterize as 'the Americans who can afford it the most' that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution 'to spread the wealth' to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture. I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What's worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self reliance, self motivation, self determination, self discipline, personal betterment, hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach on every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn't it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government.You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever expanding dependence on government. What's remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn't need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.You see, I know because I've had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I've seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce “politically motivated”), you averaged of less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else’s money you are giving to them. I won’t say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you or Joe Biden (don’t you just hate goggle?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.God help us...Cory Miller just a ordinary, extraordinary American, the way a lot of Americans used to be.P.S. Yes, Mr. Obama, I am a real American... www.cmillerdrilling.com I am using this letter without Mr. Miller's permission, though I have sent him an email requestion permission to do so. If he say's no, this post and all subsequent comments will be deleted. If he says yes, this post will stay up until election day, come what may.Posted at 11:13 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
Post contains 2612 words, total size 15 kb.1 This is so typical of the folks who are really the backbone of the country and the ones that Obama and his radical ,farleft socialist bent buddies want to destroy. You see as long as there are folks like "the Well Digger", "Joe the Plumber", the Builder Guy, The Painter Guy this country will remain free and the example to the world what hard work can do. But Obama and his radical , socialist ilk want to destroy this type of individual and further develop the layer of people who are dependent upon the government for their very existence. Once they can achieve this America is no more and Obama and is radical socialist ilk will have the society that they wish for. They will be the elite and the rest will be their slaves.
I personally think and am praying that there are enough of the folks with the attitude of "the Well Digger and the others to defeat the radaical socialism of Obama , Pelosi Reid and ilk and keep this country the true shining light , set upon a hill as a beacon of real HOPE and real CHANGE . We don't need the kind of hope and change Obama preaches!Posted by: AF Ticker at Sunday, October 26 2008 04:17 PM (t4rgt)
2 Friday, I was involved in a tax planning discussion for a businessman who has a nice manufacturing company. He had planned to sell it in a few years and retire, but now he is rushing to close a sale before year-end and before Obama raises capital gains rates in 2009 (despite his claim that he would reduce the rates for small businesses at a point in which he had no clue about what he was saying.) What a shame that small businesses are doing wrong things today to avoid conequences of Obama's likely election and tax hikes tomorrow.Posted by: Woody at Sunday, October 26 2008 07:48 PM (Eb/8J)
3 Nice try. Yes, $250,000 makes you rich, you disingenuous hacks. Give me a break.To all you clowns tying Obama to socialism, may I remind you that not only did your candidate just vote to nationalize our banks, but he also had this to say during a Town Hall meeting in 2000:
"Responding to a question from a girl who wants to know why her father, a doctor, pays a higher tax rate than people who earn less:
McCain: 'I think it's to some degree because we feel, obviously, that wealthy people can afford more.'
Doctor's daughter: 'Aren't we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism and stuff?'
McCain: 'Here's what I really believe. When you are, reach a certain level of comfort, there is nothing wrong with paying somewhat more.'"
And Palin acuses Obama of being a socialist when Alaska receives more per capita earmark money than any other state in the Union (talk about "wealth redistribution")! She asked for $256 million in 2007, and another $197 million this year, and Senator Ted Stevens obliged. Yet another example of Republican statements not comporting with Republican actions.
Folks, stop the lies. Obama's tax plan is less progressive than Clinton's, and his proposed top bracket less than under REAGAN! Were those 2 presidencies marred by socialism and destroyed economies? Ha. You can answer that one.
You’re funding wars with your Social Security and your children’s tax money. Why are you so angry that a small percentage of very wealthy individuals might go back to paying the same tax rates that they were paying 8 years ago? Why are you so eager to fall on your swords so that Exxon Mobile can keep huge profits while you just spend a few hundred dollars a month filling up your tank for an entire summer?
The Republican game plan of saying to the electorate "Be Afraid, Be VERY Afraid, Only WE can protect you" is as bankrupt as Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers. Time to get out of the way.
Posted by: Jack R at Monday, October 27 2008 03:37 AM (OY4u6)
4Jack R., no one is taking a strong stand against progressive tax rates. What's wrong is Obama's idea that the top rates need to return to unreasonable levels in order to send checks to those who are below them.
Some, like me, might call it wrong to buy votes with money earned by people who don't universally support Obama. Obama would make a radical change to our system, replacing opportunity with cash handouts.
Also, incentives for people to succeed and realize the American dream would be crushed. Years ago under a higher tax rate, I had medical clients who said that they would cut down on their hours so that they wouldn't pass the point that the little that they kept after taxes wasn't worth it--and that threshold wasn't that high at the time and Obama can keep lowering his threshold when he wants more money to fund his wild redistribution schemes and reparations approach. That will really help Obama's socialized medicine.
Your last comment is a little frightening--much as Obama has stated in essence: Time to get out of the way. Or what? You'll use the power of government to hurt opponents and stifle questions? Attacks like those on Joe the Plumber is what we can expect from a President who punished people for simply asking uncomfortable questions. We don't need our government run by one party, Democrats, that cares so much about power that it will run over ordinary citizens.
Posted by: Woody at Monday, October 27 2008 09:25 AM (Eb/8J)
5 To quote a rather famous writer, "this is all sound and fury, signifying nothing"
Taxes are always too high to the person paying them. But remember that taxes are only levied on net Income. All of you should know that "Net" income is the money left after all costs are deducted. The poor well driller probably has never paid any tax if you separate the fact from the BS he wrote. If he is in fact paying taxes now, he has been successful in "Growng his business" and is now enjoying the fruits of his labor. So you can comiserate with him as he pays tax on the money that exceeds a quarter of a million dollars.
Nothing in the Democrat program will or would have had any any effect on his progress to success.
Posted by: James Melbert at Monday, October 27 2008 02:05 PM (c9kpu)
6 I forgot to add that $250,000.00 per year means that is his business stays atatic, in ten years he will have earned two and a half million dollars ($2,500,000.00)
That would be the excess over his minumum tax rate.
Gee, pitiful isn't it?
Posted by: James Melbert at Monday, October 27 2008 02:11 PM (c9kpu)
7James: <i>taxes are only levied on net Income</i>
Do you think that the county will let me out of my property taxes due in November? Can I skip the sales tax on computers that I purchase? Are inventories no longer taxed? What about gasoline taxes? When did they stop? Do I still have to match social security taxes and pay unemployment taxes? Will the state let me drop workers comp insurance? What about the cost of all the paperwork to keep up with government regulations? Did I really not have to waste an office with wider hallways for unneeded handicapped access?
By the time that many people pay their income taxes, there's just enough left to pay these other taxes and passed along government costs.
Posted by: Woody at Monday, October 27 2008 02:34 PM (Eb/8J)
8 Woodster, don't argue with James. After all, he's a liberal and he understands that money grows on trees. And if you don't believe that, just ask the Obamamessiah. I also note that James previously disliked Obama and supported Hillary, has he succumbed to the allure of The One? Only time will tell!!!Posted by: GM Roper at Monday, October 27 2008 05:09 PM (rmRN5)
9 James opposed Obama until he found out that Obama was going to send him a check.Posted by: Woody at Monday, October 27 2008 06:20 PM (Eb/8J)
10I’m not an accountant; but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.
Progressive tax policy is socialist engineering based on the misplaced idea that people who earn more money have an obligation to pay a greater sum of money toward the “greater good.” This defies logic if we believe that every American is equal under the law, and even if we believe that our goal is an egalitarian society. If we assume a flat tax rate of fifteen percent, then people who make $400K a year will inevitably pay more than someone who makes $40K – but they share the same obligation. No one should be exempt from a flat tax, and there should be no exemptions or tax credits. Fifteen percent is fair and reasonable.
What is not fair and reasonable is the government’s assumption that it only need to reach into our pockets and help themselves to our hard-earned money, or that they can adjust this amount as they see fit. This is typical government behavior, but it is our failure. We should limit government expenditures during any fiscal year to anticipated revenues in that same year, barring national emergency or disaster. This is not rocket science. It is time we slammed the door on an arrogant congress that believes they have but to snap their fingers, and we the people will bend over for corporate bailouts and vast sums of money allocated to fraudulent organizations, such as Acorn, and utterly nonsensical ideas such as CRA loans and giveaways.
Finally, this idea that all of us need to pony up and do our fair share is a recent innovation in government theft. Show me in the Constitution where the government has a right to my income, whether that amount is $6,000 or $60,000.
Joe Biden thinks it is our patriotic duty to "pony up" and pay more taxes. This is the same Joe Biden who never served his country in uniform, but who now claims to understand patriotism. The same Joe Biden who claims that Obama is not a Marxist, and how dare we infer this from anything Obama said eight years ago. And yes, we're now discussing the same Barack Obama who assured us that "words matter." Words do matter, and so does character. Obama/Biden have plenty of the former, none of the latter.
Semper Fi
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