Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, in his latest departure from brewing coffee, blasted out an email on Friday last to hype his pledge to withhold political campaign contributions until a “transparent, comprehensive, bipartisan debt-and-deficit package is reached that honestly, and fairly, sets America on a path to long-term financial health and security.”
Sounds good, right? All of us can get behind that but there is one problem……it’s not going to happen.
Now I’m sure that Howard Schultz is a corporate titan who is fully capable in the world of latte’ but he displays a remarkable naïveté’ of the forces in play in today’s political climate or even the nature of the conflict.
Mr. Schultz begins his email by professing to be a “beneficiary of the promise of America.” I am quite sure he is, in light of the fact that he is the CEO of a large, successful corporation. But Mr. Schultz’ board room or management team includes no one who is determined to destroy Starbucks or its goals and basic structure and business philosophy.
Such is not the case in Washington.
We have elected a president whose agenda is contrary to the Constitution, who lacks the skills and experience necessary for leadership and who has surrounded himself with an equally inept management team. The goal of this management team is to subvert our republic by destroying successful free enterprise capitalism and establishing a socialist welfare state.
This conflict is at the root of the problem.
When these two philosophies of government collide, there is conflict.
Our country is near a tipping point as we are approaching parity in numbers between those who either work for the government or derive their income or subsidy from or through the government and those who do not. Over 40 percent of households are currently receiving some form of government assistance.
Ii is no wonder then that our elected representatives are in conflict. This conflict is called partisanship and has come to be interpreted as a pejorative term. We are bombarded by the media with calls for compromise. Compromise is the path we have taken that has brought us to our current condition. Further compromise for the sake of temporary satisfaction or false hope is destructive.
The president is poised to deliver still another plan that, I am sure, will include more and bigger government and increased “investments in our future” (pronounced taxes) and he will likely demand that Congress act on it or be labeled as the “do nothing Congress.”
What we need is the “do no harm Congress.”
Good luck, Mr. Schultz. Keep those baristas brewing and please don’t compromise when you are buying those beans.
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