Billionaire entrepreneur Howard Schultz is now being accused of not being self-made by some high profile members of the far-left.
Whatever you might think of the Starbucks founder, the 65-year-old’s success story is the stuff the American dream was built on.
Schultz was raised poor in the New York City housing projects. He was the first member of his family to attend college. Among other menial jobs, he sold Xerox copy machines for a living. During a trip to Italy, he had a vision of a coffee shop on every corner of America, and made that vision come true. The rest, as they say, is history.
It is also worth noting that Schultz, a life-long Democrat, is a left-wing activist who brought that activism to his company. Because of this, he has faced all kinds of criticism from people on the political right, including from yours truly, but at no time do I remember anyone on the right attempting to undermine Schultz’s extraordinary success story. Even with his obnoxious politics, Schultz personifies what makes America America.
Schultz has earned and deserves every penny of his billions.
But now that Schultz is seriously considering running for president in 2020 as an Independent candidate, and now that the political left see that potential run as beneficial to President Trump, some left-wing loons are attempting to claim Schultz is not a self-made man.
Socialist It Girl, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), ripped into Schultz this week, saying that billionaire’s need to “work their way up” before running for president, or that “maybe they should start with city council first.”
Ocasio-Cortez has still not explained how starting in the housing projects and ending up a billionaire fails to qualify as “working your way up.”
Brandon Friedman, a former HUD official under President Obama, took this to another level with the claim you cannot call yourself “self-made” if you were raised in the projects.
Responding to a quote from Schultz about being “self-made,” Friedman wrote, “If you ‘grew up in the projects,’ then you’re not ‘self-made.'”
“The ‘projects’ are taxpayer-funded public housing. Your friends, neighbors, family members and millions of Americans you never met all worked and paid their taxes so that you wouldn’t have to grow up homeless,” he explained.
The left honestly believe the government deserves credit for everyone’s success — unless you grew up “homeless.” Only if you start out as homeless can you declare yourself “self-made.”
But even then, the homeless sleep on government-built sidewalks and beneath government-built bridges. What’s more, at some time the homeless probably attended a government-run school as a child.
As a failed president once said, “You didn’t build that!”
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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