One of the first lessons you learn as a life guard is: Don’t become one of the victims…

The liberals seem to view the world in much different way from the rest of us. A way to illustrate that is found here in this music video. Sarah McLachlan is one of my favorite artists to listen to and watch. She is not only beautiful, but she is a gifted song writer and singer and I look forward to anything she puts out. In this particular video, she shows how she purposely saved money in the making of the video. It looks like she just got out of bed, blue jeans, t-shirt, no makeup, got her guitar, and with the help of a cheap camera person, made a bargain basement video. As the video goes on, she talks about how she saved money on hair, makeup, set designers, etc, etc, and what that money could do around the world instead. So, in essence, she has taken her budget for the video, created mediocrity, and spent the money on some nice things for people in need. Liberals would look at what she has done and say wow, that’s great!

I look at it and say, what a waste. Make no mistake, I want to take care of people too but what I see is that she has taken money out of the pockets of the people who work for her and put it into people’s pockets she deems more needy. In essence, I see the redistribution of wealth.

What would I advise you say?

I would encourage Sarah to instead, take that budget and work hard with her people and create the best possible video. I would encourage excellence and to take the making of the video to new heights. I would want her to make the most popular video ever and generate obscene profits with it. I would celebrate her excellence as an artist. Then, I imagine she would still want to help the needy. I would encourage her to double or triple the amount of money she would have originally given. Everyone would win, and with the other videos that she has done, she has done just that. We really all have won. We get to watch her excellence, her people get to have jobs, and the needy still get help. It is not morally wrong and you should never feel bad about making a profit. It’s ok.

Think of the federal budget in a similar way. Liberals see that money as something they can distribute to the needy, like a pie. Take the ingredients from “the rich” and redistribute it to “the poor” so they can have pie too. Seems nice at first glance, but again, what a waste. By putting policies in place that can expand the economy, in essence, we are able to expand the size of the pie. Everyone benefits when that happens, especially “the poor”. By putting policies in place that will sap the economy, e.g. cap and trade, stimulus and now health care, we will create problems for “the poor” in the long run because there will be less jobs and what looks like high inflation to come. Inflation hurts “the poor” more than anyone else. I see creating more poor people who need welfare as a form of slavery in the 21st century. Making people dependant on the government saps their spirit and encourages them to be satisfied with mediocrity. On the other hand, it does create a huge voter block who will tend to vote to keep their handouts…(in this regard, FDR was brilliant).

What would I advise you say?

I want to expand the economy by supporting the people who create jobs and wealth. I believe that if we cut taxes on corporations and “the rich”, that money will be used to hire more people and create more wealth. I want to make this country a place where businesses run to, not from and forming a commission to work together with businesses to figure out what regulations we need to do away with. We need to figure out what we can do to help businesses, not how to fleece them. Again, everyone wins…except for those in government who want to expand their power over people.

We have examples from the past that prove that this works but first I have to ask, did the “New Deal” get us out of the depression? Did President Jimmy Carter’s economic ideas work? Contrary to revisionist history, absolutely not. I remember the words, stagflation, malaise and mediocrity used when I was a kid growing up watching the terrorists disrespect us and hold our hostages at the same time as well. It was an embarrassing moment in our history perpetrated by the liberals. What brought us out of those times? President Ronald Reagan. Terrorists knew he meant business and his economic policies created a bigger economic pie for sure.

How about those tax cuts put in place by President John F. Kennedy? President Ronald Reagan? Yes. It worked and stimulated some of the largest economic expansions in the history of the country.

We do need to stimulate the economy, but we need to do it by helping the people who create jobs and wealth, not by attacking them and preventing them from succeeding. Hand outs to ACORN are nice sounding to some, but they really don’t help the economy…

So, what I want is to help people achieve great things. I want Sarah McLachlan to make great videos, I want Warren Buffet to achieve obscene profits with his ventures, I want to see home runs hit in every way possible and I want to somehow support and encourage people to greatness. I don’t want to expand mediocrity.

If you really want to help someone in need, you first have to be able to take care of your own needs. If you can achieve a profit, then you can look out around you, and start finding and caring for those around you. It feels good to give time, money and resources to good causes. It does not feel good to have my money taken and given to causes I don’t support…and not only that, any time the government is involved; there is a huge overhead cost. It is very inefficient.

Once the economy is on the mend following tax cuts, I want to focus on cutting programs. My feeling is that federal welfare programs are too far removed from where the money actually goes. With every layer of bureaucracy, comes another fleecing of the money. I would support pushing that money down to the State or local level in order to let local people decide where it is needed most. I am suspicious of having both the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. I think they can become one entity and be much more efficient. I am very suspicious of the Department of Energy and Education as they seem to not be doing the things they were formed to do. I have great heartburn with the National Endowment of the Arts as well, and would like to see some oversight and accounting go into that funding. Lastly, I am appalled at the runaway costs of Graduate Education and how we are fleecing our young college kids. Tuition and book prices are out of control and need to be looked at as well. Education is key to our future, so we have to make sure it is affordable.

Making a profit is a good thing and anyone who does should not be embarrassed about it. We should hold up those who achieve as examples of what can be done. I look up to people like Ken Griffey Jr. whacking his home runs, people like Sarah McLachlan making great music, people like Warren Buffet making great businesses, even Wall Street executives…I want to encourage these people to achieve new heights…not bind them in regulation and taxes…let them run…and they will expand our American pie.

If you want to know why we are a great country, it’s because of great individual efforts like these which had nothing to do with the expansion of the government.

We can turn the economic tide around, but it won’t be done with socialist policy. It will be done with great individual efforts and we need to help those individuals achieve wherever possible.