LETTER: Those who create jobs, pay taxes should be thanked, not vilified

                  Once again, President Obama is targeting, demonizing, denigrating, demagoging, and trying to punish the 1 percent. He wants them to be ashamed that they are successful.  He wants to create the impression that there is something wrong with success, that they didn’t earn it, that they don’t deserve it. He wants to give the 1 percent a bad name.

                  I’m not part of the 1 percent.  Not even close.  Not by a long shot.  But I’d certainly shake their hand before I’d criticize them. It used to be when you saw someone who was a success, one would say. “That is Mr. John or Ms. Jane Doe…they worked hard and have become successful”…and you would have admiration and a respect for them. Today society is being told to ridicule and hate that person for being a success.

                  Like most of the 1 percent, many started out with nothing. They were raised in a blue-collar town somewhere in the U.S.A. Today they live the American Dream because they worked their fingers to the bone for it, because they risked their own money for it, because they literally willed it to happen, against-all-odds. Their story is typical of the 1 percent.

                  The fake story meant to deceive you, repeated often in the biased liberal media, is that the 1 percent is made up of people like Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, John Menard, Donald Trump, Ralph Lauren, or assorted Hollywood stars and moguls.  They want you to think that everyone has private jets and big yachts.  These billionaire types are used as examples by the media because they want to deceive the public into thinking most rich people are not self-made, and therefore don’t deserve their success or wealth.

                  While in reality, most are self-made small business owners – the people who create most of the jobs in our economy.

                  If the media did any research at all, they would find countless rags-to-riches stories.  More than likely, 99 percent of the 1 percent are small businessmen and women who started from humble origins and earned their money the old fashioned way – by out-working, out-smarting, and out-hustling the competition. After 25 years of 16-hour days, working weekends and holidays, risking everything, and overcoming many failures along the way, they finally achieved “overnight success.” Now our own president wants to say lousy things about them and take their money away? Why?

                  These people became a success by working long days, mornings, nights, weekends, holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. They have no guaranteed job for life, nor any pension. Isn’t it funny how government employees with $100,000 pensions and free health care for life claim to be part of the 99 percent? Yet the ones who made their own success have nothing guaranteed, they have to work for it, risk their own money for it, and they want to vilify them? It’s their hard work that pays for their government jobs and pensions.

                  Along the way they have created many jobs, helping others live the American Dream too. They have made countless payrolls, and paid for other people’s health insurance. They may have dipped into their personal savings to pay others, before they paid themselves. They may have risked their life savings to expand their businesses, or to start new ones – even in this terrible economy. Perhaps they failed countless times, wiping out their savings. But they never complained, never blamed anyone but themselves, and never asked anyone for a bailout. Is this the story the media tells you about the 1 percent? Funny, I’ve never heard it.

                  Their parents taught them to ask for nothing from government. They probably never collected a check from government in their life – other than a student loan. And they paid that back in full, with interest. They want and expect nothing from government. They just want government to get out of my way.

                  Obama would tell you it’s greedy to want to keep more of your own money. I believe the very definition of greed is to ask government to take money from the people that worked hard for it and earned it, to redistribute it to those that didn’t.

                  Shouldn’t those who create jobs, pay the taxes that pay for the roads, schools, entitlements, and the bills of government, be elevated and celebrated as heroes and role models? Last I checked you don’t demonize heroes, do you?

                  Thank God for capitalism. Thank God for the opportunities available in this great country. Thank God for the American Dream. I try and remember that, and it really aggravates me that there are those who are trying to kill it.

Bil Scherrer

Burlington