Meanie Bodinie

My lovely wife Ginger, while discussing a family matter, said to me that she was tired of being a Meanie-Bodinie. This morning I read an article by Robert Reich in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled GOP’s Tough Love Cruel to Millions of Americans. A similar topic was the subject of a sermon about benevolence in church…we were told we are not doing enough. Couple that with one Democratic politician who said the Republican solution to health care reform is death….WOW!

I was aghast. I must be a Meanie-Bodinie. But you know what? I didn’t know that being for smaller government, less taxes, and more individual freedom and choice made me a Meanie-Bodinie. I thought it made me a compassionate conservative. Find me a priest. I need to go to confession.

It all depends on how one views issues of poverty. For example, I think that Second Harvest Food Bank is a worthy endeavor, and I do what I can to support it. On the other hand, when I hear comments from various people that the organization is successful because it is now serving 10,000 families, or 15% more families than last year…that’s not success! That is failure. It is failure on the part of our society and economic system to provide people a means to make a living. If the goal of charitable success is more parties served, the nation is doomed to failure.

Money doesn’t grow on trees. It comes from people working, people making things of value. Government produces nothing. It recycles…taking money from one place and putting it in another. To do that, it must pay bureaucrats to handle the shifting of money. More often than not, bureaucrats aren’t very efficient at their job. It is just the nature of the beast. One never handles other people’s money as carefully as one handles one’s own, be it a government endeavor or not. The bureaucrat takes a cut of every dollar that passes though him. He is a middleman. That middleman has no incentive to make sure the money is spent the way it was intended. His function is to disburse the money…nothing else. And his self interest is served by having more and more money to disburse, not resolving any issues.

As Margaret Thatcher once said…the trouble with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. No matter how noble the cause or how well intentioned the government program, sooner or later it will run out of money. Right now, in the United States, we are out of money.

So how are the poor best served? I subscribe to the belief that a rising tide raises all ships. If the economy improves, all citizens will benefit. If a healthy base is rebuilt from the shambles of the financial meltdown…all citizens will benefit. If small business is able to regenerate itself, all citizens will benefit. But in order for that to happen, the government needs to get out of the way, and yes, some folks will have to feel some pain as things move forward. There is no free lunch. Sooner or later, we are going to have to take the medicine, and a spoonful of Obama sugar won’t help.

Mr. Reich, one of President Obama’s closest advisors testified in Congress we don’t need any more, white, blue collar construction jobs. Unfortunately, Mr. Reich, that’s EXACTLY what we need. It is those white, blue collar construction jobs that pay taxes.

Condemning folks to a lifetime of government assistance and dependency is the worst kind of cruelty. That is a new form of slavery that knows no color..only hardship and dependency. Obama commented this past week it took a long time to free the slaves in this country. Yes, Mr. President, you are right. But how do we free the people stuck in poverty…1/10th of the United States population on food stamps. Who is the real Meanie-Bodinie?