The Best Doesn’t Come Cheap

by

Mike Scinto

Talk Show Host and Award-Winning Newspaper Columnist

as it appeared in Times Community Newspapers and the K-O Times

I don’t know about you, but when I step onboard that Boeing 747 to fly to Florida for a much-deserved week in the sun with my family, I want the best pilot they can afford to be in the cockpit. For that matter, I want the best entire crew money can buy!

If I’m ready to have IV medications started before going into surgery, I need to know the person with the scalpel has the motivation to be there doing the surgery.  I at least want to believe whoever that surgeon is, they are the best in the country; the best money can buy!

I’m sure most of you are not unlike me in those beliefs. That’s why it’s puzzling to me that Barack Obama, the Occupy movement and liberals in general are so resentful of successful folks in America who are paid commensurate with their abilities.

A professional baseball team wants the best manager it can find to handle its multi-million dollar roster. The same is true for the head coach on a professional basketball or football team. They don’t come cheap.

While all the aforementioned professionals are guided to a great extent by a passion and dedication to the activity involved, the location where those activities are carried out, I assure you, is guided in large part by the great American capitalist dollar!

This movement in America to penalize those with ambition, skill and wealth so those with none of those can have more is beyond me. That road to fortune in this great land is paved with the stories of individuals who did lack those three attributes in the beginning. But with hard work, dedication and searching within themselves they scratched and clawed their way into a comfortable lifestyle.

Let’s face it, that philosophy isn’t going to get a politician far these days. The lazy, government-dependent masses who want something for nothing are growing in number.  There was a time, and not so long ago, when pride wouldn’t allow a healthy, creative and proud American to take a dime they didn’t earn. They’d rather starve than to feel they didn’t provide for themselves or their loved ones. And that motivation alone made them morph an excuse into a job; and into a sense of pride, regardless of the bottom line on the paycheck.

And those individuals, rather than criticizing, hating and viewing their employers through the eyes of that green-eyed envious monster, learned from those who achieved and thanked them for the opportunity.

Does that mean there are no rich and powerful folks who abuse that strength? Of course there are. But left alone, the free market tends to take care of those sharks far better than any government committee, or bug-infested hippie mob camped in a park could.

           Get government out of it, turn true free-marketeering loose again on America and feel the magic………again! 

Losing Sight of the Ultimate Goal in 2012

by
Mike Scinto
Talk Show Host and Award-Winning Newspaper Columnist
as it appeared in Times Community Newspapers and the K-O Times
      

  I hope the Democratic National Committee and the Obama re-election team plans to thank the GOP this year. We’re saving them quite a bit of money. When it comes time to run ads for the general election the DNC won’t have to spend a dime. The tacky ads and televised comments run by Mitt Romney’s opponents will do the job of keeping Obama in the White House just fine!


I’m no novice at observing, commenting on or covering presidential races. And I am not naïve. I know the back and forth attacks are commonplace. But these are not normal times. If you look at the elections since 2000, it shows a country, for all intents and purposes, evenly divided. Every vote counts literally. The economic, strategic and social issues we face are world-changing and if we take a wrong turn now (and we’re well on the way in that direction under Obama) it could mean the end to the freedoms and independence we have enjoyed for most of our lives as a nation.

The attack should be against the socialist in office now, not each other. I understand the desires to be elected. Most only get one shot at it. But do you sacrifice all the conservative values and ideology that made this country great, and to which most Republican candidates ascribe to achieve that personal goal? Or do you take one for the team and unite behind a single GOP candidate to unseat the current American king?

I believe, as Newt Gingrich “claimed”, that a solid attack on Obama, without nasty stones thrown at GOP challengers, could be just as effective if not more so.

To say I am disappointed would be an understatement. This campaign is what I normally expect from Liberals. It will be costly in the end. Four more years of Barack Hussein Obama will surely send America into a tailspin from which it might not be able to recover. We might end up like the European nations economically and some third world dictatorship militarily.

               My hope is that it’s not too late and that bruised egos can be set aside. Republicans need to unite behind Romney. It’s fairly obvious he will be the party nominee. He wouldn’t be my choice but any of the candidates would be light years ahead of who is in there now. The old saying about losing the battle but winning the war certainly applies here. And if we don’t accept that now, it may be too late tomorrow to turn this country around and get it back on track. That would translate to losing the war. And that, my friends, would be too bad for all of us!