Wednesday, September 29, 2010

An Entrepreneur asks Obama a simple question:

A friend sent me this a week or so ago;  I have no idea who Dana Chapin is but I decided to print this and his name at the end because it's so important Americans hear this.   Read about a 'boy makes good' and how we have a president who seems to be trying to make 'boy fail':

September 10, 2010  Mr. President: Why Are You So Angry With Me?

Can anyone explain to me why the President is so persistently angry at successful people? In 1982, I essentially started with nothing when I graduated with average grades from UCLA. Through subsequent perseverance, risk, tenacity and hard work, I’ve managed to secure a vilified place in Barack Obama’s definition of the upper class.

Back in my undergrad days, not unlike many of my less than mature male classmates, I spent too much time chasing coeds and quaffing cheap beer, and too little time hitting the books. Fortunately, soon after graduating without distinction, I had a head on collision with ambition and ever since have had a love affair with hard work and the rewards it can bring.

Soon after entering the workforce, it didn’t take long to discover that current and future employers, not to mention myself, would be far better served if I became my own boss. Having to ask my superior when I could go to lunch or if I could extend my lunch hour didn’t agree with my personality, disposition or general aversion to subordination.

So at age 25, I convinced a very successful friend, twenty-years my senior, to back me on building a 7-unit apartment in Santa Monica, California. In the beginning, I really didn’t know what I was doing but my smooth tongue, quick-study attributes and will to succeed provided jet fuel for a budding enterprise. What started as a one-off apartment building quickly evolved into multiple properties culminating in the development of a 126-unit apartment building which we still own today.
By 1990 at the age of 31, I still had lousy cash flow but managed to create a net worth in excess of a million dollars. Twenty ye! ars ago, before twenty-something internet billionaires became commonplace, a two comma net worth at 30 was an achievement. Unfortunately, as quick as I reached seven digit status, my world began to crumble. It was 1991 and the country went into recession and Southern California real estate was in a free fall. There was actually a joke making the rounds that really illustrated my plight:  “Strolling down the street, two women crossed the path of a talking frog who announced his ability to transform into a real estate developer upon being kissed. One of the women picked up the frog and put it in her pocket sans kiss. Upon her friend’s curious query, the” frognapper” opined that a talking frog must be worth something, unlike a Southern California developer.”

Rags to riches to rags in about a half a decade! A new baby (entering NYU this week) added to the deep stress and the deep debt that began to mount.

Fast forward a couple years, to the rescue came my sister with an idea for a new business to make themed board games. With nothing to lose, I departed Los Angeles with a wife and toddler in tow and moved in with my in-laws in San Diego. Slowly but surely, the eighty-hour work weeks began to pay dividends. What started as small family enterprise with my sisters and one outsider began to grow. One million in sales the first year became three in the second and doubling again in the third. One employee became two, then five and so on. Our business became bankable providing we would agree to take survival-only wages and give personal guarantees. Paying off real estate debt would have to wait but I could at least feed my family and move out from my in-laws.

Today that business employs 35 people and enjoys millions in annual sales. While we’re profitable most years and have been in business for sixteen, the bank still requires personal guarantees on our lines of credit, so if our fortunes change, I’m still at risk of giving it all back and ! more.
In addition to this particular business, I’ve since restarted a real estate development business and started with my brother and wife a health insurance brokerage business selling mostly Health Savings Accounts (yes, I have strong opinions about ObamaCare).

All the while, the government enjoys the upside of my risk taking and none of the downside. With Obama’s tax increases on the “well off”, as a California resident, I will now pay in excess of 50% of all my income in the years I do make money. And yet, the President castigates me for being “rich” and “well connected”. I wonder if he considers how excessive tax rates adversely impact my ability—and incentive—to reinvest profits and grow my businesses; particularly in a tight credit environment. Furthermore, given the ever-growing government burdens placed on me as an employer, while it doesn’t take an act of Congress to consent to new hires, it is not without the fingerprints of Congress and the President that the bar has been raised significantly in convincing me to agree to add staff at any of my companies.

After toiling for nearly three decades, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy more than once in my career, the President has the temerity to pummel me with inflammatory rhetoric and endless additional taxes. I really do wish he would explain why he is so angry with me. My ascension to a status that has secured his continual ire didn’t come as a result of being a lucky sperm, unearned connections or laziness. With all due respect, long days, calloused hands, blind optimism and compartmentalized anxiety were the fuels that energized this journey—not to mention working under the greatest system in the history of the planet. A system where there is general consensus on the need to provide a safety net for the truly needy but shouldn’t be eviscerated to redistribute wealth garnered through ingenuity, guile, risk taking, sacrifice and hard work. !

Mr. President, I understand that my “Mr. Toads” wild career ride wouldn’t balance with everyone’s constitution. But it is imperative for you to understand that risk takers pull many in their wake as we raise the national economic tide to the benefit of the entire populous. Please allow me to do what your trillion-dollar stimulus has failed to do--create jobs. It is at the peril of the country and economy that you continue to lambast and over-tax our kind.  (Written by: Dane Chapin, CEO, USAOPOLY)

Z:  What do you think of that?
z

18 comments:

Christopher - Conservative Perspective said...

One more story out of millions that Hussein, Pelosi, Reid et al turn a blind eye to.

Karen K said...

Great letter, but it will fall on deaf ears. Obugger was fed socialism from the time he was born; he doesn't understand anything else.

Always On Watch said...

Another element needed for capitalism to succeed: confidence in the economy.

Combine the lack of confidence in the economy with what's mentioned in this letter, and what do we have? An economic disaster, with more and more government takeover of everything.

BHO's goal is the redistribution of wealth. And he's succeeding in reaching that goal as far as the impact on all but the wealthiest Americans goes.

Opus #6 said...

BHO's marxist ideology trumps this kind of truth. This is exactly the type of man who is squashed in socialism. This is exactly the type of man who makes America the best country in the world. This is exactly the reason we need to fire the Dems in NOvember.

Sam Huntington said...

At my blog the other day, a commenter pointed out that the wealthiest people made more money in the last year than they ever did and are on track to make even more this year. So I think the author of this email is correct; there is a definite feeling among Progressives that being an entrepreneur, taking risks, and making money is somehow wrong and ought to be punished. Where does this kind of nonsensical thinking come from?

I listened to a 30-something female on the radio the other day tell the audience how upset she is with America. She did all the things her multi-cultural family required of her: studied hard in school, earned a college degree, and found a job, a husband, and now has a latchkey kid in the offing. But now, she’s on the brink of losing her house because she lost her job and can’t find another one. She feels America has broken its promise to her and millions of other like her.

I actually had to pull off the road. What promise has America broken? Our founding fathers promised equal opportunity, not equal result. There is no utopian existence. Some people will never afford a Lexus or a Mercedes. Bad things happen to good people, but there is one certainty: whiners never succeed. Real Americans are made of stronger stuff. When they take a fall, they pick themselves up and start anew—like the person who wrote the email.

It isn’t just the president who’s angry at successful people; everyone on the left hates success and in my view, if this person on the radio is typical of what American has finally become, then none of us should be surprised that we have an economic problem right now.

Ducky's here said...

Yeah, I'd buy a health savings account from this hustler.

Ducky's here said...

"endless additional taxes". Endless, I say.

Guy is good with the hyperbole.

Anonymous said...

Howdy-Doody should have been reading works by Ayn Rand instead of Karl Marx. The country would have been better off if he had.

I finally realized what he looks like with his flapping arms skipping down the ramp of A.F. One. A rent rider on an old rent horse trotting back to the stable. Believe me, I've seen a lot of them.

Silvrlady

Steve Harkonnen said...

The only question I'd want to ask obama is how does he get his lips so blue.

Lack of oxygen to the head no doubt.

Z said...

Christopher, the left's blind unless people are needy, then they find ways to perpetuate that neediness.

Karen, I've been thinking that Obama's the first president young enough to foist his lefy-indoctrination-schooling on this country. THat's kind of a shocking realization. Throw in the fact that he calls himself BLACK on the census, not even 'both', and how he and Michelle are still stuck in victimhood and you've got a pretty scary combo.

Always; you're right; O's never spoken to this country with optimism except for his election...you can't run a country on negatives no matter how bad things are going, especially America, which has always thrived on optimism. Until now.

Opus..this is exactly the kind of man we need NOT to feel squashed, isn't he.

Sam, I have a very difficult time believing that the wealthiest are doing that well!! I know some pretty wealthy people and that's sure not the case for them. As for that woman; I'd have had to have pulled over, too!

Ducky, wow, I expected you to understand and empathize with a decent, hard working entrepreneur! (sarcasm) "endless taxes"..that doesn't help you to understand what he means immediately? I'd have thought someone who touts himself as so well educated, literate and creative would have loved a turn of phrase like that.
That's the best criticism you could conjure?

SilvrLady, isn't that a crack up? skipping down the steps with the elbows bent and the hands bobbing up and down! SO, it's like a rider on a rent horse, huh? :-)

FrogBurger said...

Typical. Same mindset rules France. Money's bad, people who succeed are arrogant, CEOs are con artists, etc...

Yes, Ducky, endless taxes is the correct wording. Or at least that's how the left thinks. If they could, they'd tax 90% of what we make.

In England, some are touting the ideas of having the gov collect paychecks then subtract the taxes and give the leftovers to the people.

And you were bitching about the IRS the other day. Again, if you like taxes so much you should have given them the money so the State can run according to your politics.

Hypocrite!

Z said...

FB, when the poor and needy and unable to fend for themselves become more important than those who struggle and make it in this world, I'm seeing we're in a whole lot more trouble than even I thought.

frogBurger said...

It's pretty sad Z actually.

This whole idea of redistribution puzzles me. They applied redistribution of work hours in France with the 39 then 35 hours work week. Do you think it solved unemployment? Nope.

Z said...

FB, it solved nothing and only made people very mad, from what I can tell.
Just to wrap one's brain around taking more and more from those who still have it just to give to those who won't or can't do for themselves is such a stupid idea on all levels; and it has NEVER EVER WORKED.
I sometimes drive through Beverly Hills and it occurs to me that those people won't be able to afford those wonderful homes in a few years, that jewelry stores will close, fine clothes won't be made....etc etc... we must help those who can't help themselves through charity and we DO........I just wish the government would get out of our lives and leave the successful alone. As it is, they pay most of the taxes supporting this country, as you know.

Ducky's here said...

From his tone, I'll safely bet my '67 Red Sox team ball that he hires illegals.

ExPreacherman said...

I can empathize with and appreciate Dana Chapin. During and after college I worked many jobs.
In the late 50s I decided to start my own home service business with $500.00 cash savings, a wife and three kids with no Govt loan nor outside help. I did spend many 80 hour weeks like Dana.
The business was very successful and we enjoyed a comfortable living. However, excessive taxes and crooked politicians convinced me to get into Conservative politics.
After I trusted Christ as my Savior, I began hiring Bible College students and was blessed to be able to help about ten or so young men complete their Bible College education. Many are still in the ministry.
And Ducky, not an illegal alien in the bunch.
Our entrepreneurial business was a real blessing for all of us.
I really identified with Dana Chapin and just pray millions of young Americans can experience the same thrill of success that I had.
Ducky -- I pray some day you could enjoy such a free enterprise experience -- before the Marxists ruin all our chances.

In Jesus Christ eternally, Jack

Anonymous said...

Isn't it tomorrow that the unions are going to gang up in D.C.? Better put the park police & park picker-uppers on overtime, 'cause it could be interesting. They could get inspiration from the Europeans who are demonstrating so nicely.

Silvrlady

Z said...

Ducky, not to be unkind, but your bitterness makes you sound silly sometimes.

Jack, thanks SO much for sharing that with us. Very interesting that your situation led you to conservatise politics! I hope and pray more people like Dana will stand up and NOT close their businesses due to Obama's ridiculous taxations....imagine what would happen when you consider how many Americans are employed by these businesses? It could be a disaster. Seems almost intentional it's so stupid.

SilvrLady..I don't know...let me know what you hear! xx