"The Rich" ARE
The Job Creators

Bernie Sanders, Socialist Senator from Vermont, is enraged because the "rich" aren't paying higher taxes.

The left's class-warfare rhetoric has heated up since the electoral beating they took in November. But higher decibels in an argument don't translate to higher levels of logic. The truth is famously the opposite.

Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt made this point, calmly and effectively, in a December 14 interview with Lou Mendelsohn, the founder and CEO of Market Technologies.

Some of the highlights from Hugh's interview:

• Mendelsohn's life is classic Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story built on hard work and dedication.

• Mendelsohn was born in a public housing project in Rhode Island in 1948. His father was a high-school dropout.

• Growing up, he shoveled snow to make money, and worked at a meat and vegetable market.

• His parents did not denigrate the ideas of work and wealth.

• He studied hard, did his homework, and got good grades in school.

• At 17 he left home in Providence to go to Carnegie-Mellon University, eventually earning a degree in Management Science.

• Lou Mendelsohn

  In 1977 he read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the coming of a new industry — personal computers.

• That night he went to a Radio Shack store and bought one.

• From then on he immersed himself in the task of learning about computer software.

• His goal: build a business around the application he was developing: inter-market trend analysis software.

• It took him three years to get to v1.0... (this is one of the reasons he believes the two-year tax deal worked out by President Obama and Republicans is inadequate... business needs to be able to plan ahead much more than that...) Fortunately Mendelsohn's life circumstances were good. His wife had a tutoring business that paid the bills while he worked, uncompensated.

• Today his software — VantagePoint — is a huge success.

• Mendelsohn says the Democrat fixation on class warfare is destructive: "Portraying the wealthy as selfish opportunists, while portraying small business owners and job creators as the backbone of the country is fallacious. The wealthy are, overwhelmingly, the job creators, in our economy."

• He makes no apologies for being wealthy.

• If a person achieves success after a lifetime of hard work, they shouldn't be vilified. They should be celebrated.

• On climbing the ladder to success: "You do not need to be ruthless, you do not need to hurt other people..."

• The key to success (on an individual level): Work hard. Believe in yourself. Believe in your product and service

• The key to job creation in America: Provide an environment where people can have dreams, and an avenue to achieve them.

• "We have to encourage entrepreneurship, we have to encourage small business people to take the risks, to do what they need to do in order to build their businesses, and help their employees. I have 50 employees, that may involve a couple of hundred people when you add in the spouses and children..."

• Lawmakers need to go out and talk to small businessmen, find out about the challenges/obstacles of running a business. "Government has to get out of our way, not get more in our way."

• His thoughts on the estate tax: "It's not that I begrudge paying taxes, it's that I know that for the most part, most of it is squandered. That's what offends me."