After several trillion dollars of stimulation by the Obama Administration and the Fed, one might think the economy would be chugging along at a pretty good clip. But, it just isn't so, and the light at the end of the tunnel is pretty dim. Just ask a small business owner.

Bob Beauprez

Categorized in : Thinking Light Tunnels

In America, small business is a big deal.

Bob Beauprez

small-business bigs america

As freedom-loving people across the globe hope for an end to tyranny, we will never forget the enormous suffering of the Holocaust.

Bob Beauprez

holocaust suffering people

For too long, our country's version of an energy policy has consisted of Americans waking up every day and wondering how much it will cost to drive to work, how much it will cost to keep their business running, how much it will cost to heat or cool their homes.

Bob Beauprez

home running country

Education is a shared commitment between dedicated teachers, motivated students and enthusiastic parents with high expectations.

Bob Beauprez

expectations teacher commitment

During the campaign for re-election, Barack Obama at least made vague references to a willingness to accept $3 trillion of reduced spending in exchange for a $1 trillion dollar tax increase.

Bob Beauprez

election dollars campaigns

Colorado's collective shale deposits contain somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 trillion barrels of oil. That's almost as much as the entire world's proven oil reserves!

Bob Beauprez

colorado oil world

The only direction Obama has the economy moving is backward.

Bob Beauprez

economy moving

Careful economic research has shown public-sector workers receive a level of compensation, pension benefits, and retiree health coverage in excess of what comparable workers in the private sector enjoy. In some instances, the total premium can be 30 percent or higher.

Bob Beauprez

excess benefits research

Barack Obama likes to point to General Motors as the poster child for the job creation success of his economic policies. However, whatever your sentiments about the government's bailout of General Motors, for every job Barack Obama 'saved-or-created' in the U.S. there were two jobs off shore.

Bob Beauprez

government jobs children

Two new workers are being added to the population for every one job that is created.

Bob Beauprez

population jobs two

As state and federal lawmakers debate the country's energy policies and Colorado's role in the ever-expanding energy economy, let's hope they remember that unnecessary regulations stifle growth while doing nothing for public safety or health.

Bob Beauprez

safety growth country

Although it was created with the best of intentions, the federal government's Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program has become one of the worst and most costly boondoggles ever foisted on the American public.

Bob Beauprez

intention fuel government

Every time Washington regulators pass down another heavy-handed rule or levy another hefty fine, Colorado loses potential jobs, revenue, and economic security.

Bob Beauprez

colorado economic jobs

In 2008 all the stars aligned perfectly for Obamas 6-point victory over John McCain. He was an inexperienced, untested neophyte, and successfully convinced enough voters to paint their own version of what hope-and-change was all about on the blank canvas he provided.

Bob Beauprez

voters victory stars

President Reagan, Jack Kemp and other advocates of supply-side economics understood that pro-growth tax, spending and economic policies were essential to America's long-term economic and fiscal health.

Bob Beauprez

growth long america

After the Democrats shoved the 2700 pages of ObamaCare down our throats - and we did find out how expensive, controlling, and coercive the legislation was - a majority of Americans wanted the Supreme Court to toss it aside as unconstitutional.

Bob Beauprez

obamacare majority pages

What Democrats haven't focused on are the kind of policies that would promote economic growth - such as making permanent the 2001/2003 tax cuts, opening up federal lands to more energy production, and reforming government to reduce its burden on business.

Bob Beauprez

cutting government land

Something very significant appears to be happening in America. There is a dramatic shift in voter affinity toward the GOP, and it may prove to be the mountain-too-high for Barack Obama's campaign.

Bob Beauprez

mountain campaigns america

President Obama has tried to spin the paltry new job creation numbers as 'a step in the right direction.' But, clearly, the small growth in jobs isn't even keeping up with population growth, much less returning the workforce to a healthy level.

Bob Beauprez

healthy numbers jobs

Obama and the Democrats' preposterous argument is that we are just one more big tax increase away from solving our economic problems. The inescapable conclusion, however, is that the primary driver of the short-term deficit is not tax cuts but the lack of any meaningful economic growth over the last half decade.

Bob Beauprez

growth cutting meaningful