MR. G.O.P. :GARY AMINOFF: ONE ON ONE
(An Exclusive Interview)
-ByAbby Stockli, Editor, ArtChix Magazine
from ARTCHIX Magazine
He is a Republican who appreciates art, accepts the diversity of people and has a clear sense of direction for his country. G.O.P. may mean ‘Grand Ole’ Party”, but for the purpose of this interview is means ‘Gary On Point’. He is unapologetic for his views and his demeanor and approach indictates that just maybe liberals are most guilty of lumping everyone together into one stereotype (that’s our observation, not his). When you do that to a liberal, it’s called bigotry. When they do it to a Republican we are suppose to believe that republicans are all mean-spirited and deserving of the sterotype. It’s just not so.
Gary Aminoff loves people. He loves art and he loves his country. You’re just as likely to see the handsome, debonaire, well-dressed Aminoff listening to Abba as you are to find him talking politics.
It is odd when we look at how republicans are perceived and what it actually means to be a republican. A republican is tradionally known for supporting less government, more autonomy and less censorship. By that definition, all artists would be republicans at heart. So why have many of us come to believe that republicans are less supportive of art than the rest of us. Is it because most republicans believe art should stand on its own merits, rather than be supported by tax-payer dollars? Or is it because the Christian Right would have us believe that to be a republican is to have a God-given mandate to censor “less than moral” works of art that ‘they’ find distasteful?
Whatever the case, California Republican Gary Aminoff is a conservative, without believing his views need to be imposed upon the rest of the electorate. He believes in people and giving people the best tools to achieve the American Dream. Aminoff is an unapologetic capitalist (Yay for the home team! We at ArtChix are diehard capitalists, thank-you), and he sees his country as a place where anything is possible.
In a rare interview for ArtChix, we had the opportunity to talk to Gary Aminoff about art, politics, Barack Obama and the future of his party. What he had to say went beyond politics and party. What he had to say was articulated with deep conviction in his core values and his love for the United States of America. Gary Aminoff is unique. He is the kind of man who believes in lifting up another, rather than knocking them down. He believes in the best in his country and in all we can achieve with the right leadership, right direction and right attitude.
Here is what Gary Aminoff had to say to ArtChix Magazine:
Q: You are very active in Republican Party politics in Los Angeles. Why do you think republicans had a difficult time swaying the electorate in the last presidential election?
It was the “perfect storm” for a Democratic Party victory. George Bush was very polarizing. There was a lot of disapproval in the country about him and his policies. Not only were Democrats and Independents unhappy with him, but there were also many Republicans who were not pleased with the way he governed in his second term. We had been through seven years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The country was ready for a change.
Barack Obama presented himself, very skillfully, as the change the country wanted. He ran as the “anti-Bush.” He made promises that the American people wanted to hear. Those who supported him wanted to believe the promises he made. He was a perfect candidate - attractive, articulate, young and inspiring. It also helped that he was an African-American. He got nearly all of the black vote, most of the latino vote and most of the Jewish vote. Many of his supporters voted for him, in large part, because he was black. It was a way to expiate white guilt and to feel good about giving a black man the chance to be President.
John McCain came across as Bush-lite, and of an older generation. In other words, more of the same. It would have been surprising had Obama not won that election.
The public was so emotional about Obama’s election, however, that it didn’t bother to take a look at who the person was beneath the veneer. Obama came into the most powerful office in the world with very limited legislative background and without having run any large public or private organization. He came from an urban community-organizer background. That is not adequate preparation for being the Leader of the Free World, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States of America. We hope he will be up to the job.
Q: What do you think of Sarah Palin?
My personal opinion of Sarah Palin is that she is very attractive as a candidate as well. She has been a successful mayor and governor and has demonstrated that she can competently run a governmental entity. She not only talks the talk of conservative values, but she walks the walk. She is a conservative in her core, and she can articulate those values in a way that resonates with the conservative base. She connects with her base. She is also polarizing. Feminists and many liberal women don’t like her because she is beautiful, strong, religious and anti-abortion. The liberal press has had a field day trying to make her look bad. She has been treated very unfairly by the press.
If your question is do I think she is ready at this time to be President of the United States, my answer is, not yet. But I think she could grow into it over time.
Do I think she can serve as a rallying figure for the conservative base of the Republican Party? Absolutely.
Q: Do you see the election of Barack Obama as a good thing for the country?
Yes and No. I think it is good that the country has gotten past race as an issue in electing candidates. Electing a black President was something that would not even have been considered in the realm of possibility 30 or 40 years ago. That part is good.
I think the part that is not good about the election of Barack Obama is his drive to drastically and rapidly change the culture of America,his dislike of the wealthy and American business and his intention to try to redistribute their wealth to those less fortunate. His rapid expansion of the role of government is damaging to our country. Americans are, for the most part, more conservative than Barack Obama and his advisors. Obama was raised and trained by self-acknowledged communists and socialists. Capitalism does not hold high value among that crowd.
His so-called healthcare reform program and the cap and trade program are not about healthcare or the environment. They are about wealth redistribution and control of business by the government. As Americans wake up to the fact that what has made this country so exceptional in the past has been unequaled personal liberty and the capitalist system, they will begin to reject his policies. In fact, they have already started doing that. The Obama administration wants to reduce personal liberty and to replace capitalism with more government control of business. Americans won’t support that.
America is at this time divided between those who think the problems in our society can best be solved by the government, and those who think they can best be solved by the private sector of society. The truth is, government can’t solve anything. It can only make things worse. There has never been a government program that a) came in at the budget originally projected, or b) ran a program as efficiently as a private firm could.
I have asked people to give me one example of a government program that is working the way it is supposed to, that is accomplishing its original purpose, and that the cost is the same, or even 150% of what was originally projected. The answer I get most often is Medicare. People say that because they are getting their Medicare checks. They get their medical reimbursements on time. What they don’t realize is that Medicare is a failed program. It is totally unsustainable in its present form. That is one reason the government is trying to find another program to take its place. Within 10 years or less we will no longer be able to fund Medicare. It is creating a huge deficit, and that deficit will continue to grow. The cost to the country to run Medicare is now running over 300% of its original projection.
People say that, to be accurate, you should take any government program’s original projection and triple it if you want to know what it will ultimately cost. That has proved to be true over time. So, if we take the projected $1.2 Trillion the healthcare bill is supposed to cost over the next 10 years, and triple it, we have nearly $4 Trillion. We could not possibly sustain that. The only way the government healthcare program could pay for itself would be to have huge tax increases on everyone, and even then we couldn’t raise enough money to fully pay for the program. The result of that would be a stagnant economy in perpetuity, if not an outright depression.
Q: How do you think Republicans can do a better job of getting their message across?
How long do you have to listen? Look, I will give credit where credit is due. The Democrats do a much better job of getting their message across than Republicans do. Republicans are just waking up to the fact that they have done very poorly in conveying to the American public what they stand for. They have not been able to effectively articulate the principles of conservatism in a way that resonates with many people. That is going to change, however. Probably not overnight, but Republicans are learning how to frame their message and how to get it out.
I have to say that one of the challenges about getting the conservative message out is that we have elected some Republicans to public office who have not lived by the conservative principles we stand for. So, for example, to say that a conservative principle is that we believe in limited government, and then to have Republicans in power vote to expand the role of government, hurts our credibility. That is why, this time around, we want to elect Republicans who will pledge to live by and adhere to the principles of conservatism.
The message of conservatism is so appealing and liberating that we know that we will attract many who don’t really have the faintest idea what it is, once they have been educated.
Q: Gary, what do you say to those people who see Republicans as mean-spirited?
That results from a misunderstanding of what Republicans stand for. We believe, as our Founders did, that the role of the Federal Government is limited. Most of us are federalists. The Constitution specifically states what the powers and duties of the Federal Government are and reserves all other powers to the States, or to the people. Those politicians who want an expanded government have used the general welfare clause or the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution, with the aid of the courts, to expand the role of government in ways that would have our Founders rolling in their graves.
We have also now developed a couple of generations of some citizens who believe that the government is there primarily to provide entitlements and benefits to its citizens.
We Republicans, for example, don’t think that it is the role of the government to provide healthcare, low cost mortgages, education or many other functions our government now provides. Healthcare and Education, if they are governmental activities at all, are functions of state and local governments, not the Federal Government.
Financing of homes is not a governmental function at all. It is a private-sector function. It is an agreement between a banker or other lender and the home owner. Government should not be involved other than to see that fraud or other criminal activity is not committed by either party.
We conservatives (I use the term Republicans and conservatives interchangably) don’t see why a taxpayer who struggles with supporting his own family, putting his kids through school, and making ends meet should also be responsible for personally guaranteeing to a banker that his neighbor is going to pay his mortgage on time.
That is the case now. The US Government is taking on the role of guaranteeing the repayment of home mortgages. That means that if there are defaults, you and I are going to pay for those defaults through higher taxes. Why? Why are we responsible for that? How is that the role of a government? Isn’t that a private transaction? Does that make me mean-spirited?
So to further answer your question, when Republicans talk about not supporting a Federal healthcare reform plan, it isn’t because we think that healthcare coverage doesn’t need reforming, it is because we don’t think it is the role of government to assert itself between the patient and his doctor. We believe that the solutions to our healthcare coverage problems lie within the private sector. Does that make us mean-spirited?
There are non-governmental solutions to the high cost of healthcare, and the fact that there are many people who can’t afford health insurance. We have private-sector solutions to all the problems with healthcare coverage in America. The public only hears that Republican are opposed to “healthcare reform” and therefor Republicans are mean-spirited. We have allowed the press and the party in power to define who we are. We are not opposed to healthcare coverage reform. We are just opposed to the government being involved in it, especially when there are other solutions which will cost substantially less and be more effective.
As I stated earlier, we want to take the solutions to the challenges in American life out of the hands of the government and have those challenges solved by individual people and the private markets. It can be done much more effectively there. People don’t fully get that the bigger the government, the more restricted is personal freedom, and that the converse is also true. The more limited that government is, the greater your personal freedom. When they begin to make that connection, I believe things will change.
There is a small segment of our population that is willing to give up their personal freedom in exchange for being taken care of by the government. They have not learned the value of personal liberty.
One of our challenges is that there is now a segment of the population that believes that we should have a European-style government that takes care of you from cradle to grave. This is part of the “large government” credo being taught in our public schools. When we conservatives oppose that, we are labeled “mean-spirited.” But, that isn’t the American way. We are who we are as a people because of individual ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit. That is what has led to all the advances we have made in this country. The essence of America is entrepreneurship. That has been our greatness. Why would anyone want to destroy that?
I won’t go into one of my lengthy rants about the horrors of our educational system, but I will just say that when I went to school we were taught to be patriots and to love this country. We saluted the flag every morning, we sang God Bless America, and we were taught civics and American history and learned about this exceptional country and its greatness. In schools today none of that is happening. Our children then grow up not knowing anything about our history, or how government works, or the benefits of capitalism, or the preciousness and uniqueness of freedom. It is a shame that the culture that made us great is not being taught to our children.
When you have high taxes you destroy entrepreneurship. When you have high government spending, high taxes are the inevitable result. President Obama is embarking on a program that will cause government spending to exceed anything that ever occurred in America in the past. We will not be able to pay for these programs without increasing taxes substantially on all segments of the population. That will stifle business activity, resulting in even more unemployment, and will kill the entrepreneurial spirit in America. We will become like most European countries that haven’t produced a new product or scientific advancement in years.
Q: How do you think this perception became so entrenched?
The perception of Republicans come from two places, I believe. One is the Republicans of the past. Republicans in the first half of the 20th century were the wealthy. They were the captains of industry and the members of elite country clubs. John D. Rockefeller comes to mind. The Democrats were the party of labor - the working man. That is the way it was. That is not the way it is.
These days, the super-wealthy in this country are Democrats and the working middle class are mostly Republican. Roles have essentially been reversed, but the old perceptions persist. The public doesn’t realize that most major public company Presidents are Democrats. They probably don’t know that virtually all the Wall Street moguls are Democrats. Most investment bankers are Democrats. The 25 most wealthy on the Forbes 400 list are Democrats. The presidents of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are Democrats. The four wealthiest men on the planet, Bill Gates (above, right) , Warren Buffet (above, left) , George Soros and Larry Ellison are all Democrats. Republicans are the shop owners, the engineer, the accountant, the small business owner. In other words, the middle class. Democrats are now the upper class and the lower class. The very wealthy and the very poor, for the most part. Republicans are in the middle.
If you ask the average man on the street he will tell you that Republicans are rich and greedy. He will tell you that Republicans control all the corporations and wealth and Democrats are the struggling middle class. He will be totally wrong. Ask him to identify a wealthy, greedy Republican, however, and he will not be able to do it. It is all perception, and a very inaccurate one at that.
The other reason is that the press continues to paint Republicans as being rich, greedy and, yes, mean-spirited. The preponderance of newspaper reporters and newspaper owners are Democrats, or are independents who vote for and support Democrats. Republicans do not get fairly represented in the average newspaper or TV news station.
Q: You happen to be a very open supporters of the arts. You have even commented on Facebook on the work of some controversial artists. Tell us about your appreciation of art.
Well, is there anyone who doesn’t appreciate art? I believe artists have a message for us. I think artists are the canary in the mineshaft. They sense and feel, before most of us, what is coming - and let us know. They provide the beauty in life. After all, how dull and mundane would life be if we didn’t have art, in its various forms?
Artists bring beauty and grace to our lives. Artists, in some cases, make us leave our comfort zone and experience parts of life through their art that we wouldn’t otherwise experience. Artists can transport us to places we wouldn’t otherwise go. Artists can show us a vision of life that we wouldn’t otherwise see. Artists enable us to see things from the perspective of their view, not just from ours. Artists can take the mundane and make it beautiful. I enjoy art and artists of all stripes.
Q: Where do you think the line should be drawn, if any, when it comes to public funding of the arts?
First of all, let’s define terms. When you say “public funding of the arts”, are you speaking of government funding of the arts?
Because I see art as being essential to the quality of our lives, I want to see artists receive funding so they can perform their art. On the other hand, funding of art is a role that I don’t personally believe the federal government should be involved in. I do believe in public funding of the arts, however. meaning that the public voluntarily funds the arts.
Ideally, I would like to see artists funded from the private sector. I think we should encourage people to contribute to the arts. We have, and we should have more, private foundations that support the arts. I think corporations should be encouraged to support foundations that fund artists. Since they get a tax deduction for those contributions, they receive a benefit as well. I also think there is nothing wrong with local governments supporting local artists. I am very supportive of “public” funding for artists and believe that it can be done by private individuals, foundations, corporations and local governments.
You asked for my opinion, however, you can take heart in the fact that cutting funding for the arts by the Federal government is not likely to happen. I expect the Federal government will continue to fund the arts.
Q: What is Gary Aminoff’s taste like when it comes to music?
My taste in music is very broad. I like to say that I have catholic taste in music, but most people think I am talking about religion. That word (small c) really describes it. I like most genres of music, with the exception of hip-hop. Sorry, I just can’t get into hip-hop.
What I listen to depends a lot on my mood at the time. I love to listen to opera, especially at night, after dinner, with a cigar and a glass of single-malt or port, with the volume cranked up. I also love classical music. Sometimes I love to listen to country. Other times I like the oldies. Yesterday I had Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons blasting from my ipod in the car. I really dig good jazz, both dixieland and modern. Again, depending on my mood, I can dig on Blues. This afternoon I was listening to Abba. So you see, I am all over the board.
Q: Who is your favorite author or artist?
Wow. So difficult to pick a favorite. Like music I enjoy reading different genres of literature. There are so many authors I like to read and so many artists whose work I enjoy. Just off the top of my head I would have to say, since I am reading one of his books right now, that Victor Davis Hanson is one of my favorite authors. At least this week.
As far as art, I really love the impressionists. That is my favorite period. So Edouard Manet comes to mind. But I also love the post-impressionist period and for that period I would have to say Van Gogh, with his bold strokes and powerful images. I also like the experimentation of the modern and post-modern artists. It is hard for me again to select a single one. As you can probably tell, I react to art emotionally, not intellectually, so what my emotional state is at the time probably has a lot to do with what I appreciate at that moment.
Q: What do you think the greatest challenge is for the United States today?
In my view, the greatest challenge for the United States today is the international plot perpetrated by a political group within Islam that wants to enforce all people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to live under Sharia law. This program requires its followers to engage in violent jihad, or holy war, against all non-believers to bring about the triumph of Islam under a global theocracy, the Caliphate.
Most Americans are unaware of the fact that this group has declared war on us, and that 9/11, the Fort Hood massacre and the underpants bomber are just some of the attacks they have made on us. To pretend the plot does not exist, as many do, is to be unprepared to defend against it. I predict they will get more skilled in their methods and that we will see many Americans die at their hands, unless we are prepared to get serious about defending ourselves.
There are other serious challenges, but I consider that to be the greatest challenge at this time.
Q: If you could have President Obama’s ear for 10 minutes, what advice would you give the president?
I would say, Mr. President, with all due respect, you are taking the country in the wrong direction. For example you are focusing the country on the healthcare issue, at a time when unemployment has reached historical highs and the economy is in the tank. You are also planning a huge expansion in government spending the expectation of which is causing businesses to retract. Uncertainty about the outcome of that is inhibiting small business growth, which is the source of employment in this country.
Stop trying to divert the attention of the country to non-essential issues and focus on two things: jobs and economic recovery. You do that by a) greatly reducing income taxes immediately; b) Give incentives to businesses to hire employees through tax credits; c) Eliminate barriers to business expansion; d) allow businesses to get tax credits for the purchase of equipment; e) adjust banking regulations and reserve requirements, at least temporarily, to allow banks to be a more able to make business loans; f) reduce spending for non-essential government programs; and finally g) eliminate immediately the capital gains tax. And then step back and watch the economy take off.
And, oh, yes, Mr. President, stop apologizing for America. We have little to apologize for and much to be praised for by other countries, and lastly, please stop bowing to foreign leaders. It is unbecoming and un-American.
Q: Who is a potential Republican presidential candidate to watch in 2012?
There are many bright young conservative potential candidates on the horizon. It is still too early to say who will be a candidate. Personally, I think some of the best are Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal, and Tim Pawlenty. There are others, but I don’t think candidates will start to come forward until 2011. Ask me again next year.
Q: Gary, thank you so much for your time and it is a pleasure to interview you for ArtChix.
Abby, thank you so much for allowing me to express my opinions. I enjoy reading ArtChix. Keep up the good work.
-By Abby Stockli, Editor, ArtChix Magazine
