In all honesty, Gov. Christine Gregoire’s inaugural address was inspiring.

I wish I could trust her words as more than just political posturing. She has a reputation in Olympia for taking credit for others’ successes and passing the buck on her own missteps. I’ve witnessed myself how she does the two-step with her fabulous lawyer skills.

From her address is a glaring example of how she thinks:

“So I want to say that I am willing to take risks, and willing to tolerate failure as long as we admit it, can learn from it and keep moving forward.”

That’s nice. She’s willing to risk our failure as long as “we admit it, (we) learn from it and keep moving forward.” In other words, “let’s not mention my irresponsible spending that created our deficit, or my complete absence of leadership on transportation. These are your failures and I’m willing to tolerate them.”

The governor referenced serious problems in education, such as the high school dropout rate, but the same pattern emerges. Rather than resolve existing disputes (failures), such as a lawsuit from several school districts regarding the strained and incoherent funding system, she actually worked hard at expanding the state’s role (and therefore the taxpayer burden) in education by creating the Department of Early Learning (which is really day care — let’s be honest).

Gregoire cuts from programs for abused and neglected children that are woefully mismanaged and also the subject of endless lawsuits, while expanding health care to include children from families earning up to $80,000 a year. Essentially, she created an unwarranted entitlement for children while ignoring the travesty of the children being abused to their painful and miserable deaths while in state care. This behavior only makes sense if you are purposely trying to make people more dependent on government.

Gregoire mentions the burdens that our state places on businesses, with no reference to the most obvious one of all, the Business and Occupation tax, which requires that businesses pay on their gross income, not their profit. They pay the state before they pay employees, overhead and federal income tax, making it a major hurdle for new businesses to launch without starting out indebted to the state.

So, what’s my idea? I propose a “Take your governor to work” week. The governor (and the Legislature while we’re at it) needs to understand the difference between “wealth creation” and “wealth distribution.” A business owner is the only one worthy of teaching this because it’s the reality they live every day.

The governor and most of the Legislature are professional public servants who have no experience with creating private wealth. Most have never had to sign the front of someone’s paycheck, have never had to submit a profit/loss statement or been forced to fire or layoff people in response to tightening budgets.

The governor and Legislature merely distribute other people’s money with no bottom line accountability. Nobody gets fired when a program fails and in fact, government programs tend to get more funding when they fail, as though money is the reason they failed (though they’re furious at CEOs who get bonuses for their failure).

And did someone say green? As in green jobs? While she referenced how painful it was to make the nearly $3 billion in cuts, the same speech makes an homage to more state spending in the way of creating “green” jobs and reforming the state economy to a “green economy.” As Todd Meyer from the Washington Policy Center (www.washingtonpolicy.org) points out, creating these green jobs out of public money “is akin to banning tractors in order to employ more people.” It requires more people to work less efficiently and at lower wages.

Whenever the government engages in creating jobs, it actually drains wealth from citizens to do so, all the while pretending to create wealth. Since those newly created jobs are on the public payroll, where do you think the money comes from to pay those new positions “created?” It comes from the taxpayers, necessitating yet another five cents per gallon or $10 more on our car tabs, or one nickel per cubic inch of air we breathe.

What the governor calls “investing,” I call “spending our hard-to-save dollars.” Rather than spending more of the public pie, the government should be in the business of what former Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi called “a customer service” ethos of helping private businesses succeed, thus creating more private wealth to stimulate the economy. When was the last time the local city or council permitting agency or Labor and Industries Department official actually asked “how can I help you be successful?”

The answer is, they don’t. They exist in complete opposition to the private citizen, creating as many obstacles as they can to keep their jobs secure (that you and I pay for).