Readers
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Tax evasion penalties confined to commoners
What happened to the Founding Fathers’ idea that we should have a government of laws, not of men? That is, everyone should play by the same rules.
Out here in the hinterlands, the common people go to jail for failing to pay their taxes. But in Camelot (Washington D.C.), those who fail to pay their taxes get appointed to Cabinet positions.
Roy Miller
Phoenix
‘Scofflaw politicians’ . . . isn’t that redundant?
Charlie Rangel, Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle.
What’s more worthy of scorn: That the list of high-profile Democratic tax cheats continues to grow or that so many of our politicians – Democratic and Republican alike – excuse such behavior while law-abiding citizens are played for suckers because they actually follow the law and pay taxes on time and in full?
Mark Kalinowski
New York, N.Y.
Jobs secure, Congress in no rush to end recession
All but 11 House Democrats voted for the President’s stimulus package. And 100 percent of the Republicans voted against it.
What does that tell you? The House is more interested in party politics than in rescuing Americans. Otherwise, you’d never get 100 percent of a large group to agree on anything.
Congress does not have a clue about what it takes to cure the recession. We have entered the 14th month of this recession and things continue to get worse.
Fourteen months! If Congress had a clue, we would be out of the recession by now. The recession is not like the weather. Congress actually has the power to cure the recession, if they knew what they were doing.
Republicans say we can’t spend our way out of a recession. Hello? What do you think got us out of the Great Depression. The recovery began with federal deficit spending on the New Deal and prosperity came with federal deficit spending for World War II. Federal deficit spending has cured every depression in American history.
Now, America burns while Congress fiddles. Democrats want to spend; Republicans want to cut taxes. And both want to prevent the other from succeeding. Hello, again? Tax cuts and increased spending are economically identical. They both add money to the economy through deficit spending.
Yes, spending can be focused temporarily at favored projects, while tax cuts are farther reaching and can be made permanent. But now is not the time to argue. Now is the time to pump money into the economy, whether by spending more or taxing less.
While millions of Americans suffer with unemployment, Congress continues to collect its salary. So what’s the rush?
It sure is painful to see people’s lives ruined by that band of nincompoops in Washington.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Wilmette, Ill.