Readers
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Economic system’s circling the drain
Among the great truths mothers teach are warnings “to leave well enough alone.” It is a fact folks living longer are those having the least to do with medicine. Doctor errors are the fifth-leading cause of death.
As one alive because he was not taken to the hospital when badly burned and not expected to live (“Why waste the money?”), I did not get the infection killing many burn victims in 1938 and was not exposed to the staphylococcus common in hospitals.
There are great principles in simple truths. Just as the human body is self-healing the free market fixed much greater downturns than 2008 in 1925, 1949, 1953, 1974 and 1981 quietly.
The “stimulus package” is a bad idea. It will only make things worse as did the New Deal and Japan’s efforts in a decade of economic debacle. Governments never learn. They only become more parasitic.
General Motors and Chrysler deserve to die. It is certain the pieces will be picked up much as Volkswagen after we bombed Hitler-folk into caves; then make something new and better of rubble. The free market is a self-healing mechanism.
Bankers sold loans to people who did not qualify, breaking laws while making money. All should be prosecuted and imprisoned.
Wall Street derivative dealers took bankers’ words on loan quality without sampling as would an MBA with a wet ink diploma. They deserve to go broke and never allowed near Wall Street or a cash register.
Our financial system has become a full toilet into which many miscreants have left deposits. The elected class just added theirs. The time has come to flush.
Adrian Vance
Lakeport, Calif.
Republicans obstruct effective solutions
President Obama’s administration hoped to find a more collaborative way to negotiate governance of our great country.
After the Republicans’ “winner take all” steamroller politics, power has now swung to the Democrats. Obama’s leadership tried something different: listening respectfully, including Republicans in policy development and compromising to accommodate Republican concerns.
The final version of the Economic Recovery Act cut proposed spending by more than $100 billion over the previous version, just to accommodate Republicans and gain their votes.
The act also increased tax cuts for the wealthy in spite of ample experience that this doesn’t do much to help the economy.
These compromises were made to include Republicans in solving our common problems, yet only three voted with Democrats to pass the act. Republicans remain obstructionist.
Democrats would be well-advised to use the political power they currently have to fix the massive problems caused by years of Republican hegemony, and not to dilute their cure with Republican snake oil.
Collaboration is a two-way street and Republicans have shown deceit in working toward effective solutions.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont, Calif.
Legalizing marijuana might cut meth use
Meth use is once again on the rise. This a terrible drug that has disastrous health consequences.
Marijuana, on the other hand, has almost no health risks.
If we were to modify our absurd war on drugs and allow people to use marijuana, it might significantly decrease the use of meth.
This would be a huge benefit to everyone.
Roy Miller
Phoenix
Racial cowardice is in the eye of E. Holder
President Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, recently vomited forth the notion that “in things racial . . . we have always been . . . essentially a nation of cowards.”
This is outrageously offensive to anybody who honors the hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers who gave their very lives to end slavery – lives that Holder refrained from mentioning.
What Holder also left unmentioned is the harm that he and other leftists have caused for decades by mislabeling plenty of good-hearted people as “racists” simply for holding nonracist political views different from their own.
Holder is the real coward for leaving all of this unmentioned in his disgraceful diatribe.
Mark Kalinowski
New York, N.Y.