Readers
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Mr. President, tear down that border wall
Building a wall along our southern border to keep out potential landscapers, hotel maids and lettuce-pickers is a bad idea. They are no threat to America and we need their services.
On the other hand, building a wall to keep out drug criminals is futile. These criminals, the people who really are a threat to Americans, are not stopped by a physical barrier. They and their contraband, mostly drugs, have the resources to find ways around any physical barrier.
The violence in Mexico is reaching alarming proportions and American politicians have the blood of these victims on their hands because it is American demand for drugs that produces the drug trade and it is the American war on drugs that causes the crime.
Mr. Obama, I ask you to tear down this wall and abolish the counterproductive, immoral, war on drugs. I do not suggest that drug use will go away, but the criminal element will be deprived of its income and will vanish overnight.
The government of Mexico, now stretched to the breaking point, will be rescued from the precipice and thousands of lives will be saved.
Mr. President, you are a caring and intelligent person. In your heart, you know the war on drugs is wrong. Get down on your knees tonight and ask God to give you the courage to do the right thing.
The future of the government of Mexico and the lives of thousands of innocent victims are in your hands.
Roy Miller
Phoenix
Put your money on capitalism
As regards the economy, President Obama seeks to emulate Franklin D. Roosevelt: “What you see in FDR that I hope my team can emulate is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence and a willingness to try things and experiment.”
Unfortunately for us, it was precisely FDR’s false confidence and mishmash of socialist experimentation that prolonged the Great Depression for years, causing misery for millions.
Of course, this reality contradicts the false lessons “taught” millions of American schoolchildren by government schools. This isn’t surprising. Government schools lack the objectivity needed to properly criticize government when leftist politicians screw up. (For anybody interested in learning more about FDR’s harmful economic policies, I highly recommend reading “FDR’s Folly” by Jim Powell.)
The lessons of FDR’s harmful policies are timely for today, given the shameful appetite for corporate welfare and pork displayed by both Bush 43 and Obama over the last six to eight months.
The day before the Bush- and Obama-backed TARP corporate welfare bill became law (Oct. 2), the S&P 500 closed at 1,114.28. As of the close of business on Feb. 20, the S&P 500 stood at 770.05.
In other words, the stock market was down by about 31 percent since our government significantly increased its already malicious level of meddling in the economy (e.g., the very existence of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the protection afforded them by corrupt politicians such as Barney Frank and Chris Dodd).
What our country needs now is to stop electing harmful politicians and start electing helpful ones. How to tell them apart?
Helpful politicians consistently recognize every individual’s absolute moral rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – in part by embracing the only economic system that is fully consistent with the protection of those rights: capitalism.
Mark Kalinowski
New York, N.Y.
Consider taxing the rich as reparations
Republican propagandists, following Sen. Judd Gregg, have been criticizing nonstop President Obama’s tax reform plan to make the very rich pay a more fair share of the cost of running this nation.
They wail about how taxing people who make more than $250,000 profit will “hurt small business.”
Hmmm, where were their voices last year when Bush administration allocated $700 billion to big business, with virtually no strings attached? Did small business get any of those bailouts? Did Sen. Gregg argue against that huge theft, er, transfer of our national treasure?
Now, Republicans are squealing like stuck pigs at the prospect of paying more taxes on their unearned incomes. All those golden parachutes, bonuses and bailouts have been class warfare against working folks. It is due time for war reparations.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont, Calif.
More Letters to the Editor