{"DS | Head | Brief"/}Republicans should support president
{"DS | Body text | ragged"/}So, President Obama is a liar? Let's look at the Bush-Cheney years. Cheney: "The Iraqis will throw roses at our feet. Oil will be $20 a barrel."
Bush: "The Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction, a mushroom cloud. Al-Qaida is there. No one in my administration leaked the covert CIA agent's name to the media."
The Republicans are crying that the Dems are making deals on health care. Remember, Halliburton (Cheney's pals) got a no-bid contract.
They are using the same scare tactics to stop universal health care. They get too much money from health insurance companies and drug companies.
The public option would create competition within companies and bring down costs. "Get the facts" on government and health care. Get a copy of "Healing of America" by expert T. R. Reid. In Japan, a doctor visit is $20, a CAT scan is $98. Here, it is $100 for a doctor visit and $1,200 for a CAT scan. The Republicans complain about bipartisanship, but where were they when they passed all of Bush's 70 spending bills and put the country $5.6 trillion in debt? They do not care about the poor or middle class. Only the rich benefit from the Republican party.
They were against buying cheaper drugs from Canada, against the minimum wage, against health care reform. They just want to give tax breaks to the wealthy and oil companies. They do not want any domestic spending programs.
If you want to make our country better, why don't you work with President Obama instead of being critical of everything he does?
Keep up the good job, President Obama. We support you.
{"DS | Letters name/town"/}William Agnew
Norwich
{"DS | Head | Brief"/}Impose sales tax
on stock trades
{"DS | Body text | ragged"/}Where has the money gone?
During the past eight months, while day trading on the stock market, I've asked myself why our economy is so unbalanced. I have come to understand one legally sanctioned way that money moves from Main Street, where we pay sales tax on almost every purchase, to Wall Street, where every purchase is sales-tax free.
That's right, when shares of a company change hands, there's no sales tax.
When you buy seed, a plow, clothing, books, restaurant meals, you pay sales tax.
But the cash-rich corporations, the insurance companies, the small investor and the big traders pay no sales tax on those transactions, even though they stand to make a bundle on the transaction.
Sales tax represents a huge portion of the money that government uses to provide services and protections _ money that the government says there's not enough of.
Poor people pay a much larger proportion of their income in sales tax than the wealthy.
People and institutions that buy stocks don't pay sales tax on stock trades.
Why should this class be exempt?
Imagine an America in which grade school children have books, pencils, and computers. Imagine debt-free college graduates. Imagine a country that has enough money to properly supply its armed forces and send GIs to college after service.
We need to tax stock market trades so that money is available to get our economy back on track.
This idea has been floated in Great Britain and here in the U.S., recently by Nancy Pelosi. One argument against it is that a tax here would cause money to move to other markets.
Duh! "Globalize the tax!" The whole world would benefit.
{"DS | Letters name/town"/}Janet Sutta
West Oneonta
{"DS | Head | Brief"/}Happiness not guaranteed in U.S.
{"DS | Body text | ragged"/}As good as Robert Beckman's Nov. 17 letter was, I don't think it did enough justice to what "rights" has come to mean today.
Merriam-Webster defines a right as "Something (as a power or privilege) to which one has a just and lawful claim." Encarta World English dictionary says, "An entitlement, freedom, or privilege to do something." The first strikes me as closer to the founders' view of the concept, while the second seems to reflect today's attitude toward it.
I can't help but feel though that we're confusing rights with liberties. Liberties are defined as "having the freedom to think and act without being restrained by necessity or force." But the current nature of rights you won't find in a dry definition is the notion of it being governments place to pay for them. We have the liberty to do many things, but none that the founders envisioned the government financially responsible for.
Abortion on demand is a prime example of this. One has all the personal liberty in the world to get one, but no constitutional right to one. That we think we do is only because some judges made themselves black-robed legislators and raised it to the same level of those basic freedoms in the constitution. But even with those, the founders never intended public resources to go toward their exercise. That would be like having freedom of religion only if Washington supplied the physical means.
I think their overall view of the rights of citizenship can be summed up by Ben Franklin, "The Declaration of Independence only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." An alien idea in the era of the nanny state.
{"DS | Letters name/town"/}Robert Olejarz
Sidney
{"DS | Head | Brief"/}We must strike hard against terror
{"DS | Body text | ragged"/}I believe I can speak with some authority on the true and accurate feelings of those on the "Arab Street." A lifetime with the foreign service in the Persian Gulf region (with wife Cecile at my side, she with the British Institute's Division of Mid-Eastern Affairs), has given me a substantial understanding of this region. My oh-too-many years have allowed me to have seen it all in the Middle East; as a tiny tot in the early 1940s, I was held aloft by my father to glimpse the Grand Mufti as he traversed the streets of Baghdad.
Many Muslims feel a somewhat kinship with President Obama because of his upbringing, but far more view him as a weak and ineffective leader who, quite oddly, feels no sense of respect or admiration for his own country or the history of his country.
The segment of the Muslim religion that has degenerated into an almost-cult of mayhem and murder feels strongly that now is the time to strike the "Great Satan," (USA). They feel that Americans have been led to believe by their president that we are not engaged in a global war on terror, only a few skirmishes with some poor, misguided souls.
I have seen the blood-stained hand of fanaticism from the Suez to Entebbe and on into the present time. America, be strong, tough and vigilant, the barbarians are surely at the gate.
{"DS | Letters name/town"/}Gerund C. Fontainne
Franklin
