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(letter in the Daily Local News, February 7, 2010)
Dan Truitt’s letter to the editor on Thursday complimenting the GOP for “saying no” to government spending would be laughably hysterical except that so many people who support the GOP share his views.
Bill Clinton left a $20 billion surplus in the U.S. Treasury when he left office. It was squandered on the largest tax giveback to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans when George W. Bush took office. While Republicans squeal about Democratic spending, anyone with 30 seconds of free time could Google deficit spending and see it is Republican presidents who are far more culpable of this sin than Democrats.
Where was their outrage when George Bush decided to borrow more than $1 trillion for two wasteful wars? Who profited from this binge of borrowing? It surely wasn’t the American people. It was large defense contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Republican political campaigns.
Republicans are the party of “No” when it is convenient. For now, let’s call them what they are: hypocrites.
Charles Bauerlein
Downingtown
by David Sirota at Creators.com, 2/5/10
Judging by Tim Tebow’s much-hyped Super Bowl ad, “choose life” remains conservatives’ favorite abortion shibboleth. But really, the phrase better captures the stakes in the Great Budget Wars of 2010.
Plagued by deficits, communities everywhere must now decide between tax reform and public spending cuts — between economic life and death. And thanks to two Western bellwether states, we know what each choice means.
Choosing death means mimicking Colorado Springs — a Republican red tattoo on Colorado’s purple heart.
As a venue for political experiments, the sprawly GOP enclave is as pristine a conservative laboratory as you’ll find in America. If the city has garnered contemporary notoriety at all, it has achieved infamy for domiciling right-wing groups like Focus on the Family and infecting the world with viruses like Douglas Bruce — the father of draconian initiatives that seek to prohibit governments from raising levies.
When the Tea Party movement’s anti-tax activists refer to the abstract concept of conservative purity, we can turn to a microcosm like The Springs (as we Coloradoans call it) for a good example of what such purity looks like in practice — and the view isn’t pretty….
keep reading at Creators.com
from Daniel Kurtzman, About.com: Political Humor
Where else can raw ignorance rise to such high places — and then flaunt itself shamelessly for all to see?
AlterNet, February 4, 2010
American politics is a hoot! Where else can raw ignorance rise to such high places — and then flaunt itself shamelessly for all to see?
For example, who needs Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien for comic relief, when we’ve got Andre Bauer? He’s the Lieutenant governor of South Carolina (a state, by the way, that really is a comer on the political comedy circuit — especially after Gov. Mark Sanford’s madcap schtick last year involving his disappearance, the Appalachian Trail and an Argentine mistress.
But Sanford is leaving office, and Bauer, who is now a Republican contender for governor, is the state’s new star joker. He had ‘em rolling in the aisles recently when he did a wild, slapstick routine on food stamps at a town hall meeting. Andre proclaimed that much of his political thinking was shaped by his grandmother and that he had learned a valuable lesson from her. …
keep reading at AlterNet