PAY UP
Re: Peter Ferrara’s
A Laffer Curve Breakthrough:
If just to rock their world — a conservative or
Republican-leaning person from academia should present the
benefits of everyone earning a wage paying some taxes on a
federal level to the public. No one should ever be getting a net
return. Do it in the name of equality. Really point out the
disparity of distribution. Get this in the tabloids and news
programs for all to see. Lay out all the welfare programs and how
they could begin to be means tested with some new targets, etc.
The hard truth is, those potentially most affected by the phantom
proposition won’t even be paying attention unless a negative
result occurs for them, so the audience would be all who are
minimally engaged or that have some capability of understanding.
While it may not be politically possible to actually execute
these changes, the concepts can be clearly explained why
modifying the current tax laws make sense and in process educate
many more as to why the conservative way is better.
— Bruce Love
USING HIS OUTDOOR VOICE
Re: Andrew Cline’s Gates
Lied:
Indeed he did.
— Dean Crist
Gates’ actions are not just indicative of a “hopelessly erroneous
political theory.”
They also represent a dangerous social and intellectual reality,
nurtured and actively expanded and exploited by ideologues such
as the professor, Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson,
Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and others.
Evelyn B. Higginbotham—the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History
and chair of the African and African American Studies (AAAS)
department at Harvard. She weighed in with her support for Gates,
in a letter
published Thursday, July 23, by the Harvard
Crimson.
She wrote, in part, of how “outraged” she and, she trusted, her
colleagues at AAAS were and that they believed Gates’ account,
supporting him fully.
She also declared the insidiousness of “racial presumption” by
“offending” whites who are, she said, clueless about their
purported insults.
Higginbotham, while then suggesting that she and her
colleagues—and, presumably, all of us—would never know Crowley’s
“full emotional state,” asserted that she and AAAS knew Gates and
were in Gates’ “corner.”
One wonders: Do she and Gates have the intellectual honesty and
personal courage to come out of their “corner,” turn on the
light, look into the mirror of their lives and see the sinister
nature of their intentional insult and deliberate judgments that
are reverse-racist acts?
One also wonders: Have she and Gates apologized to Officer
Crowley? If not, will they?
— C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton, West Virginia
The United States is now a country where people can stand up and
say, “I voted for Barack Obama BECAUSE he’s black.” I suppose
Henry Louis Gates and company think that’s progress…
— Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida
DUMP HIM
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s
Is Lindsey Graham Crackers?:
I would like this to be an open letter to all of the good
citizens of South Carolina.
Okay, folks. The joke is over. We get it. We’ve all had a good
laugh. Now, would you please, PLEASE dump Graham when he comes up
for re-election? He’s turning out to be nothing more than another
copy of the two girls from Maine.
The country can’t take any more of this. Only you can spare the
rest of us from this fool.
— Garry Greenwood
Gearhart, Oregon
If Fox News puts this charlatan on as a representative of
Republicans and conservatives one more time, I’m going to kill my
TV set.
Then I’m going to dispatch a very nasty e-mail to Roger Ailes.
Lindsey Graham needs to be removed … … . NOW!
— Jim Bjaloncik
Stow, Ohio
PRESIDENT STEIN
Re: Ben Stein’s We’ve
Figured Him Out:
All I can say is thank God for Ben Stein. Maybe he should run for
president. He is trying to open the gate of knowledge for those
who voted for Obama and now see the beginning of what could be
the end. Mr. Stein is a man that stands up for the people and is
not afraid of speaking the truth — the truth that the American
people are now privy to. What a shame, we, myself not included,
voted for a president that has never shown any proof of
credentials. Wake up America!!! Mr. Stein, I commend you for the
courage to speak out. My prayers are with you and also with this
country.
— Patricia Gibbons
I am a great admirer of Ben Stein and concur in his projections.
I am a U.K. medical graduate (1949) and experienced first hand
the lies and deceit in promises made by the Labour
Government under Clement Attlee and the Min. of
Health Aneurin Bevan.
One statement in particular remains in my memory spoken by Bevan
at a meeting in 1948 before the passage of the National
Health Bill i.e., “this Bill will ensure that no one will fall
below this net” — as experience showed “this became a
ceiling above which no one could rise.”
The ultimate event was the establishment of a private insurance
program with private care facilities to counter the
unacceptable delays and missed opportunities to get early care I
know from personal family experience with a Mother whose early
Cancer of the Gall Bladder is on display at the Royal
College of Surgeons museum in London as the “First totally
encapsulated Carcinoma recorded since the onset of
NHI some 30 years before.”
God help us in theavoidance of this type calamity in our
future.
— Harold Passes
Bethesda, Maryland
NO FREE LUNCH
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s
Who Will Tell Michael J. Fox He Needs To Die?:
To my mind, there are two immediate and relatively inexpensive
(compared to Obamacare) solutions to the health care fiasco.
First and most obvious is tort reform. Case in point: John
Edwards became a multimillionaire by
pressing frivolous law suits against health care professionals
and their insurance companies.
Since he was relatively easy to look at, he was able to convince
a multitude of juries to help make
him rich. Remember, the lion’s share of jury awards in such suits
goes to the lawyers, not the “aggrieved” plaintiffs; hence the
term ambulance chaser.
Secondly, years ago, most communities had hospitals run by some
level of government. These
hospitals provided free clinics where the poor and indigent could
get reasonable basic health care, usually without long waits, at
minimal cost to the patient. Some of these clinics even provided
dental care! When the hospitals were privatized and became profit
centers, prices soared and reasonably priced health care in the
form of clinics disappeared.
Under today’s system (Medicaid and government edicts) hospital
emergency rooms are required by law to provide care to anyone who
shows up, regardless of ability to pay. This includes illegal
immigrants who have no rights but, know how to game the system!
Medicaid patients go to the emergency rooms as a matter of course
to avoid co-pays, so even when health care is cheap, they want
cheaper. Such is the mindset of the welfare state.
Obamacare is no more the answer to today’s problem than
Hillarycare was under Clinton. There is no free lunch and the
price of obamacare will require taxes far in excess of what I am
willing or able to pay.
— C.D. Lueders
Melbourne, Florida
Another reason for Michael Fox to qualify for QALY: he has
already been told by Dr. OZ on the Oprah show that there is no
help coming from stem cell research. It does not work.
— Raymond Curiale
FATAL ENGINEERING
Re: Ralph R. Reiland’s Barack,
Meet Friedrich:
Mr. Hayek is difficult to read, but worth the effort. In the
attempt to re-make American life, and currently the health care
sector, I wonder if many would take the president seriously if he
decided he was smart enough to be a structural engineer. How many
would be willing to drive over the repaired bridge in Minnesota
if the only engineering done on it was the president’s? I would
be no more inclined to trust a bunch of lawyers with my health
than with designing a bridge for me to drive over.
They don’t know that they don’t know enough. Unlike the news
cameras showing the destruction of a bridge collapse, a peon in
North Dakota that dies waiting for cancer treatment will not make
the national news headlines.
As Hayek indicated, socialism leads to totalitarian systems
because in order for collective systems to work, force becomes
necessary. The chapter on the poisoning of our language is really
interesting, and very applicable to this president. He talks a
ton, is always in our faces, but it is just talk. Its purpose
seems to distract like a magician while he’s busy doing the
opposite.
I also appreciated Hayek’s comment to religious folk, and his
acknowledgement of its importance to civil life enjoyed by all,
even atheists, as I believe he was. We are the guardians of
tradition, and contrary to popular belief, it is tradition and
not scientific method that Hayek credits as the success of our
extended order of capitalism.
— R. Welton
Michigan
