The American Spectator

Reader Mail

GETTING HIT
Re: Philip Klein's Now Comes the Hard Part:

Not only is the Baucus Bill a formula for uncontrolled spending, but there is another major problem. The employer mandate is very poorly crafted, in that it is enforced based on the SIZE of the company by number of employees.

This means that a large but nearly bankrupt company would get hit while some very small but extremely profitable firm skates by.
-- John D. Froelich

IT STINKS
Re: Peter Ferrara's Ruination From Obama-Baucus:

I am 88 years old and on Medicare and also a supplement policy I pay for. Even so, neither Medicare nor my supplement pay out more than I pay in. With Medicare Part B, Part D, and my supplement, I pay in around $5,000.00 per year and my medical expenses including dentistry, prescriptions, and Dr. Visits run $4,000.00 per year. I don't smoke, consume a glass of wine each day, watch my diet, and do some exercise which I enjoy doing.

Also, when I was working I invested in the tax exempt medical fund which I hope will help pay for any catastrophic illness I am sure to contract some day. And now my government is going to shovel as much medical expense of others on me just because I managed my health care as best I could during my earlier years. The Obamacare care stinks. My only satisfaction is that I did not vote for him.
-- Warren Lyckman

MOVING TO THE LEFT
Re: Jeffrey Lord's The Reagan Prize:

I'm leery of say, starting some group to hand out prizes in Ronald Reagan's name. There's the observation that any organization will inevitably move to the left. The Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation...and, yes, the Nobel Prize committees. Eventually things pass out of the hands of the founders, or anybody who knew Reagan... and eventually things pass into the hands of those who often have different ideas.

You wouldn't want a prize named for Ronald Reagan handed out to the ultra-liberal activists of thirty or forty years from now, would you?
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

KEEPING BLACKS DOWN
Re: John R. Guardiano's Personal Fouls:

Once again, the black leftists cry "foul" when it suits their needs. A Rush caller yesterday, who was black, and lives in Detroit, bemoans the fact that black leaders, like Jackson and Sharpton have allied with the white liberals to keep the black man down. Yet, blacks continue to follow the liars like Jackson and Sharpton, and vote in the welfare programs which have stunted family growth and security in such formerly great cities like Detroit and Chicago. Why are these cities, and many others under Democratic control for generations, bankrupt and with NO future? I can't all be George Bush's fault. No, but the almighty Obama, who proclaims to be "post-racial" has a racist attorney general, and in many ways uses the race card in a more subtle way than even Jackson and Sharpton.
-- Bob M
Ft Myers, Florida

Don't forget that Sharpton once incited a group of his "followers" to kill a Korean grocer inside the grocer's store. This, it seems to me, was "the reverend's" biggest "hit."
-- J.H. Insley

A BUFFOON
Re: Lisa Fabrizio's The Friend of My Enemy Is Who?:

Thanks for this decent and honest report on a good man who took the heat for 8 years because the liberals did not get their own way! Al Gore would have been the worst President of USA EVER! The man is a buffoon.
--Ginger Rose

EUROPEAN CAPITAL
Re: Quin Hillyer's reply (under "Tanker Sores") in Reader Mail's Unreasonable People:

Regarding the Airbus question, which Mr. Hillyer believes is settled by this comment: "Northrop is going to assemble the plane here in the U.S."

Point missed completely. It's about capital. Northrop might assemble the plane in the U.S., but the capital accrued in the process would be going to Europe.

Heaven knows we need the capital in the U.S. Why allow the owners of Airbus to expand their manufacturing capability at the expense of ours? For the life of me, I can't figure that one out.

Moreover, we must not allow any of our essential military hardware to be put at the mercy of a foreign country. It would be hard to name any other piece of military hardware so absolutely essential to our ability to protect our country and interests than an air tanker.

Northrop is a corporate shill. And you know what shills do for and with your money, don't you?
-- A. C. Santore

THE CHICAGO WAY
Re: The Prowler's Stimulating the Stimulus:

Among the stimulus funds appropriated were funds to help military families, who move at the government's behest, cope with housing sale losses. Many families moved when prices were high (and expected to move even higher), then the bubble burst and the sales of homes at great losses provided significant enough impact that Congress included the military in the stimulus appropriation. While the unions and ACORN entities claimed their royal shares first, the military families, many of whom suffered great losses while fighting on two war fronts, have not received the appropriated funds, designed to mitigate the losses they suffered.

For my money, the military, whose sacrifices have been so very great, should have been first at the dinner table, but I am a military mom, one who waited at home praying, as our son left some 9 times to go to the front lines. So, when our son and his wife needed to sell their Florida home, before leaving for a new PCS (permanent change of duty station), they were in shock to find out the home they had bought was, at the very least, over $100,000 differential in current appraisal. But they put it on the market and had me praying for a buyer. One came, then the matter of making up the loss fell as a problem to be solved.

Like other families, we chose to help our son and family. He has never asked for one thing since he left home at 18 to attend USAFA (the Air Force Academy) in Colorado. We felt that helping his young family (with one child and another on the way) was needed, so we helped with a loan. Still, they held hope, since early summer for this appropriations and the ability to limit their losses. And they wait, and they wait, and they wait.

I have called our own Congressman for answers but cannot seem to get anyone in his office to follow up to my questions, concerning when the military's chances of being helped will arrive. Perhaps his office has no answer but as Americans who say they are concerned about the sacrifices our military makes in our behalf, we should be doing more collectively to let our President know that military is far more deserving of funds, than any group of ACORN.

We have never expected a thing from the government in our own lives and perhaps hoping that our government would provide assistance in this manner, for the military was a fruitless idea to begin with. I urged our son not to apply, but after much thought and prayer, realized that if anyone deserved assistance in keeping their loan debt, due to military assignment, from being large and looming in their young family's life, he was right to put his paperwork in asking for said funds.

That the Obamas feel they need to pay back those who got them elected but ignore our fighting men and their families is despicable. But then, as they say, this is the Chicago way, you have to do them a favor before being on the repay list. It is clear the military has no such place in this President's agenda.
-- Beverly Gunn
East Texas Rancher

GETTING THE DATE WRONG
Re: Larry Thornberry's Revenge of the Norwegian Nerds:

When I first heard the news about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize I had to go check my calendar. I needed to reassure myself that it was indeed October 9th -- and not April 1st!
-- Gretchen L. Chellson
Alexandria, Virginia