• Front page
• Receive letters on your RSS reader

Brian Quade of Denver writes:

I am very concerned about news coverage of the Iraq War versus issues that need to be discussed for the 2008 election. All of the news is about how the US government governs citizens of other countries. But the American people get neglected and ignored. Americans are screaming for health care, jobs, housing, energy, and environmental reform, but they are drowned out by coverage of our government’s attempts to impose western-style democracy on people that don’t want it. Democracy can not be brought into Iraq from the outside. Nor can there be democracy here when every attempt is suppressed or ignored.

This letter has not been edited.

READER COMMENTS

What democratic attempt is supposedly suppressed? Name a few please so that we have a basis to either deny or confirm your yearnings for this horrible bashing of our liberties. I seem to recall that millions of Iraqis voted? That seems to me like they want a democratic form of government. Do you remember the purple index fingers Brian?

Brian. Since I live a little south of you, I may not be able to hear all the screaming that you hear, but help me out here.

I have health insurance. In fact, I'll bet you do too. If you don't, it's well documented that you can get treatment at any hospital emergency room. Free if you say you can't pay. So who is screaming for health care except you and Hillary?

Plenty of housing here too. My work takes me into Denver almost every day. Aurora too. I see a few drunks holding signs, asking for booze money, but I don't see many people living on the street. Besides, your Mayor is in the process of building $10M dollars of subsidized housing for the "homeless", thanks to the confiscation of a huge chunk of your wages.

How about energy and the environment? Talk about the effects of policy and consequences. The high cost of, and low supply of energy in Denver, and the U.S., is directly attributable to environmental policy. Want more oil? Drill for it. We have it, but "environmental reform" has placed it off limits. How about natural gas? Does the Roan Plateau decision ring a bell? Nuclear energy, used for the generation of electricity, is safe and efficient (see the Europeans), but you guessed it: can't do it, environmental policy. Want wind power generation? Ask Ted Kennedy how cold it has to get in Nantucket before that will happen around him and his well healed (not a health care reference) neighbors.

So Brian, if you really are hearing people scream, you might want to take advantage of your health care plan and go see a doctor. Not sure if there is a cure though for the socialist/government is good for everything mindset.

The simple answer is; politicians get brain dead about the real purpose they were elected, to serve the best interests of the public, once they get to Wasington D.C. and see how much money and power they have at their disposal.

"...Americans are screaming for health care, jobs, housing, energy, and environmental reform..."

All readily available and easily accessable by all Americans; we have an abundance of the above. This is the same crowd that's always screaming for something "owed" to them, but won't lift a finger to be get it for themselves, be accountable for themselves and be responsible for themselves. These welfare junkies will never be happy because they are basically miserable people who are lazy and won't drag their sorry butts out of their welfare hammocks.

Meanwhile, Americans now enjoy an all-time record household net worth of about $60 trillion--we worked for it and earned it without screaming!

Hank: "Meanwhile, Americans now enjoy an all-time record household net worth of about $60 trillion--we worked for it and earned it without screaming!"

Other statistics:

"The $54 trillion total net worth works out to $180,000 per person, or $720,000 for a household of 4!"

I have the general impression that there are an awful lot of people whose net worth is well below those figures.

"As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)."

"There were 36.5 million people in poverty in 2006, not statistically different from 2005. The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 44.8 million (15.3 percent) in 2005 to 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006."

"It's hard not to be worried when confronted with numbers such as these:

* About 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year.
* Average households carry some $8,000 in credit card debt.
* Personal bankruptcies have doubled in the past decade."

Hank said "These welfare junkies will never be happy because they are basically miserable people who are lazy and won't drag their sorry butts out of their welfare hammocks. "

You are talking about the US, right? - where there is really no form of long-term dole, and food stamps don't really provide even survival-level support.

So who are these "welfare junkies" you speak of, and what welfare are you saying they are living off?

Bango Skank,

Sounds more like Newt Gingrich's old "Contract on Americans" than anything else..

I see where old Newt seems to want to come crawling back up, out of the swamps, and sort of try to repeat the "good old days" when bashing 'welfare" - and tearing down most, if not all, the nations major social programs - was the Republican's greatest "achievement".

Looks as if old Newt's got a supporter in Hank, already. Well, the Bush bunch hasn't come up with an exit plan to get us out of the Iraq quagmire yet; so turning the clock backwards, and waging a sort of "homefront war" just might be about all the Republicans have left to keep the Party going for the rest of the lame duck period.

Anon 4:20 - Hank is correct. We already have state healthcare for those who cannot offord it. They even want to increase the max income level to over $60,000 yr to qualify so there won't be any need for a national healthcare bureaucracy.

As for the numbers you provided re uninsured, have you disected what those numbers include?

1) 8.5 million make $50,000 - $75,000
2) 8.5 million make over $75,000

These people can easily afford insurance but choose not to.

3) 12+ million here illegally

This alone reduces your 47 million figure to 18 million and doesn't take into consideration the other several million included in this figure that will regain insurance within 4 months of the census.

This leaves only less than 5% fo the US population lacking insurance and we already covered them at the state levels.

Bango - There have been and still are millions who literally live off of welfare programs.

As for food stamps, why on earth are they accepted at convenience stores? I see people using them for a soda and a twinkie.

Ever been the local super? Junk food, frozen food, chips, soda, all these necessities are being bought with food stamps but wait, now for the second group to be rung up. Now we pay for the whiskey, vodka, beer and cigs with the cash from welfare that food stamps won't cover.

Shouldn't food stamps be reserved for food? I mean, if these people can't afford to live on their own, shouldn't they be using government funds for meat, fruits, vegetables? Maybe some flour, beans, and other bulk items you can nutritiously feed your family on?

Or is it their right to use others tax dollars for the twinkie?

KW said ”Bango - There have been and still are millions who literally live off of welfare programs.”

There are millions who received unemployment insurance which is paid by employers, and others who get social services like subsidized utilities and food-stamps, but I am very suspicious of claims of “welfare queens” and the like without seeing evidence of some kind of widespread or significantly large misuse.

I don’t doubt that what you say of booze and twinkies is likely to be true, but in how many cases is it true, to what degree, and is it really a problem from an ideological point of view.
For example, the Conservative view currently is that personal individual freedom trumps everything else, so if the person chooses to buy twinkies and booze rather than food and milk, why would you care?
If you care about that at all, then you are saying that government has a duty to impose control over personal decisions, which of course means that you also are committed to government having a duty to provide care in the first place.

Of course what you are really after as a Conservative (at this period) is to deny that government has any such duty and you actually want to take all such social services away under the view that absolute individual freedom along free-market lines is the ultimate goal of democracy. Unfortunately that means you should also be committed to no state involvement in morality, religion, or even nationality, which you rather feel they should be.

The irony of the current political system is that both “sides” are forced to hold conflicting ideological positions.

So not only would I want to see to what degree this is actually a widespread or significant problem, I would want to know for what reason you care at all.

Bango Skank,

You are dealing with a belief-system. It is one of the most self-contradictory, and inherently mutually exclusive in terms, of all the possible belief-systems around today.

It does not rest upon ANY grounds of evidence or facts. Indeed the belief-system is one that most vigorously rejects both evidence and facts that have even the slightest appearance of being critical, or of offering a refutation of the belief-system's dogmatic pronouncements. The more absurd the dogmatic pronouncements, the greater intensity of the belief; and the more vituperative the denunciations of the believer against anyone challenging.

As has been demonstrated, time and again, throughout a host of postings here, the "free market/capatalist/anti-social-programs/anti-welfare/anti-civil-equalities/anti-civil-rights" form of "deity" is - by far and away above all others - the most "jealous god" of all. And its followers and disciples are - again by far and away above all others - the least self-reflecting, and least able to distinguish between objective reality and subjective personal embodiment of both "deity" and dogma.

I wish you all the best with opening that can of worms - again.

Grouch, it’s a character flaw, I know. I see these cans, read the label, and yet I still keep opening them. ;)

I am always curious as to whether it’s only seemingly a Gordian knot, and actually resolves fractal-like into a simple algorithm, or whether it is really a complex system of often contradictory atomic concepts.

The Neocons were originally after a rather benign and laudable goal – spread democracy, get rid of tyrants, stop people from being starved and tortured, etc. However, they also see humans as inherently wicked and bad, and inherently irrational.

At the same time the statisticians and marketers gave them the “values and lifestyles” classification, and some political and psychological theorists proposed a view of democracy and freedom as being a cut-down version that followed Nash’s game theories.

POST A COMMENT

• Ballot measures and property taxes
• Bias Clinton headline
• Paul Campos
• Joining Boy Scouts of America
• Gen. Petraeus on the front cover of the RMN
• Pulling the troops out of Iraq
• Gen. Petraeus and MoveOn.org
• Gen. Petraeus