Decision 2008

Everyone is to blame for meltdown

The key fact about the greatest American financial meltdown in 79 years is it’s bipartisan nature. Both the Democrats and the Republicans partnered in manufacturing the current crisis; it represents a profound failure of every regulatory agency of government. Both parties refused to clean up the financial mess when it was still manageable; both presidential candidates are deeply culpable in creating this economic fiasco.

The take-home message is our political system, not just our credit system, is broken. Whether the shills are donkeys or elephants, they sing to the body corporate. Money controls our political parties and elections. And Wall Street controls the money. We the people are an asterisk.

But what can we do? Third parties in America go nowhere. How do we regain control of our Republic? In the upcoming presidential election I will be voting “against” John McCain. But am I really “for” Barack Obama? Not really, even though I caucused for him. (Before he compromised on virtually every core issue I believe in, before the Rubin-esque corporate stamp defined his anti-progressive campaign.)

What is left to believe in? Really, what do we do? Where do we as a people go from here?

Martin P. Hayes

Indianola

This is important to know before you vote

In case it didn’t it stir your memory, the organization called Acorn, which the bail-out bill would bless with part of our $700 billion, is the same “Acorn” that was caught in the biggest voter fraud case in Washington state history. They submitted nearly 2000 bogus voter registrations. This is also the organization that Barack Obama worked for in Illinois and which Obama’s campaign has now been charged with failure to report Acorn’s $800,000 in disguised contributions. This is news that is very important to the voters of this state and Kitsap County. Will you print it prior to the election? It is easily researched. The ball is in your court.

Buz Whiteley

Suquamish

Do you really want change?

With nearly 40 percent of American voters considering themselves Independent of the major political parties one would think that real change is well within our reach. However, voters continue to pick the lesser of evils believing that a third party candidate or Independent cannot win. Most voters can see that there is little difference between the Republicans and the Democrats at the national level, yet they will not even consider a third party candidate that may be more in line with their our values.

For example, the Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin takes a stand on the right to life issue which is much more conservative than McCain, yet the right to life group endorsed McCain. Chuck Baldwin is willing and able to stand up and say that abortion is wrong and therefore should not be funded with taxpayer money, yet he recognizes that this is not something that can or should be prosecuted. With such a stand he preserves a woman’s right to do as she wishes with her own body, and keeps the government out of our bedrooms.

Both major parties are controlled by big money special interest groups and corporations who fund the major party candidates that will make the government work for them. Hundreds of millions of dollars are then used to spread propaganda which will get the person with their interests at hand elected. By voting for one of the major party candidates you are deciding which special interests and corporations you want controlling your government and your life.

If you want real change and a government that works for the people, then you will vote for anything other than one of the two major party candidates.

Dan Goebel

Keyport

Two candidates, two directions

The two presidential candidates offer starkly different directions for the future of our nation. Forget all the smoke and mirrors of campaign ads and media coverage, and look at their core beliefs.

Candidate “A” believes government is the answer for everything. The elite in government know much better than you how to handle every issue of life, and will take an increasingly large portion of your income in the form of taxes to pay for his massive government programs. The increased tax burden on businesses and individuals will further stifle the already weakened economy. He will appoint Supreme Court justices who will insure that abortion which has already killed 40,000,000 of our unborn babies will continue. He believes if we just talk nice with the radical Islamic terrorists, they will have a change of heart and quit trying to destroy us. We need to be nice so everyone in the world will love us.

Candidate “B” believes you know best how to spend your hard earned income and wants to get government out of everything but the absolute essentials. He will continue to cut taxes on all individuals and businesses so we can get the economy cranked up again. He will appoint Supreme Court judges who will hopefully overturn the horrendous Roe vs. Wade decision and halt the holocaust of our unborn children. He will ensure the strength of our military to protect our nation from those who would like to destroy us, whether at home or abroad. He will negotiate when possible, but be willing to show our resolve with actions if necessary. We need to do what’s right, whether the rest of the world likes us or not.

Two extremely different directions, your choice.

Don Wiens

Kingston

Cash to the wealthy, credit to the poor

George Bush gave our tax dollars to the rich who offered the poor the opportunity to purchase homes they couldn’t afford. And now, the poor are losing their homes and the rich are laying off their employees.

John McCain opposed the tax giveaway when Bush proposed it. And now, Barack Obama wants to take those tax dollar from the rich and give them to the poor. McCain says no. Now that everything is crashing, Obama agrees with McCain.

Why should Congress five our tax dollars to the wealthy so they can sell more houses to people who can’t afford them? I know, I know, we want to bail out the rich so those people living in tent cities can get credit to buy a care and send their children to college. Only in America. What happened to fiscal responsibility?

J. Michael Sondheimer

Bremerton

Bailout might not work

The people the United States have just inherited somewhere around $850 billion of debt approved by our legislators. Some 88 percent of this to be used to buy toxic securities created by our Wall Street investment bankers. We will be paying for this for many years to come. We will suffer significant, if not massive, inflation and our dollar will buy very little. If the “bailout” works at all, it will work very slowly, and unemployment will remain high. In the long run, the ones to reap financial gain from this will be the very ones who created this debacle. Whoever is elected as our next president, he will inherit a mess of collosal magnitude that will require tough, and sometimes unpopular decisions in his fight with our worthless legeslators. Frankly, I do not think Obama has the background, backbone, experience, or integrity to handle it. Remember, as you cast your ballot in the upcoming election, this mess was unloaded on us by the incumbent legislators, and specifically, Sen. Patty Murray, and Representative Norm Dicks, both who voted for it.

George McCullough

Suquamish

Bush: Leadership by fear mongering

How soon we forget that Mr. Bush used fear mongering over WMDs to justify invading Iraq. And now he is using fear mongering to spook us into a massive bailout of Wall Street, just before he leaves office!

I was appalled to hear Mr. Bush blame the financial crisis on average Americans taking out too many subprime mortgages. Anyone who takes time to look at the facts can see that this boils down to decades of lax federal regulation. Reaganomics created a “free market” that allowed Wall Street to go crazy with predatory lending. Nonsensical subprime loans came from the funds Wall Street raised from investors who foolishly bet on never-ending real estate appreciation. Meanwhile, under “trickle-down” policies, living-wage jobs vanished, our real wages declined, and now our cost of living is spiking.

And so, no surprise, Wall Street’s house of cards is about to collapse.

Let’s not be spooked into handing $700 billion to these amoral Wall Street hucksters. Let the free market correct itself. And let’s give our new president a fair chance to set a new course for our country, without being hamstrung by this galling example of corporate welfare.

Robin Acohido

Kingston

A tale of two parties

Imagine you’d just received documents in the mail that referred to your financial situation, scary talk that your retirement was in danger, savings and investments not as robust as you’d been led to believe and that, at some point, your paycheck will be affected too.

You call to get help, two teams appear offering to figure this stuff out. One team talks a bit about the numbers, it mostly goes over your head, so they back up, try to explain it again. Some of what they say makes sense, some of it sounds half-baked, but at least you get the notion that these guys have experience with this kind of trouble.

Now, the other team? The other team gets all chummy and offers you a can of your favorite beer. They ask about your family and your school all friendly like, and then they point out that they are “just folks” from down the street. Same as you, no pretenses, no glib intellectualism. They give you a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. “We’re just regular guys here to help.” When pressed for specifics, they refuse to talk numbers, and mutter some vague comment about how the other team has connections with terrorists.

You know very well what you’d do. You’d toss the second team out of your house. You’d recognize that their fake attempt at friendliness shows that they have something to hide.

Rodney Stells

Don’t trust McCain

What scares me most about McCain is his absolute trust in the “invisible hand” of the free market and his foreign policy “experience.” He has always promoted deregulations, supported Phil Gramm’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA — prohibiting government regulation of credit default swaps that led to the $700 billion bailout, and it prohibited also regulation of the energy trading market that led to the bankruptcy of Enron).

Now he wants to privatize health insurance. He wrote in “American Academy and Actuaries” magazine: “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state based regulation.”

On McCain’s victory with honor and leaving Iraq a democracy pipedream is also very unrealistic. He should remember that the British have “been there, done that.” They had the same goal after they created Iraq out of the Ottoman Empire right after WWI. They installed king Faisal, had elections and left. After Feisal died every succeeding president came to power by assassinating his predecessor. The last of the dictators was Saddam. At the same time the power struggle between the Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds boiled below the surface and erupted after the US invasion.

Why do we assume an ancient tribal society will change overnight? It took Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the fall of communism (1,500 years) to sort out its borders, its religions, and establish lasting peace.

James Behrend

Bainbridge Island

Don’t trust McCain part 2

Desperate to get into the White House at any cost, John McCain has resorted to demagoguery in an attempt to destroy (politically) Barack Obama. His sidekick, Sara Palin, has assumed the mantle of chief demagogue—and she is quite good at it. At a recent rally in Florida her rhetoric came very close to “inciting to riot.” People in the crowd were shouting “terrorist” and even “off with his head” every time Barack Obama’s name was mentioned. At a McCain rally in Wisconsin more of the same occurred, adding the word “traitor” to characterize Obama.

McCain needs to realize that his day has passed. It passed in 2000 when he made the fateful decision not to fight back against Karl Rove’s swiftboating. Instead he accepted defeat and sold his soul to the devil. If he had stood against the Bush onslaught and run as an Independent, he would have retained his honor and it is likely that he would have won the presidency. By embracing Bush he sealed his fate of ever winning the presidency, a title he wants more than anything else to prove to himself that he is a better man than either his father or grandfather was.

Charles Bickel

Poulsbo

Open letter to John McCain:

Subject: Campaign Strategy

“Welfare state is core of crisis,” headlines Star Parker’s erudite column on Oct. 11 in the local county newspaper. We now see Obama’s promised changes as a continuation of the “welfare state.” You, John McCain, on Election Day, are positioned to jump-start every facet of America’s economy using the expertise of Sarah Palin as your Energy Czar. Development of all domestic energy sources is the key to building a thriving economy for every American, whether business owner or employee.

This lady, the Governor of the pristine and energy-rich state of Alaska, has voluntarily left the comforts of her home to answer the call of her country to serve as your running mate for the office of Vice President. She is already deeply involved and eminently qualified to preside over the development of every domestic source of energy production from day one. She’s our Margaret Thatcher, Iron Lady!

Secondly, fix the tax system by taxing consumption, not production! A simple sales tax, flat tax or fair tax is easy to collect and process. It gets rid of a mountain of regulations and paperwork and frees up a large portion of that huge IRS staff for reassignment to Immigration.

The IRS personnel being transferred to Immigration would find and catalog all illegal immigrants whether they are residing in sanctuary cities, in hospitals, in jails, on the welfare rolls or working illegally. During this round-up period, some of the Immigration staff would be developing a permanent system of control to provide for temporary workers as needed. Procedures and requirements for attaining citizenship could follow.

Education and Health Care will become affordable for more people as rapidly as new energy supplies flood the American economy. Workers will find good paying jobs, and keep more of their paycheck as employers are freed from the current tax system.

Last but not least, establish term limits so that legislators have less opportunity to engage in fraud, as in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Eliminate the earmarks that get them re-elected year after year.

On the moral issues, do shut down the ACLU and NEA. They are responsible for removing all reference to America’s God from schools and public places. America’s God, the Creator who has made ALL humankind in His image, is the God honored on America’s coinage and inscribed on over 200 buildings in Washington DC. His word tells us that when we no longer listen to him, he will turn his back and leave us to our reprobate minds. (Like using corn for fuel in a world dying of hunger? And failing to protect new life? And worshiping the creation more than the Creator?)

Oh yes! Don’t forget to send John Bolton over to the UN to tell that money-hungry sink hole of America-haters that we no longer wish to support them in their lavish lifestyle, so here is an Eviction Notice!

Marion Larm

Poulsbo