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Published: April 27, 2008 10:16 pm
Our Readers Speak — April 27, 2008
National debt is a major problem
What ever happened to “pay as you go”?
It should be noted that not one of the major presidential candidates has addressed the debt crisis or the continued reckless deficit spending. What does $10,000,000,000,000 in national debt mean to you?
Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.46 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute. What does that mean to you? It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.
Even if you’ve escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That’s because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.
Bush’s budget for 2009 is a record-breaking $3.1 trillion. Again, this is $400 billion short of expected revenue. He continues to argue for making the tax cuts for the rich permanent. Bush says that this top 5 percent of the population will spend more money and thus give the rest of us more jobs to service their needs. The late Sen. Huey Long said that such a policy was like feeding working people crumbs off the table. At some point we will have to “pay the piper” and our living standards will be reduced to Third World levels.
The U.S. Treasury sells T-notes and bonds to finance the national debt. Communist China, our largest trade partner, holds $4 trillion of our debt. If they begin to sell even a portion, it would cause our interest rates to skyrocket. This would be necessary to find others willing to buy our debt securities. This could lead to a depression.
Few realize that many countries in the world have no national debt at all. None of the Arab counties have such debts. Both China and Japan have about $2 trillion in cash surpluses. Also, our trade imbalance with Red China amounts to $202 billion a year. As a result we have lost 1.3 million manufacturing jobs to China. I do think that America is bankrupt.
Michael Bryant
Beckley
Bring the troops home from Iraq
The saddest of milestones has been reached in the occupation of Iraq — 4,000 American heroes have lost their lives. The few remaining supporters of the Bush-Cheney doctrine will have much to say about how these brave men and women shall not have died in vain. We will hear over and over that leaving Iraq now will somehow diminish the value of the sacrifices made by the bravest of the brave.
I reject the notion that our proud nation must continue to feed the grist mill of a religious civil war with the lives and limbs of the finest soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors on the planet. One should not confuse the courageous willingness of these warriors to perform their duty and obey their orders with the reckless and wasteful utilization of that dedication. The brave men and women of our military are sworn to obey the orders of the president. They do not question those orders and they should not. They will go anywhere and fight any battle if ordered. The illegal actions of the president and the failure of the Legislature to check his actions are how lives are wasted. I reject the notion that we must sacrifice more heroes in order to justify or validate the loss of those who have gone before.
The war against Iraq was never right. The occupation is not right now. There is no, nor has there ever been, a national strategy which is served by the war or the ongoing occupation. We are simply sending brave young patriots off to a foreign land to be killed or disfigured; then brought home to be forgotten.
The war and occupation of Iraq has nothing to do with the “war on terror,” nothing to do with 9/11 and does nothing to improve our nation’s security. Quite the opposite effect has been achieved. It is far past time to bring the troops home.
Keith Poe
Coal City
Tourism pushed aside for coal
I used to think that state officials believed that mountains in tourist areas are worth saving. Now I know I was just being naive.
Gov. Manchin’s Department of Environmental Protection is allowing mountaintop removal on Gauley Mountain, which is next to Hawks Nest State Park, and literally in the middle of West Virginia’s whitewater rafting industry. On one side of Gauley Mountain is the New River Gorge National River; on the other side is the Gauley River National Recreation Area.
This area draws thousands of tourists annually. That number will only continue to increase, unless the mountain is blown up and the rivers contaminated with toxic mine waste.
The DEP didn’t stop the destruction on Gauley Mountain even when the company was mining without a permit.
I believe that mountaintop removal/valley fill mining is wrong everywhere. But it startles me that Gov. Manchin appears perfectly willing to sacrifice a major tourist area for the benefit of the coal industry’s short-term profits.
Dianne Bady
Huntington
Government needs to think about the people
I was on the road yesterday when area stations raised their per gallon prices by 16 cents in one painful whack — $3.65! I know some who are facing the dilemma of spending more to get to work than they make. How long do we believe that people will continue to do that?
I don’t know if Barack was right about his suggestion of “bitter” — I do know that people I speak with are into a disturbing spiral of despair and fatalism that renders all elections to them inconsequential, if not totally pointless.
We seem to be in a shell game of sorts — the pea is being moved so quickly from under one cup to another that finding it is impossible. Buck passing on energy has become a fine art — at bottom, people have concluded, nobody is responsible.
But we know that’s not true — some folks are making big money at the expense of their fellow citizens. For you see, the spike in crude prices, we’re told, has nothing to do with supply and demand. There’s plenty. It has more to do with the declining dollar, declining investor confidence in the strength of our markets and the felt need to put investment dollars into more stable commodities — like oil.
So it’s the race to invest in oil that, more than anything else, is driving up the price. What they call “futures.” How does that make you feel? While we contemplate changes to our way of life that are demoralizing to most, those most responsible continue to operate under the radar — undetected, unchallenged, relatively invisible to the masses who just don’t understand it all.
Nobody asks why, nobody calls attention to them, nobody, not even our presidential candidates, seems to see a problem.
Doesn’t it seem reasonable to assume that some things, like life-saving prescription drugs, access to medical care, food for the hungry, heating oil or jobs, — some things should be labeled as so critical to life that they must be kept beyond the greedy hands of speculators? And shouldn’t there be some who believe that government’s job, in the face of prospective disruptions to public tranquility and actions detrimental to the public good, is to put the welfare of people ahead of commitments to ideology, to political party, to profit and to economic systems?
William A. O’Brien
Beckley
Thanks to readers for their support
We want to thank all of the Register-Herald subscribers on behalf of Jeff and Aendrea Richmond and their two daughters, Sidney and Lauren. They both have acute leukemia. The many cards and gifts that were received were just great.
Lauren is 3 years old now and going into maintenance monthly. Sidney has had a very tough two months of illness, a gastrointestinal virus and kidney stone that the doctors say is a side effect of chemotherapy. She is almost 5 years old and is learning to walk again after her hospital stay. She lost all of her pretty long hair, but says the Lord will give it back.
She will have chemo in her spine in May and once in June, then she will go into maintenance, once monthly by port.
Please continue praying for them for the Lord is a great physician, giving the doctors and nurses the wisdom to take care of all the cancer patients at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Their address is the same now until July 1: 792 Sunset Circle, Cranberry Twp., PA. They have relatives in Shady Spring, Daniels, and Raleigh County.
Ruby E. Meadows
Richmond
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