The views and opinions expressed in Political Place do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sun Day or its staff. The section is meant to offer readers a chance to express their thoughts on political issues.
Response to Cecile Powellâs letter
First and foremost, there is no way Republicans could have had anything to do with Obamacare. It passed without any input from them. Not one of their proposals were incorporated into the final bill.
Second, Fox news simply reports just like ABC, CBS, and NBC. They didn’t put the content of the bill together; the Democrats did it all by themselves.
Third, the website was constructed by an “administration favored” company and will cost a billion dollars when the final bill is paid. A young engineer from Silicon Valley said he and his group could have made a site that “worked” for under $50 million, so it looks like some political consideration was at work.
Fourth, Bush had nothing to do with this “White Whale.” He has judiciously kept his trap shut, even when the current administration blamed him for whatever they failed at.
Fifth, Medicare would not be law now if the Republicans had not helped. In the senate 13 Republican votes helped make up for the Democrats who voted against it, and in the house, 70 Republicans voted for Medicare making the margin needed to pass.
When Obamacare is up and running, there will be more uninsured people than when it started and the cost will be 35 percent more because things are mandated that people just don’t need, like maternity for 60-year-old couples and birth control for 60-year-old females and males who have had vasectomies.
My own insurance company has notified me that my policy will cost 35 percent more next year, and it is a policy administered by a service company and reimbursed by my employer, with a guarantee of a 5 percent profit only for their service. I pay for my dependent wife and the profit is exactly the same: 5 percent.
The plan is comparable to Captain Ahab’s White Whale. Obama supporters are so obsessed with it they will drown before admitting it is so flawed it will never work and will sink us if they don’t get real.
Perhaps it was designed to fail, so the administration could ride in on a white horse and save the day by what they really wanted, a single payer system, knocking all the companies out of business, and nationalizing the entire system, as all the Democrats really wanted.
Ms Powell is short on facts and long on partisanship, but she is exuberant.
Wilton Jere Tidwell
Sun City resident
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Response to Joni Lindgrenâs Dec. 5 Letter
Joni Lindgrenâs Dec. 5 letter titled âWhere your money goesâ is right on when she accuses our legislators of giving hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to major corporations so they wonât leave Illinois. However, I am disappointed she failed to name the elected officials who pushed through these budget-killing deals. The major culprits are: Michael Madigan, John Cullerton and Patrick Quinn.
Ms. Lindgren also said that our state would not be broke if we simply stopped paying such bribes. There, I would disagree with her. While terrible, a few hundred million in corporate tax breaks pale in comparison with the billions wasted on unsustainable public employee pensions. Since the 1970s, our legislators, including the aforementioned trio, have voted in over 130 pension enhancements that are now devouring the Stateâs budget.
Itâs not that teachers and other public servants donât deserve a good retirement, but legislative rule changes have resulted in bloated pensions that most people in the private sector canât imagine. For example, over 7,500 Illinois teachers make $100,000 plus while working only 170 days per year. They can retire at 75 percent of their pay after 35 years and a goodly number now collect pensions that exceed $100,000 per year. The same is true for many state, county and municipal employees.
So, when Ms. Lindgren is identifying the corporate sources of our fiscal woes (including $8 billion of unpaid bills, over $100 billion in debt and our fast-sinking bond rating), she should also name public employee unions, teachers unions and lobbyists who have lined the pockets of our legislators and governor with over one hundred million dollars in political contributions. And, she can use the statistics and dollar figures cited herein to substantiate these misdeeds because they are painfully accurate.
Dick Stack
Sun City resident
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It isnât any wonder that Obamacare has been so poorly received by the American public. Its performance to date has shown it to be the disaster that it really is. As of Nov. 30, Republicans nationwide are nearly unanimous in their disapproval of the law, and now more than two-thirds of independents agree. Fewer than six in 10 Democrats continue to support the law; their support dropping 16 points from last month – from 74 percent in October to 58 percent. Support has dropped 11 points among independents and an additional five points among Republicans.
Most liberal-biased media ignore or downplay these numbers as well as outcomes, while joining this president in his own âadvertising campaignâ for an unpopular law that has so far shown mostly bad results. Current polls also indicate that most Americans don’t have much confidence in the ability of the Obama administration to implement the âPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act.â
Cecile Powellâs recent remarks [Political Place Dec. 5-18] are leaps of abstraction and personal judgments concerning news media âmisinformation, distortions and liesâ and can be overlooked, but her own misinformation regarding Republican votes being totally against Social Security and Medicare laws amount to outright lies themselves. Government records provide the truth; showing nearly one-half of the Senate Republicans voted in favor of the Medicare Act, and more than one-half of House Republicans were also in favor. The Social Security Act also included large percentages of Republican votes in favor: Senate Republicans by two-thirds and U.S. House Republicans by 80 percent.
Republican legislators saw and supported the value in those laws, but were and continue to be unanimously opposed to the PPACA because it is a bad law that provides neither Patient Protection nor Affordable Care; and that can be proven by any number of measures. Any âsmear machineâ here is the sole property of those who would falsely blame and slander opponents with personal attacks, when the facts speak for themselves.
Jim Nelson
Sun City Resident
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20 children remembered
Do you remember the 20 school children, 6- and 7-year-olds, who were murdered by a mad man with an assault military-style rifle in Newtown, Conn. last year on Dec. 14? Miraculously, over 400 other students hid and later escaped to safety with their teachers.
History repeated itself from over 2,000 years ago. Scholars had estimated that 20 children in the âvicinity of Bethlehemâ were murdered when a mad man, Herod âthe Great,â ordered his military to kill all boy babies two years of age or younger. Warned in the middle of the night, Joseph, Mary, and their baby Jesus escaped to Egypt. For hundreds of years, the massacre of those innocent children in Bethlehem has been commemorated in church services at the end of December.
In America, the mentally unstable young perpetrator passionately played violent computer games and practiced loading and shooting his powerful assault guns – paid for by parents and relatives who felt something was not normal with him but chose not to strongly intervene. On his computer he even printed charts of the student killings in the Columbine High School and many other mass murders based on research and games he purchased. He and his mother each had a NRA training certificate. He carefully planned his evil attack, had four guns to overcome any armed resistance, loaded his large gun magazines with ammunition for the mass killing, and prepared to kill himself afterwards.
In Israel, three joyful foreign Magi inquired of King Herod in Jerusalem as to where Godâs Messiah King had been born. Herod feared anyone who would replace him, and later ordered the murder of all male children aged two or younger. His trained mounted soldiers had the weapons for mass killings in their era – long, sharp spears and hardened two-edged Roman swords. Some townspeople may have had concealed weapons (religious Zealots hiding their daggers) but would not have been able to come close enough to stop the soldiers who even had shields and metal body protectors.
âNever againâ cried the people. Did you say that too? What have you done to prevent shootings? Have you stopped giving relatives money or gift cards used for weapons, ammo, and violent games – and got them to promise not to buy such items?
Some politicians are too afraid of losing political funding of the gun lobby and organizations. They would not vote even to stop sales of profitable âmilitary-style weaponsâ to âmentally unstableâ people who have guns that could kill hundreds of us anywhere we live, work, shop, meet, worship, or are entertained. We are not talking about legitimate, allowable hunting rifles.
Are you afraid? You should be fearful if you do nothing. Only you and I can change such laws through elected representatives – according to the First Amendment to our U.S. Constitution it is our right to do so. Cry out ânever againâ and tell legislators to vote to protect us, not gun manufacturers. We also have the right to âlife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.â Together we can do it. Other countries have done it and so can we. God bless America.
SIDEBAR:
Connecticut State Police released the names of the victims shot and killed at a Newtown elementary school.
All 20 of the children who were victims were ages six and seven.
Among them were eight boys and 12 girls:
Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Ana M. Marquez-Greene, Dylan Hockley, Madeline F. Hsu, Catherine V Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, James Mattioli, Grace, McDonnell, Emile Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Benjamin Wheeler, Allison N. Wyatt.
Ken Kozy
Sun City resident
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First and foremost let’s disabuse ourselves of the idea that corporations actually pay taxes. Oh they send some money to governments, but as with all the costs they encounter, they just add them into the costs of doing business and pass the entire package on to the consumer.
Taxing corporations has been a way governments hide the source of their funding. The end consumer actually pays more than if no taxes were assessed to corporations. Corporations have to employ tax accountants to keep track and figure out their tax bill so they’ll know how much to roll into the cost structure.
If we simply stopped all taxation except taxes on all new goods sold, prices of products and services could drop 30 percent.
The income tax is the most evadable tax of all and it is what Karl Marx recommended, in order to destroy the middle class, which he despised. We existed for 140 years without it until our first “Progressive President” Woodrow Wilson got the constitution amended to allow the Marxist taxation system.
There is a bill in committee that would give the 50 percent who evade all income taxes a stake in the game. It is called the FairTax, HB25 and SB122. It is revenue neutral and would save the $400 billion spent annually filling out forms to comply with a 77,000 page tax law that nobody understands, not even the IRS employees.
A side benefit would get rid of the IRS who simply cannot keep from employing discriminatory practices against Conservatives this time and Progressives in the past, when Nixon used them to punish his enemies.
Wilton Jere Tidwell
Sun City resident
