McCain is the enemy
In the editorial “Pain at the pump” (PWW 5/3-9), “It appears the McCain-Clinton idea is more an illusion to garner votes than a solution since such savings is minimal and the cuts to roads and construction jobs would be considerable.”
I was very troubled by this statement, as it seems to indicate that both McCain and Clinton have the same plan. Before you start categorizing Clinton as the same enemy as McCain, please consider that they are two different proposals.
Clinton’s would replace lost highway construction revenues with a tax on oil company profits. Unlikely as it may be to successfully pass the legislation necessary to make this happen, it’s just as unlikely as many ideas and platforms both Democrats are standing on during this election. Is it pandering to populism and votes? Of course. But since when do we oppose a tax on oil company profits?
McCain has no plan for replacing the lost revenue.
Why is it that in the PWW I see no criticism of any Democrat but Clinton? Would you refer to something as the, say, Obama-Clinton plan to end the war? Or the Obama-McCain health care plan? In both cases the candidates have plans to address the specific issue, and Obama and Clinton are both calling for the withdrawal of troops, and in similar ways. And both Obama and McCain are not mandating health care.
I just want to remind everyone that McCain is the enemy, not Hillary Clinton.
Melissa O’Rourke
Chicago IL
New Deal for people, not Wall Street
Say, folks, the Federal Reserve dusted off some provisions of the New Deal from the Great Depression and forked out $230 billion to the Wall Street rich that swindled our workers and poor into housing debt they couldn’t afford. Of course Sen. Baucus tells the people it’s their own fault that they couldn’t afford their housing. I protest. Say, Sen. Baucus, where is the $230 billion for public housing and mortgage relief for these 2 million households. Tent cities like the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression are springing up all over our country. Poverty and hunger are on the rise. How about dusting off the other provisions of the New Deal and restoring relief of social welfare cash payments to poor families, without sanctions or penalties.
Daniel Gawain Waters
Troy MT
Prison spending stats
Thanks for sending the PWW/NM. I always read it thoroughly and it’s a great newspaper.
I perceive a deep and sudden change in the media from supporting Obama not too long ago to stopping Obama at whatever cost. Why the sudden rightist panic with respect to “middle of the roader Obama?” I do not know.
Here are some “quick and dirty stats” for your readers’ perusal, and a call to action to be thrown into this year’s political cauldron.
If Texans got smart on crime instead of the law and order nonsense that benefits prisoncrats, a few demagogues, a bunch of lawyers and their cronies, and downsized the Texas Department of Criminal Justice “grossly overcrowded” prison population, Texans would benefit by saving $13.2 billion per year, which could pay for the following and more:
• $800 per year for renewable energy to 1 million homes,
• $2,000 per year for day care to 250,000 toddlers,
• $8,300 per year crop insurance to 100,000 small and medium farmers,
• $18,000 per year to 35,000 downsized prisoncrats in vocational-technical seminars,
• $4,600 per year for insurance or foreclosure aid to 100,000 homeowners,
• 8,000 sports, dance, drama, music, art teachers who would earn $54,000 per year.
These are the benefits of ending excess imprisonment in the United States. The current system is a failure!
Ana Lucia Gelabert
Gatesville TX
McCain, wrong again
On April 24, in a vain attempt to distance himself from the Bush regime’s criminal neglect during its Hurricane Katrina debacle, the Republican Party’s paleolithic presidential candidate, John McCain, uttered theses witless words: “Never again will we experience such mishandling of a natural disaster and the suffering that ensued from it. That will never happen again.”
Perhaps the research department at the racist Republican National Committee should remind the 71-year-old senator that thousands of our fellow American citizens died needlessly in New Orleans, while Bush and Cheney purposefully and maliciously refused to act, and while carefree Condoleezza Rice was simultaneously spending several thousand dollars on shoes at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue in Manhattan!
As pathologically politically disingenuous as he may be, even McCain must realize that his coveted 100-year colonial occupation of Iraq will only open the door to future catastrophes here at home.
Instead of securing “the Homeland,” our active duty military personnel, National Guard and reserves are being forced into repeated and extended traumatic tours of duty overseas through Bush and Cheney’s implementation of a backdoor military draft, otherwise known as “stop-loss.”
Jake Pickering
Eureka CA
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