Response to Keele

First, I would like to express my gratitude to Van P. Keele for giving me such an excellent opportunity to expose his fallacious, delusional, rambling distortion of political reality in his 3/14/12 letter to the Star. It’s actually fun to debate a liberal inventing their own version of political reality. My original letter ably and appropriately exposed Obama as an ineffective leader. My thoughts about Mr. Keele’s fallacious letter follow.
1. I knew that Obama requested the Simpson/Bowles commission, and never stated otherwise. However, Obama choose to totally ignore the commission’s recommendations, even though a vast majority of Americans believe that many of those recommendations should be implemented!
Also, any serious economist will also tell you that increased tax revenues should be implemented in a manner that does not adversely impact the economy. That eliminates increased taxes on the wealthy and small business owners- who frequently invest and stimulate the economy, thereby creating more jobs, taxpayers, business income, and tax revenue.
2. Keele is flatly 100% wrong when he says that Republicans want to end Social Security and Medicare! There are absolutely no facts substantiating that claim!
3. Keele states that millions of Americans are benefiting from Obamacare. Surely Keele meant to use the words will be benefiting, instead of are benefiting, because Obamacare is not significantly in effect yet.
Liberals/socialists are compassionate in wanting millions of people to benefit from Obamacare. However, they are extremely uncompassionate when they ram Obamacare down the throats of more than 300,000,000 people and generations to come. Inflicting so much adversity on so many people to benefit so few is just plain stupid! We can’t afford current entitlements, let alone new ones! Obama and his liberal friends purposely delayed the full start of Obamacare so that startup costs would be delayed. As if it couldn’t be expected, startup costs for the first year were originally estimated to be about $900,000,000. Now the CBO estimates that startup costs will be more than double that figure. Fortunately, sane people predict that the Supreme Court will throw out the whole unaffordable Obamacare mess.
4. Keele states that Obama has reduced our country’s reliance on foreign oil to the lowest in 16 years. The truth is that Obama had nothing to do with that occurrence. The fact is that oil production on non federally controlled lands has significantly increased through no fault of Obama. However, Obama is directly responsible for essentially eliminating new oil exploration and production on federally controlled lands. The reality is that we would not be facing the present oil crisis had Obama not interceded.
5. Keele states that Obama’s administration has been reviewing all regulations, eliminating unnecessary, duplicate or silly ones. I challenge Keele to provide one credible example supporting that statement. The truth is that economists are accusing Obama’s administration of instituting many new regulations that negatively affect our economy!
6. Keele states that Americans pay less in taxes under Obama than under Bush. Keele may be right on that one- unemployed Americans can’t pay taxes, plus businesses are making less money as a result of Obama’s stifled economy and therefore, are paying fewer taxes.
Keele states that as a result, Bitterrooters are beneficiaries. Try telling that to all the people who can not afford to pay the taxes or loans on their properties- causing many loan defaults!
Further, Keele states that Obama wants our taxes to be more fair and simple. Boy, that statement is a joke. Simply put, Obama wants the job makers to be taxed more to support class warfare, thereby stifling job creating investments!
7. Keele states that Obama is doing everything in his power to get people working again–and it is working! Baloney, despite Obama promises of spending money to get unemployment below 8 %, unemployment is still at an unhealthy rate. The only thing that Obama has done is to “put” money down a rat hole subsidizing “green” jobs in businesses that have gone bankrupt.
Keele states that government is shrinking at all levels. Wrong again! Thanks to Obama, it isn’t shrinking on the national level. Face it Keele, such socialization of an economy might be a favorite in socialistic Europe, but not the USA. Try naming one country where socialization is truly a success! Why are our ”blue” states on the verge of bankruptcy? Could it be because too many people are on the dole, living off present workers. What does any rationally thinking person think will happen when there are more people on the dole than workers supporting those on the dole? You needn’t be a rocket scientist to figure that one out!
8. Keele states that we’ve never been stronger or smarter, and never been more proud of our servicemen. Well, if that were true, why is Defense Secretary Panetta complaining so much about forthcoming disastrous defense spending cuts- leading to sacrificed capabilities? Those sacrificed capabilities are a direct result of Obama’s inability to reach agreement on reasonable debt reductions.
9. Keele states that Obama understands that we cannot drill our way out of the energy dilemma- wrong again. Reasonable supporting arguments are already stated in Item 4.
10. Apparently, both Keele and I agree that our representatives should abide by our great Constitution and supporting documents. However, where we disagree is that I believe that lawmakers should not bend or stretch the limits of constitutional requirements. Understanding the responsibility of legislating within constitutional requirements is obviously an enormous shortfall of citizens like Keele and liberal representatives in Washington.
Also, Keele apparently thinks that the Supreme Court has not already validated the right of businesses to contribute to Political Action Committees!
In conclusion, all you non-astute eligible Bitterroot voters, who have benefited from Obama’s lack of leadership, should follow Mr. Keele’s recommendation and vote for Obama. Just remember though, when you so proudly cast that vote, you are one of few that currently approve of Obama’s handling of our economy! Should enough people so vote, update your Doomsday planning! After all, ‘this is the United States of America’ and nobody is better at doing a bad job than Obama!
Jerry Haslip

Victor