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Vail Daily letter: Interesting, all right

Jim Cameron
Vail, CO, Colorado

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states: “May you live in interesting times.” Indeed we are.

Amidst all the anti-establishment, anti-government sentiment, we appear to be willing to let the inmates run the asylum. The uprising against congressional incumbents is surprising only in that it has taken this long for the general public to figure out that favors have been bought and paid for by big money special interest groups for some decades.

The Republicans have announced that they are going to publish their platform for the mid-term elections by the end of September. That’s nice.



I am anxious to hear how they are going to cut government spending and employment and reduce overall unemployment at the same time.

I am also curious to hear how eliminating the inheritance tax will help reduce the national debt. And how will leaving Bush’s income tax cuts in place spur economic growth going forward when they couldn’t produce but a pittance of employment growth during his eight years in office? Sounds like too much of a free lunch to me.

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The Democrats seem to have run out of ideas. The stimulus did help some, but it was mismanaged as it was implemented. The goal was to help rebuild our decaying infrastructure and produce jobs that had some longevity. Some of the stimulus money dribbled down to the town we live in in Florida. The town used it to build flower beds.

The Tea Party has put out the message to its faithful to tone down the rhetoric, lest they scare away all us independents come November. It’s a little late.

The general electorate may have a short memory, but opposing candidates, political pundits and the Democratic Party machinery do not. There are volumes of video and still shots of Tea Party demonstrations filled with degrading, racists and insulting images of Obama.

The perpetrators are nameless faces in front of a camera. More telling are the statements made by Tea Party candidates that have names associated with them that will be repeated ad nauseam this fall.

For example, there is the Tea Party favorite who believes a goal of the U.S. should be to take back the Panama Canal by force. We better alert all of the American ex-pats that have retired in Panama to beat feet before the bullets fly.

Then there is the Republican senatorial candidate from Nevada who has hinted that “the people” should deploy 2nd Amendment rights (i.e., arm themselves) to oppose a federal government that they don’t agree with.

One of Colorado’s own Tea Party favorites believes that a U.N. program to promote the benefits of bicycle riding is a covert plot to rob Americans of their freedoms.

The list goes on.

All of us have said things in our lives that we regret and wish we could take back. These statements are usually made during times of emotional stress. Those are more forgivable than calculated or off-the-cuff statements made in the midst of a political campaign.

I have a question for the Tea Party leadership: Why don’t you just repudiate these statements?

I suspect the answer is that you don’t won’t to render your candidates unelectable.

Or are these statements consistent with your goals and agenda?

Jim Cameron

Avon


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