This page was last updated on August 20, 2012.
Repairs take time; Jayne Berresford; Beaver County Times; August 19, 2012.
This appears to be the fifth letter from Ms. Berresford. Previous Berresford letters I critiqued were entitled “Congress doesn’t have nation’s best interest” and “Help, don’t hinder.” The previous letters I didn’t critique were entitled “Birth control not important issue” and “‘Our employees’ should live like us.”
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“Mr. Berardelli, having written the original letter that you are debating I find I’m incapable of not responding in some way.”
[RWC] The “the original letter” to which Ms. Berresford referred was “Congress doesn’t have nation’s best interest.” The Berardelli letter was entitled “President lacks leadership.” The letter to which Mr. Berardelli responded was “Boils down to hate” by Jewel Robertson.
As you read this letter, you’ll find it’s little more than a rapid-fire list of lefty talking points. Rapid-fire listing is a tactic to disseminate a bunch of talking points while minimizing rebuttal. For example, a person blurts out a group of talking points – sometimes related, sometimes not. Since the blurter knows it’s a lot more work to rebut talking points than it is to spit them out, he also knows it’s unlikely his opponent will take the time to rebut every talking point. In some cases, like on a website, the length of your responses may be limited, which also works in favor of rapid-fire talking points. When you don’t rebut every talking point, some people assume you’re conceding the unaddressed talking points are true.
“First, President Obama’s leadership has bravely led us out of Iraq and is trying to get us out of Afghanistan. It has led us to Bin Laden’s downfall. He helped to keep the car industry going. He is trying to help everyone have affordable healthcare. He has also made mistakes. Please show me which president hasn’t.”
[RWC] As for “President Obama’s leadership has bravely led us out of Iraq,” Mr. Obama simply followed the agreement negotiated by the Bush administration with the Iraqis.
Regarding Mr. Obama “is trying to get us out of Afghanistan,” he increased the troop level in Afghanistan even though then-Sen. Obama opposed the 2007 Iraq troop surge. During the Bush administration (2001-2008), there were a total of 630 U.S. casualties in Operation Enduring Freedom. During the first three-and-a half years of the Obama administration, there were 1,469 U.S. casualties.
Regarding “Bin Laden’s downfall,” what relevant intelligence/military actions/policies did Mr. Obama employ that former-President George W. Bush did not?
As for Mr. Obama “helped to keep the car industry going,” all Mr. Obama did was throw our taxpayer dollars at Chrysler and GM to protect labor union management from traditional bankruptcy proceedings while screwing-over the bondholders. GM alone received “$50 billion in TARP bailout funds, a special exemption waiving payment of $45.4 billion in taxes on future profits, an exemption for all product liability on cars sold before the bailout, $360 million in stimulus funds, and the $7,500 tax credit for those who buy the Chevy Volt.” Of that, President Bush directed about $13 billion of our paychecks, pension checks, etc. to this improper use of tax dollars. Just as happens all the time, Chrysler and GM would not have gone out of business had Mr. Obama left our traditional bankruptcy laws play out.
As for Mr. Obama “is trying to help everyone have affordable healthcare,” that’s hogwash and even if it were true it’s not the function of government to dispense healthcare. Perhaps Ms. Berresford can explain how including a takeover of the student-loan industry in the Obamacare bill “is trying to help everyone have affordable healthcare.”
“Bill Clinton left office with a healthy surplus of money and jobs in America. Enter George W. Bush and his tax cuts and loopholes; bye bye jobs and money surplus. G.W. had eight long years to royally mess things up, and you wanted Obama to undo this mess in two years. Last I heard the presidential term is four years. Personally, I hope his term is eight years.”
[RWC] Ms. Berresford failed to mention a couple of things. First, the budget surplus had already declined in Bill Clinton’s last budget (FY 2001). Second, Mr. Bush inherited a recession that started during the Clinton administration and then had the Enron mess and 9/11 dumped on his lap. In any case, employment grew for 52 consecutive months (9/03 - 12/07) adding more than 8.3 million jobs and GDP grew in every quarter from the fourth quarter of 2001 through the third quarter of 2007. Unemployment went from 6.3% in June 2003 to 4.4% in May 2007. Later in 2007, unemployment began a slow increase as we entered into the early stages of the subprime mortgage mess we’re still in.
There were tax RATE cuts, not tax revenue cuts. Before the current recession began to kick in, tax revenue peaked at $2.6 trillion in 2007, an increase of $577 billion (29%) since 2001. By the end of fiscal year 2007 (the last before the recession), the deficit was down to $161 billion. Once again, tax revenue wasn’t the problem, spending was. I’m sure Ms. Berresford would like us to believe her “tax cuts and loopholes” were for the “rich.” Several years back the Tax Foundation reported, “Despite the charges of critics that the tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2003 and 2004 favored the ‘rich,’ these cuts actually reduced the tax burden of low- and middle-income taxpayers and shifted the tax burden onto wealthier taxpayers.” In 2010, Democrats finally had to admit the “tax cuts for the rich” BS was a lie. On December 6, 2010, President Obama said the following about the Bush income tax RATES: “Make no mistake: Allowing taxes to go up on all Americans would have raised taxes by $3,000 for a typical American family. And that could cost our economy well over a million jobs.”
“The point is, in a time when we most need a government that will help the middle and lower income families who are struggling the most to survive, not only did the Republicans refuse to help, they passed voter suppression laws to keep us from helping ourselves. The 1 percent gets richer and the middle class disappears.”
[RWC] When Ms. Berresford claims “Republicans refuse[d] to help,” she makes the flawed assumption failed leftist policies/programs are in America’s best interest.
Ms. Berresford appears to forget President Obama had significant Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress for two years (2009-2010), including a period with a filibuster-proof Senate. As we saw with Obamacare, Republicans couldn’t stop anything Mr. Obama wanted even when not a single Republican voted for it. If something Ms. Berresford wanted didn’t get passed during those two years, she can’t blame Republicans.
It appears fairly clear the Obama administration economic policies failed, which should come as no surprise. Consider the following quote from Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary during the Great Depression. Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in May 1939, Sec. Morgenthau said, “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … And an enormous debt to boot.” Further, unemployment never got below 9.9% before the U.S. entered World War II. Sound familiar?
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