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We can’t blame the president; Thomas M. Finch; Beaver County Times; February 20, 2013.
The BCT has published at least 38 letters from Mr. Finch since December 2004. At least 29 of these letters were anti-Bush and/or anti-Republican and they never disappoint. Here is one example. You can find the remaining Finch letters I critiqued in the critique archives. As usual, this letter is little more than a string of leftist talking points. I wish he could get a regular column in the BCT. I also wish he could get at least five minutes per day on a local radio and/or TV station.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“I was amused by Rachael [sic] Cole’s rant of Feb. 13th. All Obama-haters love referring to him with his middle name -- Hussein sounds so much more sinister, Muslim and anti-American. Her allegations of ‘spewing and encouraging hatred between the haves and have-nots’ is a blatant lie that must be refuted. I also take exception to the slur of ‘pandering to the entitlement mentality.’ Unless she is independently wealthy, and has no need of Social Security, Medicare or any of the other government services that her grudgingly paid taxes provide, she should stop throwing stones.”
[RWC] If anyone knows about rants, his letters indicate it’s Mr. Finch.
President Obama must an “Obama-hater” himself because he used his middle name when he took the oath of office in 2009 and 2013. And what about those school kids forced to praise Mr. Obama by singing “Mmm, mmm, mmm, Barack Hussein Obama?”
Mr. Finch wrote “a blatant lie … must be refuted” but he did not refute the alleged lie. If constantly and falsely claiming “the rich” don’t pay their fair share of income taxes isn’t “spewing and encouraging hatred between the haves and have-nots,” what is it? Remember when Mr. Obama falsely charged doctors were unnecessarily removing tonsils for the money and were raking in all kinds of big bucks for amputations? Remember when Mr. Obama dumped on private-jet owners, ignoring jobs to employees in the private-jet industry who build, fly, fuel, maintain, supply, etc. jets plus their companies’ suppliers and so on?
Let me get this straight; someone who may have as much as 15.3% of their paycheck confiscated to pay for someone else’s Socialist Security and Medicare benefits can’t comment about Mr. Obama “pander[ing] to those of the entitlement mentality?”
“The Republican oligarchic premise is that corporations and the wealthy 1 percent should run everything, and the other 99 percent should fend for themselves. That is not how government is supposed to work, and people smart enough to not belie their own self interests re-elected Obama. A representative democracy does what is best for the common good -- not just for whomever has the deepest pockets. In a New Republic article, Matt O’Brien stated that, ‘Since 1979, middle class income increased 40 percent; while the top 1 percent’s income shot up a staggering 275 percent.’ You certainly can’t blame the president for pointing out the obvious.”
[RWC] Why on Earth would nearly 50% of Americans want “1 percent … [to] run everything?” Does Mr. Finch just make up this stuff? If anything, Mr. Finch described the left because it’s the ideology of big government and centralized power. Who voted for Obamacare which gives the feds control over just about every aspect of our lives? Not one Republican voted for this attack on individual liberty.
The Finch comment that a “representative democracy does what is best for the common good” is contrary to the U.S. and Pennsylvania constitutions. If Mr. Finch’s vision were true, government could take away every right simply by claiming the action “is best for the common good.”
As a group, the Founding Fathers believed all rights were granted to man by a higher authority (“endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” as in the Declaration of Independence) and intended the Constitution to detail only those powers granted to the federal government (“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” as in the DoI). In other words, if a power wasn’t mentioned in the Constitution, the government did not have that power. To be safe and make sure everyone knew this intent, the Ninth and 10th Amendments were included in the Bill of Rights. The Ninth Amendment says, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The 10th Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.”
The source of Mr. O’Brien’s data was a Congressional Budget Office report entitled “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007” (October 25, 2011). My response to the O’Brien quote is “so what?” If your income increases by 40% (in constant dollars) and you’re upset because someone else’s income increased more than yours, it’s called envy, resentment, and so on. I was fortunate; my parents taught me better than that.
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