This page was last updated on March 25, 2010.
Health care reform couldn’t wait; Jerry Miskulin; Beaver County Times; March 25, 2010.
I encourage you to review Mr. Miskulin’s body of work in the archives. Mr. Miskulin has written at least 60 letters since 2004 (I didn’t critique all of them.). Most (all?) are illogical and full of falsehoods (not just wrong).
In recent letters, Mr. Miskulin expressed displeasure with the tea parties (here and here), proclaimed
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“First, let me say that I haven’t read the health-care bill. As I sit here writing this letter, a vote on the bill is imminent.”
[RWC] Not knowing what is in the healthcare bills didn’t stop Mr. Miskulin from offering his opinion. Yet more evidence it isn’t about healthcare.
Please read my paper entitled “Healthcare.”
“The present health care system is in shambles. In America for the last 30 years, we’ve papered over our problems. We’ve used deficit spending to bury our real problems economically, and look what a mess we’re in.”
[RWC] “The present health care system is in shambles?” Mr. Miskulin and his fellow traveler Stephen Kislock need to get their stories straight. Just yesterday Mr. Kislock wrote, “The United States has the finest medical care in the world, but only if you can afford it.”
Deficit spending is definitely a problem. At the same time, Mr. Miskulin failed to note Medicare and Socialist Security are Ponzi schemes and thus financially untenable. Mr. Miskulin also ignored the lefty programs offering house mortgages to people who could not afford them that caused the subprime mortgage meltdown at the bottom of this recession.
“Whenever Republicans were in power in the last 30 years, their main focus has been on tax cuts. Look where’s that’s gotten us.”
[RWC] This is the second consecutive letter from Mr. Miskulin discussing the myth of “tax cuts.” As a reminder, tax revenue was at a record high before the current recession. As a reminder, most tax rate cuts came during recessions and cutting tax rates is SOP during a recession. The exception was the 1997 rate cuts during the Clinton administration that received broad bipartisan support (Over 80% of congressional Democrats voted for them and President Clinton signed the bill.).
“The present health care system is bad and getting worse, and yet the Republicans advocate doing nothing - like that matters for something.”
[RWC] Again, Mr. Miskulin and his buds need to do better coordination of their talking points. Are we “bad and getting worse” or “the finest medical care in the world?”
As for “yet the Republicans advocate doing nothing,” I discussed that talking point when the Times tried it on multiple occasions. This is simply an attempt to avoid intelligent debate. You see, if you present a proposal the left doesn’t like, they ignore it then claim you made no proposal or “overlooked” the problem. That tactic ensures lefties don’t have to debate the pros and cons of your proposal.
As we saw during President Obama’s “healthcare summit,” Republicans clearly understand the issue and presented remedies rooted mostly in solutions that would preserve our individual liberty.
“The Democratic health care plan may or may not be the right plan, but at least we can say we met the issue head on, that we didn’t shirk from our responsibilities.”
[RWC] I can’t believe how many folks like Mr. Miskulin appear to believe doing something - even something that will make things worse - is better than “doing nothing.” Remember, even if you do nothing, you are making a choice and you’re doing something.
“We can only hope that this is the start of an overhaul of the whole way of doing things in Washington.”
[RWC] What, even more vote-buying and rule-breaking?
“Republicans have sat on the fence for so long that their time is almost gone. They’ve already put us through too much. Isn’t it time we get them off our aching backs.”
[RWC] It would be nice if Mr. Miskulin would detail all of the bad things Republicans did and then explained in detail how they hurt the U.S. Instead, Mr. Miskulin simply makes drive-by accusations. Don’t get me wrong; Republicans made plenty of miscues when they behaved like lefties and didn’t dismantle lefty programs. The problem for folks like Mr. Miskulin is if they attack Republicans for things that did actual harm (lefty policies) to the economy, they indict themselves. That’s why we get drive-by accusations with no details.
© 2004-2010 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.