Bob Schmetzer – 12/30/09

This page was last updated on December 31, 2009.

Health plan would level playing field; Bob Schmetzer; Beaver County Times; December 30, 2009.

I critiqued eight previous Schmetzer letters and they are usually broken records. A 2004 letter asserted Republicans were “driving Americans into the ground.” That letter claimed the GOP planned “to reflect their commitment to defend our homeland by reintroducing the draft in 2005” despite the fact Democrats were the only guys talking about reinstating the draft. Other letters resurrected the Cheney/Halliburton talking point, lobbied for VP Cheney’s impeachment, lobbied for surrender in Iraq, and blamed President Bush for a mine cave-in. Breaking the trend were letters lobbying for a government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare system and another expressing panic at offshoring. The last Schmetzer letter I critiqued was nearly word-for-word plagiarism.

According to the BC Democrats website, Robert Schmetzer is the local town chair for South Heights. Why doesn’t the Times mention this association in an editor’s note when it publishes Mr. Schmetzer’s letters?

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Watering down whiskey is illegal.

“What do you call health-care bill passed by the U.S. Senate?

“Did it ever occur to anyone that all the goods that are dominating our marketplace are from modern industrialized countries with government health-care programs in place?”

[RWC] I’m confused. Don’t leftists always tell us “all the goods that are dominating our marketplace are from” third world countries whose workers we’re exploiting by having them work in sweatshops for a mere pittance? I guess the story changes depending on what lefty program is being sold.

“It is called dumping. The taxpayers in their country are subsidizing the products.”

[RWC] That’s BS and is based on the belief employers have some obligation to pay for employee healthcare.

“Why do the president and Congress continue to promote so much unemployment here in the United States? A national health plan would level the playing field.”

[RWC] I guess Mr. Schmetzer doesn’t know foreign businesses are among “taxpayers in their country,” and those healthcare taxes go into the cost of their products. The old and tired idea a government-run healthcare monopoly would help the U.S. economy is hogwash. Please read my paper entitled “Healthcare.”

“Yet they continue to pretend that money has something to do with it. There is no such debate when it comes to purchasing a weapon or bomb to kill people. Yet when it comes to saving an American life, the arguments rage on.”

[RWC] Maybe that’s because providing healthcare is not a constitutional responsibility but national defense is. Remember, the only federal government responsibilities are those specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The 10th Amendment specifically states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

“Keep it up. It will smell so bad we, the people, will have no choice but to flush the toilet on the present Congress and president.”

[RWC] If you believe a Democrat partisan (at least based on his letters) like Mr. Schmetzer would “flush the toilet on the present Congress and president,” I have a bridge to sell you. At best (in his view), Mr. Schmetzer means he wants an even more leftist “Congress and president.”