TARP credited with preventing economic collapse
Re: "Do Dodd or Frank care why TARP failed?" editorial, Oct. 28
Your editorial states that "the Government Accountability Office's eagle-eyed auditors said they found no evidence that [the Troubled Asset Relief Program] prevented a financial meltdown a year ago. ..."
You might want to inform your readers that the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program Report to Congress dated Oct. 21, 2009 clearly says that ... "it appears that the dramatic steps taken by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and other agencies through TARP and related programs played a significant role in bringing the system back from the brink of collapse."
Jeffrey Koshel
Washington
Third party candidacies are a losing strategy
Re: "New York race exposes the big tent GOP myth," Oct. 28
Mark Tapscott's advice in his "expose" of the Big Tent theory for the GOP constitutes a road to nowhere for the Republican Party.
His bottom line? If a RINO wins a Republican nomination fair and square (in this case, Dede Scozzafava), then run a third-party conservative who doesn't live in the district or know anything about local issues, most likely throwing the election to the Democrat. Now that's a winning strategy!
Just imagine how Tapscott and his cronies would howl if the roles were reversed and GOP moderates ran their own candidate because the duly chosen Republican was too conservative.
One has only to look to Capitol Hill to see the idiocy of his theory: Large Democratic majorities are now implementing President Obama's reckless agenda because that party had the sense to support moderates when it was appropriate for their districts. They run the country while Republicans kick out the heretics.
David Lampo
Alexandria
Editor's note: Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman was born and raised in New York's 23rd Congressional District and has spent most of his adult life there as well.
Modern Prohibition isn't working either
Re: "Crime History - Congress passes ban on 'intoxication beverages,' " Oct. 28
Last Wednesday's crime history reports on congressional passage of the Volstead Act in 1919, paving the way for Prohibition, which you report "had unintended consequences" -- making "life in America ... more violent with organized crime and open rebellion against the law." Enforcement "proved to be extremely difficult" in states where authorities "refused to pay to enforce" these laws.
If we just replace "alcoholic beverages" with marijuana, methamphetamines, and other street drugs common nowadays, how much different would such an account be today? We have not learned from our past and are thus doomed to repeat it.
Dino Drudi
Alexandria
