More reasons why President Obama should be a one-termer Re: “Obama should bow out,” Sept. 19
There also other reasons besides the ones Steve Chapman mentions why Barack Obama should bow out of the 2012 presidential race.
First is his abject and deliberate refusal to enforce our nation’s immigration laws and properly secure our borders. Second is his mishandling of the fiasco in Afghanistan, where the war is dragging onward with no satisfactory political resolution in sight. Third, his constant blaming of George W. Bush and other previous presidents for the nation’s troubles even after being in office for more than two years shows his weakness of character.
Finally, Obama’s refusal to prosecute the Black Panthers for intimidating white voters in Philadelphia is clearly an abuse of his constitutional obligations. It is never the place of an American president to pick and choose which laws he will enforce.
Lawrence K. Marsh
Gaithersburg
Unnecessary projects waste borrowed money
With the federal government $14 trillion in debt and a $1 billion shortfall in Maryland, government officials should not waste a penny until they are once more on a solid footing. Yet the extreme waste I see is enough to make me give up on “good government”.
Beverly Farms Elementary School on Post Oak Road in Potomac has been leveled and Hoover Middle School is in the process of being demolished. Both brick buildings are solid and substantial and could have lasted another hundred years. How many other sturdy structures are being torn down to create jobs with “free” federal money borrowed from foreign countries and then frittered away on worthless projects?
Similarly, serviceable concrete curbs in Montgomery County are being ripped out and replaced at great cost. Have our politicians lost all regard for the taxpayers?
Murray Katz
Silver Spring
Social Security shell game is a Ponzi scheme
To stimulate the economy and assist in job creation, President Obama’s American Jobs Act proposes to reduce some payroll taxes paid by both employees and employers for one year, which would add about $240 billion to the federal deficit over 10 years.
Whether this tax cut will achieve its intended purpose is debatable. It’s just as likely that employees will save the extra money or pay down debt as they will spend it to stimulate economic activity. Temporary suspension of some payroll taxes won’t likely nudge employers into hiring more employees.
This is a shell game. The wizards behind the curtain in the White House require that any amount lost to the Social Security Trust Fund be made up from the general revenues of the U.S. Because the debt-ridden U.S. government has no extra cash on hand, the Treasury will have to borrow money to replenish the Social Security Trust Fund, which will then lend it back to the Treasury to fund ordinary U.S. obligations such as national defense, entitlements, and studying shrimp on treadmills.
The cherry atop this chicanery sundae is that mindless partisans repair to the fainting couch when some of their opponents have the gall to characterize Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.
Bob Foys
Inverness, Ill.
