My rebuttal to a John Locke Foundation member's oped in the newspaper.

[mmonk]

For your critique:

A Rebuttal to Rotterman

I read Marc Rotterman’s op-ed in the Saturday, July 18th, News & Observer titled “Polls point to an edge for GOP” where he tries to make the points that Obama and “big government” policies are experiencing a Fox News and Fred Barnes quote “Obama’s Persuasion Gap” as if Fox News viewers or neoconservatives would ever give him any benefit of the doubt. And of course in John Locke ideological conclusion, he says more tax cuts, less domestic government spending, less government interference in our costly private health insurance system, is the way back to prosperity. But he fails to mention that we have been operating that way essentially since the presidency of Ronald Reagan so why is it we are in this mess?

We essentially are in this mess in my opinion because of the philosophies of groups such as the John Locke Foundation and their influence. Whether they want to admit it or not, President George W. Bush operated under their philosophy and all presidents since Reagan to some degree. We have steadily cut tax rates at the top except for a brief period under Clinton, cut and shrunk the growth of domestic government services, ramped up military spending, privatized government domestic services, steadily deregulated Wall Street and business interests, and expanded “free trade” agreements. Under President Bush, according to US debt figures, we added $4.89 trillion dollars to our debt while engaging in these practices and a trillion dollar elective war in Iraq. A GAO report released last year showed about two-thirds of U.S. companies and foreign firms doing business in this country paid no federal income taxes from 1998 to 2005 and about a fourth of large corporations with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts paid no taxes.

We don’t need economics lectures from Rotterman or the John Locke Foundation at this time. We have run this country into a ditch under their ideology. We need to reregulate our financial services industry and restore the Glass-Steagall Act. We need sustainable tax rates to get a handle on crushing debt and we need domestic government spending to turn dollars in our economy to jump start it back. For our country’s sake, we need to change course away from the John Locke Foundation philosophy.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Nice. Suggest you remove "essentially" and "in my opinion"...

Everybody knows it's an opinion already. Moreover, everybody knows it's true. :)

[mmonk]

2. Thanks.

[DURHAM D]

3. And John Locke himself would shit -

if he knew what these little toad heads have been doing in his name.

[mmonk]

4. You are correct.