Despite Ryan’s endorsement, no confidence in Obama

Despite Ryan’s endorsement, no confidence in Obama

EDITOR:

In Tim Ryan’s Oct. 28 endorsement of Barack Obama (Obama is best for our Valley’s economy), he supports the usual policies promoted by the Democratic Party that simply have no chance of succeeding. According to Congressman Ryan, President Obama will “invest” in green technologies, manufacturing workforce education, energy independence (presumably through alternative energy technology), retooling the auto industry and universal health care. Although Mr. Ryan does not mention saving Social Security, investing in public education or repairing the country’s crumbling roads and bridges, I am certain these worthy causes won’t be left behind. And, at the same time, 95 percent of all American families will get a tax cut. As a practicing CPA for 30 years, I am pretty good with numbers, but you don’t have to be that good to see that these numbers can’t add up.

Anyone who handles a family budget knows that you start with the money you have coming in and then decide how much you can spend and on what. We all know people who spend with no consideration of whether they can afford to. They borrow today and worry about paying for it ... well they never seem to worry about paying for it.

The examples of government intervention leading to bad unintended consequences are numerous. Legislation requiring mortgages to be issued to non-creditworthy customers contributed to a housing bubble that was destined to burst at some point. Adding to the problem were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government sponsored organizations that exhibited the discipline of college kids on spring break, with the full moral and financial support of their congressional enablers.

Regarding trade policy, there is a credible argument to be made that protectionism extended the length and severity of the Great Depression. It is hard to fathom how Sen. Obama’s policies, enthusiastically supported by Ryan, will lead us to new prosperity.

I am old enough to remember the mess that Jimmy Carter made of the economy, and I see many similarities in the approach Barack Obama says he is planning to take. I am not looking forward to the economic carnage that will inevitably result.

JOHN P. DONCHESS

Youngstown

Old book in a new cover

EDITOR:

Gov. Palin, Rudy Giuliani and the GOP are on the stump scaring people with the line that an Obama election means socialism in the United States. My first question to Palin would be could she sit down and intelligently discuss the meaning of the subject. I would ask the group why distributing wealth downward is in their minds “bad” socialism but it is OK to pass billions from taxpayers upward to Wall Street and the banks for the bailout.

One source I found shows that in 1983 the top 20 percent of Americans controlled about 80 percent of the wealth and the bottom 80 percent of the population controlled about 19 percent (not 100 percent due to rounding). By 2001 the top 20 percent had control of about 84 percent of the wealth while the bottom 80 percent fell to about 15.5 percent of the wealth. The years since Reagan have had the largest upward transfer of wealth in the history of this nation.

The argument that the bottom 40 percent of people pay no taxes hides the fact that these people would pay taxes if they hadn’t lost their middle class income. Most of the non-taxpayers would be happy to pay if they got their middle class lifestyle back.

The good paying jobs that made blue collar workers middle class since the end of World War II have largely gone elsewhere.

The GOP talks about Obama promoting class warfare when their scare tactics are a cover for the upward wealth transfer their policies have caused. Reagan only revived the 1920s GOP promise that if the rich got richer, everyone would benefit. If you believe in the story they are selling, you are buying a bill of goods that has been sold before, and it only works for so long before it crashes.

RAYMOND L. MOSER

Columbiana

Students get career training

EDITOR:

The story that the Youngstown City School District tells is one of hope. We have a new sense of hope with each new building that we open. We have a renewed sense of hope as our graduation rate continues to rise. We see hope as our test scores improve each year. We see hope in the faces of our children as they receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships. We are working hard to maintain the momentum to keep us moving in the right direction.

In the Oct. 28 letter, “City schools must write new kind of success story,” the writer states: “What they [students] don’t need is the old academic roster of Latin, physics, advanced math, etc. They do need to learn how to live in today’s society, i.e. how to get and hold a job, how to budget and invest money, how to shop for everything from groceries to insurance, and how to understand how today’s business world operates.”

The Ohio Department of Education mandates what students must take while in high school and holds school districts accountable. The ODE does not make exceptions to curriculum based on the socioeconomic status of a school district.

Regarding the need for trade schools, the Youngstown City School District operates Choffin Career and Technical Center. All students in the Youngstown City School District and outlying areas have the opportunity to attend Choffin as juniors and seniors.

They can choose one of our 21 programs. The motto of Choffin is “Real work that real people do in the real world” and we stand by this. Our students are taught valuable life skills as well as rigorous academic subjects.

RENEE C. ENGLISH

Enrollment coordinator

Choffin Career & Technical Center

Youngstown

Bigger worries than taxes

EDITOR:

Republicans who complain about taxes should be more concerned about their margin of profit. I was a farmer for 40 years, including some of the Depression years, and we weren’t concerned about taxes. We were well aware that taxes provided roads, education, infrastructure, law enforcement, fire protection and many other valuable services.

In these times of many layoffs and foreclosures, taxes can employ many people in vital services. Those people will have money to save their homes and provide profits for grocers, auto dealers and other businesses.

It seems to me that it is much more important to provide jobs for little people than to give $700 billion to financial institutions — although that may be helpful to our economy.

We have always had a degree of socialism, especially when we need to help our fellow Americans, as in the 1930s and during the present recession. We are a Christian nation.

JIM HERREN

Youngstown

Assessing bad decisions

EDITOR:

John McCain is a genuine war hero and a man of personal integrity, but he has made some bad decisions in his quest for the presidency. Perhaps the worst of these, one that arguably marks him as unqualified to serve in that high office, is his choice of Sarah Palin as his party’s candidate for Vice President.

Some readers will conclude upon reading this that I am both an “ageist” and a flaming liberal. In fact, I am a bit older than Sen. McCain, and most of the presidential candidates I have voted for since 1952 were Republicans.

The crucial issue is the substantial danger that he will die or become disabled in office, making her our president. Standard actuarial tables tell us that the probability of a man his age dying in the next four years is about 13 percent. In addition, 9 percent (4 of 43) of our presidents have been assassinated. Add to that the risk of disability caused by Alzheimer’s disease, other forms of dementia or a stroke, and there is at least one chance in four that our safety, stability and future prospects as a nation would be in the hands of a leader whose knowledge of foreign affairs is limited to her ability to see Russia from her house, at least on clear days.

As reasons to reject Sen. McCain’s candidacy have multiplied in recent weeks, early concerns about Barack Obama have tended to fade away. Obama’s organizational skills, ability to communicate clearly, steadiness under pressure, religious faith and the many wise and prominent American leaders who have endorsed his candidacy all give confidence that he is the right person for the job.

ROBERT D. GILLETTE

Youngstown

Questions for Obama

EDITOR:

Questions I would like to ask of Barack Obama:

If taxes would be raised on businesses making over $250,000, where is the incentive for growth for smaller businesses just under that amount?

For every one ad for John McCain, there seem to be six or seven for Obama. Where is all this money coming from and who are the biggest contributors to his campaign?

Obama’s only mention of his family or childhood are of his mother and her parents. Why doesn’t he want to talk about his father’s family?

Maybe we need to ask ourselves what else is he hiding.

SHERYL ECKERT

Youngstown