(Re: “Pimpin’ the boardroom: Snoop Dogg struts into the executive office,” Overtones, Jan. 28.) Your apparent celebration and approval of pimps is appalling.
Pimping is not a joke. If Mr. Dogg thinks that it is, then he and yourselves are in need of some serious counsel.
Charlie Bowen/Erie
Roll up your pant legs
It’s very difficult to reconcile the anxiety of many over a large and increasing national debt and their wishes that something be done to create a raft of new jobs.
It’s the modern tar baby — one can’t get done now without the other. Of course, it might have helped if the nation’s fiscal surplus of 2000–01 had been preserved. Everyone did enjoy his tax cut, right? No? Well, those who did are the people who by and large have not been laid off and who have little reason for angst.
Where is the outrage properly directed against these economic actors? Where is the hue and cry over the massive transfer of people from corporate payrolls to the government’s (via unemployment benefits)?
Of course, there could be a solution somewhere in that barn full of pony droppings. Companies just might begin hiring, if (1) they no longer had to pay any taxes or unemployment insurance premiums, and (2) if workers would just agree to work without health insurance, vacations and pay. Simple! So let’s roll up our sleeves — no, pant legs — and get back to work! Somebody’s got a mortgage payment due on the second home in Aspen.
Greg Iwan/Longmont
Democans and Republicrats
My view and the sentiment of some other Constitutionalists is that prochoice and Massachusetts state-run Romneycare supporter/voter Brown’s win was nothing more than a moral victory for the less liberal portion of the same old Democan and Republicrat two-parties-without-a-difference system.
After the Republicrats filibuster the ObaMao health care takeover, the Democans will still have a 59-41 majority to pass any kind of government-run program they want. Or they may simply decide to use the reconciliation “nuclear option” majority of 51 votes to ram it down our throats because they do not care about what “We the People” think.
Congress got to be this way because “We the People” didn’t do anything to stop it, and it will not change until “We the People” decide to change it.
Some words of caution
about Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts; he draws a parallel with
Barry ObaMao’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2009 primary battles:
In
both cases, relative unknowns beat the anointed successor. Brown was an
unknown who overcame even longer odds than ObaMao. Just one month
earlier, he was down anywhere from 20 to 31 points in the polls.
Yes,
he did make opposition to the Democan plan for the federal takeover of
health care and lower taxes the cornerstones of his campaign, but, at
the same time, he voted for Romney’s similar Massachusetts state health
care plan.
Democans are all over that, plus Brown is socially liberal and pro-choice.
Also,
Brown is in favor of a foreign intervention strategy in the mold of
Dubya and far too many of today’s Republicrats. Do we simply say, as
Sean Hannity does, that Congress passed a war resolution which is
“equivalent” to a declaration of war? If so, why not just have the
courage of our convictions to declare war? And will Scott Brown, at
last, be an advocate for the invocation of the “letters of marque and
reprisal” clause of the Constitution that could save us the financial
and human costs of these overseas interventions? I doubt it.
Clearly,
“We the People” were voting for something other than the status quo
with Brown, and that “something” might not necessarily be what is known
as traditional “conservative” Republicratism.
In
my opinion, “We the People” are yearning for an orthodoxy anchored in
consistency, and in this country that anchor exists only as the United
States Constitution! Remember: Politicians and government officials are
like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reasons.
Defend the high ground!
W. R. Muenzberg/via Internet
Supreme failure
The Supreme Court, by design, with justices appointed for life by presidents (and
seated by Congress), is essentially a conservative institution, yet it
remains open to change and flexibility. It should not be seen as having
an infallible, written-in-stone judgment on matters of law.
Appointments
are swayed by democratic input and, as such, its members can become
enmeshed in a political time warp. The Dred Scott decision affirming
slaves as property was supported by a part of the Constitution inserted
as a political expedient to induce Southern states to join in forming
“a more perfect Union,” yet it came at a time when political opinion
(and the democratic process) was turning toward the complete abolition
of slavery. Outrage at the Court’s refusal to consider a morality of
the human over the monetary further fueled the abolitionist movement.
Thus
far, the five conservative justices of the Roberts Court seem caught in
a time warp of laissez-faire capitalism. The Court has previously ruled
that eminent domain can be used to trump an individual’s property
rights for commercial interests as well as for public projects, and
now, the people no longer have the right to legislate rules of campaign
finance. At a time when the public’s trust in the world of high finance
is in the toilet with their IRAs and 401(k)s and the curtain has been
pulled from Reagan’s rhetoric of deregulation, Roberts’ Gang of Five
have to be seen merely as dinosaurs smugly ruling against a new and
growing political reality. Government is the only effective counter to
the corporate world’s abuses of power.
Robert Porath/Boulder
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