How will this economy get better?
The unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent last week, the highest since 1983. Back then, the economy quickly recovered over the next year, with 8 percent growth. And by 1984, the economy was roaring.
What is different between then and now? The largest tax decrease in U.S. history was taking affect in 1983. It reduced taxes across the board, and people and businesses began investing in America. What is being passed in 2009? Universal health care and a climate change bill. Both will increase taxes on everyone. I would like anyone to tell me how this economy is going to get even remotely better.
Universal health care? The government can't even get the swine flu shots ready for us. It's time to quit listening to the politicians and use logic again. I guess we have to hope there will be massive change in 2010.
Glenn Spence, Vernon Hills
Republicans are promoting medical malpractice reform as part of their proposal in opposition to the Democrats' health-care reform agenda. And malpractice limits would probably reduce costs. But this raises serious questions.
Isn't imposing such limits at the federal level completely inconsistent with Republican principles favoring states' rights and opposing a powerful central government? Any resulting federal law would certainly provide different limits than most state legislatures have deemed appropriate. And if you let the federal government start making these kinds of decisions about what has historically been state law, where does it end?
If Republicans are serious about health-care reform, why did they wait until now? Since the Clinton health-care efforts were shut down, the problems have gotten progressively worse. And Republicans had virtually complete control of government during most of the Bush years. Yet they didn't seriously try to pass medical malpractice reform then.
Instead, they passed an incredibly expensive Medicare prescription drug bill in a cynical effort to win over senior citizens while rewarding the pharmaceutical and insurance industries using taxpayer dollars.
That law came with an unfunded liability bigger than the entire unfunded liability in Social Security at that time, further threatening Medicare's sustainability. And it specifically prohibits government from negotiating price with the drug companies. So much for fiscal responsibility!
The supreme irony is that Republicans, who opposed Medicare as "socialized medicine" from its inception and vehemently oppose a government-run single-payer system, are now marketing themselves as the protectors of Medicare, the government-run single-payer system that covers virtually all of our seniors.
David J. Roberts, South Loop
With the shootings at Fort Hood, do we have any doubt that cultures and religions around the world fall victim to suspicion and apprehension when there is a reluctance and resultant inability to communicate with each other?
Could this give us another lesson that military intervention should not be a knee-jerk response to international discord?
"We fight them over there so we won't have to fight them over here"? Tell that to the surviving soldiers at Fort Hood who know full well the emptiness of this hollow war cry.
James D. Cook,
Streamwood