Hinchey for the little guy

To the editor:

Congressman Maurice Hinchey fights for the little guy. He recently secured almost $700,000 in federal funding for flood mitigation in Sullivan County and has been diligently working with us in our fight against New York Regional Interconnection since 2006.

In Washington, Congressman Hinchey continues to fight for the repeal of tax breaks for big oil companies. He pressured the White House to increase funding for the heating assistance program to help those who will struggle to heat their homes this winter.

Congressman Hinchey isn’t afraid to stand up to special interests. And as Americans, we also need to stand up and demand good representation in Washington. I believe Congressman Hinchey knows the people and the issues in our area and he deserves your vote.

Wake up

To the editor:

Chris Hackett makes out that Congressman Carney is a wicked politician, because he is in Washington. Please, what are you trying to be, Mr. Hackett? You were glad-handing when I met you, and your “handler” behind you, during the primaries; you asked for my vote and I was honest with you, telling you that I support Chris Carney.

Chris was a college professor (political science). He is a Commander in our Naval Reserves and specializes in counterterrorism. He recently served his required active duty during the Congressional recess. Because of his expertise, he is frequently called to the Pentagon. He is so well qualified that he, a freshman congressman, was chosen to be the chairman of the Subcommittee for House and Homeland Security. Chris is also the father of five; his wife is a schoolteacher. They live in a very small town in Susquehanna County.

Mr. Hackett—now a politician, too—try and top this! You inherited the business your father-in-law started. So what?

Looking for the best in both

To the editor:

Recently, I have found myself sympathizing with Democrats on some issues and feeling that God showed me errors as well as successes in both parties and with the Bush administration. I agree I also want change in our government, but I know that the changes Mr. Obama wants are not changes that are the American way. He is far too liberal and European in his ideas. This quote by Governor Mike Huckabee at the Republican convention is an example of one of the reasons the United States is still great. “I’m not Republican because I grew up rich, but because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me.”

Also, Governor Sarah Palin is a great choice for Vice President and will bring feminine reasoning and approach to the White House.

As for my faith, it leads my politics. Therefore, I am pro-Israel, in favor of intelligent design/scientific creationism, for faith-based programs, for school and government prayer and public display of the 10 Commandments, for freedom of speech and freedom of religion and for traditional family values with holy matrimony between one man and one woman only. My faith also leads me to be against abortion, euthanasia, pornography, against evolution being taught to our children as fact and against the incorrect modern misinterpretation of separation of church and state.

Where my faith moves me into the Democratic realm is in the areas of immigration, death penalty, energy conservation/natural environment and the war in Iraq.

The answers will not be found in our next President or his political party but in Christ alone; In God we trust, God bless America, one nation under God.

JP (John) Pasquale

McCain advisor on Freddie Mac’s payroll

To the editor:

Freddie Mac paid Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae. Davis’s firm, Davis Manafort, had been kept on Freddie Mac’s payroll because of his close ties to McCain, the Republican presidential nominee.

Davis was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000, set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations. These facts were reported in The New York Times on September 21 and 22.

This is what lobbying is all about—influence buying. With a lobbyist running his campaign, when John McCain keeps boasting that he fights “special interests,” whose “interests” does he mean?

Gosh-darned impressed

To the editor:

I was impressed with Sarah Palin’s performance in the debate. After the Katie Couric/Palin joke-fest I was all set for more fun. But Palin made her and McCain’s positions pretty clear. They say change, but she didn’t point out one single way that McCain/Palin are different from Bush’s war, war, war foreign policy and his economic policies that favor the rich.

I was also impressed with her big tricked-out American Flag—wow! It went well with her golly-gee, aw-shucks delivery. I kept thinking that the Clampetts would stop by to say “Hi.” They had oil-soaked dollars in their pockets too, didn’t they?

Lies

To the editor:

Election ads often misrepresent the other side’s stance. But Time’s Joe Klein, in the September 29 issue, said “McCain is running a uniquely dishonest campaign.”

Here are debunked claims made by McCain/Palin or groups working for their election (from Factcheck, a non-partisan project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center).

A new McCain-Palin ad says that “McCain and his congressional allies led” on the financial crisis while Obama was “mum.” That’s simply not true. A claim that Obama would raise taxes on families making $42,000 is simply false.

A McCain-Palin ad says that Obama was “born of the corrupt Chicago political machine” and implies that the candidate himself is corrupt by association with four local political figures. But the ad’s implication and many of its supporting details are false. In fact, this is a particularly egregious example of ricochet sliming.

McCain has launched two different deceptive attacks on Obama’s Iran policy. Obama actually said that Iran is tiny compared with the Soviet Union and doesn’t pose a threat the way the Soviet Union and its thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles did.

McCain released an ad claiming that Obama’s “one accomplishment” in education was “legislation to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners.” That’s false. A National Rifle Association advertising campaign distorts Obama’s position on gun control beyond recognition. It falsely claims in mailers and TV ads that Obama plans to ban handguns, hunting ammo and use of a gun for home defense.

Even Karl Rove on Fox News Sunday said, “McCain has gone one step too far in attributing to Obama things that are beyond the 100-percent truth test.” It is time to look critically at such claims. Eight years of lies is long enough.

Vina Miller

Honesdale, PA

Sarah Palin is not me

To the editor:

Honestly, Sarah Palin is not me. As much as folks keep saying that Sarah Palin is just like “every woman,” I have to disagree.

First of all, I do not agree with Sarah’s right-to-life stand. I’m pro-choice. But how about—just for the time being—we stop asking if someone is pro-life or pro-choice? How about we just start asking folks if they’re doing okay on a day-to-day basis? Too many folks I know are struggling to make ends meet.

I can only imagine there are lot of pregnant women out there, wondering to themselves, how am I going to feed this baby? How am I going to keep this baby warm this winter? How am I going to get this child to school if gas costs so much? Sorry Sarah, but having a baby at 17 because no one sat down with your daughter and told her about contraception doesn’t seem too thoughtful or wise or even parental. How about we teach our children about self-esteem, about loving themselves, about the power and courage to say, “No, sorry, I don’t wanna get pregnant now.”

Sarah Palin believes that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth together. I am a staunch believer in evolution. I don’t need Sarah to agree with me. I just don’t want her to think that just because she’s the Governor of Alaska that her beliefs warrant some kind of suspended disbelief on my part.

And for the record, I do not believe in banning books, target practice on animals, or that it’s God’s will that we’re going to hell in a hand basket.

No, Sarah Palin is not me. We share nothing except the possibility of a pair of wireless frames. And don’t get me wrong. I love the glasses—it’s just, I hate the vision.

Who’s the real change agent?

To the editor:

Let’s be clear about who the real “change candidate” is here. Senator McCain is fashioning himself as trying to “reform” the financial structure in this country. He mimics what Senator Obama has been saying for the last two years; more regulation on our financial institutions, help for the working and middle-class families through tax breaks, job creation, healthcare, etc. I never heard the words “Main Street” come out of McCain’s mouth until it was clear he was losing this election and the only avenue left to him was to co-opt Senator Obama’s mantra.

John McCain has always been a strong supporter of deregulation and less government oversight for Wall Street. Why do you think we’re in this mess? It didn’t happen overnight. McCain’s fingerprints, footprints and DNA are all over the economic disaster that we are now facing. But, now, he wants to “change” the philosophies he has supported and legislated for the last 20 years. And John McCain wants to end earmarks, but didn’t he announce, not too long ago, that he wanted to spend $300 million dollars to the inventor of a better car battery? So much for his opposition to ear marks. Let’s vote for the real change candidate, Barack Obama; not for someone who merely mouths the words.

Cheryl R. Glenn

Spin

To the editor:

In this seemingly celebrity-obsessed culture we live in, it’s imperative to take time out to examine the facts instead of the faces. With daily headlines of our economy in a shambles, unemployment at record levels, foreclosed housing and hard-won pensions at risk, it’s easy and even necessary to escape into the world of entertainment.

Unfortunately for us, the political campaigns and their strange bedfellows, the media, are all too aware of our plight. Designer eyeglasses or the cut of a suit get more airplay than a candidate’s stance on education or health insurance. Whether it’s our current President cutting brush on his ranch or a Vice Presidential candidate with a dead caribou, spinning the images in a way that the general populace can identify with is what’s deemed important. Personally, I’ll put my money on the tree specialist down the road when it comes to handling a chain saw, and as far as shooting wolves from a plane or field dressing a moose goes, well... like my friend’s mom says,” everyone’s good at something.”

More of the same

To the editor:

In order to get elected, McCain resorts to lying about Obama's economic/tax plan. Just this week, McCain repeated the lie that Obama would raise taxes for people making $42,000. This lie has been repeatedly debunked by independent sources and independent news outlets, calling the lies "shamelessly misleading", "thoroughly dishonest", and "a toxic mix of lies and double-speak.” Even Karl Rove, the star of slash and burn said that McCain's attacks have gone "too far.”

Can’t McCain and his self-described "bull dog with lipstick" find anything more substantial to discuss than the ancient history of Ayers? Or by bringing this up again, are McCain and Palin suggesting that we revive the Keating/McCain history? Hockey mom Palin is out of touch with the rest of the moms. We are all concerned about the economy and a strategy to improve this Bush/McCain mess.

They have no economic strategy so they use these tactics of character assassination and lies. These are just more of the same culture of dishonesty and division that has hurt America so much in the present administration. We deserve better. We deserve Obama and his plan of hope for the middle class.

Failed ideology

To the editor:

For the past four decades Republicans have operated under the following belief system for a global free market:

Complete removal of regulation that stands in the way of accumulating corporate profit, sale of Government assets to private sector, maximimum cut backs to all social programs, no protection of local industry/ownership, prices (including labor) determined by the market, low or no minimum wage caps.

Last week this system failed. The fall of Wall Street is to unregulated global capitalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to the fall of communism.

Fatefully this happened four weeks before Americans have the chance to change their destiny. Change is frightening and since nobody seems to know where we are headed, even with the $700 billion bail out, our future is uncertain. But an end is the beginning of the new.

McCain is old school. McCain’s ideology is the one that led to the collapse of the financial sysytem and all his advisors wear the cloak of failure. Palin is the Neo Conservative’s Trojan horse, a perceived “gift” to the struggling working and middle class, but be not fooled: Palin only appears capable when brainwashed by the old guys and spouts insincere promises from the same old failed rhetoric.

Obama is smart, young and strong. Obama has a fresh vision for our country. Obama does not believe in any tried and failed doctrines like unregulated capitalism or socialism. Obama knows government but has little patience for its recent workings. Obama is not tied down by special interests. Obama will surround himself with great advisors and together they will lead us to a better future that combines the good of our past with the endless possibilities of a better future.

Be optimistic, vote Obama/Biden.

An award-worthy performance

To the editor:

We award Oscars to our most accomplished actors and actresses. This year, the Academy ought to establish a new category: “Performance by An Actress In The Role of A Competent Candidate.” Sarah Palin needs to be acknowledged as the actress she is, a fact driven home by her debate with Senator Biden last Thursday.

I believe that virtually every word Sarah Palin uttered that night was scripted. She memorized her lines and delivered them with enough phony down-home folksiness to disarm Andy and Barney sittin’ on the front porch drinkin’ pop.

When the two were introduced, she coyly set up her subsequent pre-planned “Say-it-ain’t-so, Joe” line by asking Senator Biden if it was okay to call him “Joe.” I’d be willing to bet that all the winking, smirking and eyelash-batting were penciled in the margins of her script as well.

She herself brazenly detoured from most of the questions asked by the moderator to unrelated pat responses she’d perfected the week before at the McCain School For Thespians. Well, almost. It really wasn’t hard to detect what she was out to do. Additionally, many of her responses were inaccurate or false.

Life is unscripted. We need leaders comfortable in new and challenging situations who can think on their feet. We’ve been embarrassed and misled by a bumbling president for the last eight years. If John McCain is elected, Governor Palin could wind up in the Oval Office. What a prospect.

The Sarah Palin America saw in the Katie Couric interviews is the real Sarah Palin: unsure, hesitant, tongue-tied, clueless and completely out of her league as an aspirant to the high office of Vice President of the United States. May her ill-conceived and clumsily-executed candidacy rest in peace after November 4.

Doomed to repeat?

To the editor:

Recently, I saw a political cartoon that shows George Washington crying on the dollar bill. I'm sure that he and the other heroes who founded this country are all crying. They led a revolt against tyranny and abuse of citizens and today we find ourselves, more than 225 years later, in the same situation.

Sarah Palin criticized Joe Biden for citing the past. The past is the place we learn lessons from. The future does not change if we don't understand and learn from our mistakes.

We have an opportunity to show we have learned on November 4. Never forget that McCain is a Republican and the Republican Party is supporting him. This is the party of George W. Bush. No matter how much McCain wants to remove himself from the last eight years-, he can't. He voted with Bush 90 percent of the time.

American lost 159,000 jobs in September alone. We need someone who understands not just that we have huge problems but how to fix them, how to work with Congress, how to work with other counties in this multi- national world, how to talk plain talk to the country so that people understand what is going on.

We are in control of our destiny. That is what democracy is all about. You have the right to vote.