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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 27, 2008

Stimulate Year-Round

I received my stimulus check last week. It was nice, but I have to wonder if all involved couldn't have saved a lot of time, effort and expense if the IRS simply hadn't taken the money from me in the first place. Given the usual governmental overhead, it probably costs $650 to produce and cover every $600 check.

It seems to me that in a consumer-driven economy like ours, it would be a good idea to leave the money in the consumers' pockets and let them stimulate all year long. Millions of individual consumers making millions of independent decisions has worked quite well over the years.

John S.V. Weiss

Spring Hill

Don't Get Fooled Again

I asked for solutions and Frances Earl's response is why should Democrats solve problems - problems are Republican.

Without Republicans, things will magically solve themselves. Maybe that's why Democrats have done nothing since taking control over Congress.

Frankly, inflation is everybody's problem. Terrorism is everybody's problem. Also, political divisiveness is everybody's problem.

What hope do we have for Democrats solving our problems diplomatically when she as a leader in that party calls Republicans, "evil-doers?" She is not redirecting anything; she has said the same things about Reagan.

What hope do we have for Democrat diplomacy when Bill Clinton offered Arafat 95 percent of his demands (the other 5 percent being the destruction of Israel) and Arafat answered with a holy war?

The fact is that Sen. Barack Obama plans to send Israel down the tubes so much so that Joseph Lieberman and Ed Koch, two powerful Jewish Democrats, support a Republican for president. Earl has just also confirmed Israel will get no help from Democrats.

Want to know why countries like Democrats more than Republicans? Democrats give them more money with less accountability. It doesn't matter what our foreign policy is, it's all about money.

That is except for many Muslim nations who hate our strong support of Israel and have their own oil money, except again for the billions James Earl Carter agreed to give Egypt in exchange for peace, which still didn't stop Egyptians from killing us on 9/11.

Democrats won't let us drill for our own oil, so these OPEC countries can strangle our economy. We are afraid of polluting our environment.

So instead, we allow the Amazon River basin, Lake Maracaibo, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the South China Sea to get polluted, protecting a few hundred desolate acres of Alaska.

But worst of all, the Chinese with leases from Cuba are slant drilling for our oil in the Straits of Florida. The only way to stop them is to extract our oil first.

Another concern is that our drilling methods are far more environmentally safe than theirs, so it's better if we do it.

Democrats don't care; instead they are causing Amazon pink river dolphins to go extinct while caribou multiply under Alaska's pipeline.

As oil prices rise, shale oil in Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas has become profitable to extract, but Democrats are already proposing legislation to stop it. Why?

I also asked if a president is to blame for local military issues or that Carter should be blamed for poisoning over 170 service members.

Earl confirms that besides being responsible for our soldiers' deaths in the Iranian desert trying to rescue hostages he failed to protect, he is to blame for poisoning these service members in Monterey, Calif. According to her, Carter is indeed an evil-doer!

I don't know why these Democrats think soldiers only started griping when Bush became president. They've obviously never served. I have and can definitely speak for veterans.

I received a stop-loss notice from the Carter Administration in 1979. In California, I received at least three job offers so I requested a military discharge. I was told I could only request it within six months of my due date.

Then they put me on orders to go overseas seven months before that date. When I later requested a discharge, I was informed that because I was on orders my active duty requirement was extended four more years. I had to go!

To add insult to injury, I was later given a medical discharge without being given proper medical treatment or benefits because of that extended duty.

The point is stop-losses weren't some clever invention of Bush; Democrats were doing it since way back when. I know first hand.

Now I ask, what are Obama and the Democrats really offering us? They haven't answered how they are going to make things better and have shown no inclination to do so.

Carter was a smiling face offering change. Let's don't get fooled again.

John T. Boyle

Hernando Beach

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