Letters to the Editor

Swamp
    
     Dear Editor:
     If there is any justice, the smear campaign run by Lynn Jenkins attacking Nancy Boyda will backfire. Nancy has been a breath of fresh air in a putrid swamp of hypocricy
     Her opponant, on the other hand, seems quite at home swimmiing in murky waters.
    
    
     Armand Way
    
    
; Joe
    
     Dear Editor:
     The main point of the ’Joe the Plumber’ phenomenon isn’t the fact that Joe’s an apprentice plumber; it’s not that he’s in no position to buy the company, it’s not that the company makes less than $250,000/year, it’s not even that Joe owes his state @$1200 in back taxes. It’s that when McCain chose to make him a focal point, he checked out his background as superficially as he apparently checked out Sarah Palin’s before he nominated her. He again went with his gut, showing once again his similarity to George W. Bush.We’ve suffered grievously from that kind of temperament for almost eight years and we don`t need any more of it. Thanks, but no thanks.
     Brooks Keogh
    
    
;Where’s the Money?
    
     Dear Editor:
     After reading the Oct. 17th Topeka Capital-Journal article "Who’s Got the Money?" I was curious to learn where candidates for the 2nd District Congressional seat were spending their campaign money, so I went to the CJOnline website to check it out. Seems as though, despite her commercials saying how much she will do for the people of this district and how important her local roots are, Lynn Jenkins prefers to spend her campaign money out of state. Some examples: her campaign flyers came out of Lexington, MA; her campaign banners and yard signs came out of Houston, TX; and a firm in Alexandria, VA is shown to have provided the following ’Äì commercial broadcast buys, media placement, commercial production, television ad production, artwork production, and even conducted a voter attitudes survey. It would seem to me there must be some companies in the 2nd District capable of at least producing campaign yard signs. Apparently the Jenkins campaign doesn’t see it that way.
     On the other side of the ticket, Nancy Boyda has spent her campaign money locally with companies in Topeka and Lawrence supplying her signs, commercial ad production, advertising placement, media buys and graphic production. I like the fact that a candidate wanting to represent me in Washington, DC is spending her campaign money with local businesses, especially in this time of financial stress and difficulty for so many business people.
     Susan D. Chan
    
    
; Step Up
    
     Dear Editor:
     The recent attempt by the Republicans to distance themselves from the last eight years of the Bush Administration is foolhardy at best. It cannot be justified in whatever extreme one tries to take it - for the last eight years they were in control.
     Trying to blame Clinton, who left office in 2001, or the Democratic Congress that recently took the reigns is grasping at straws.
     The Republican led Congress rubber stamped the agenda for six years until the Democrats were able to upset the balance, not necessarily being "in control" as the GOP would have you believe. The wheels of this current financial crisis were already turning before the election of 2006. The "Bush tax cuts" were supposed to create jobs. They did, at places like Lehman, AIG, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and other financials playing with the "surplus" the financially endowed gained through the tax cuts. Waste and fraud belied the high dollar restaurants and flashy jewels of the new culturally elite. It was reminiscent of the 1980’s, when the US was heavily in debt to foreign nations and encouraged risky lending by the Savings and Loan institutions to create the illusion of prosperity. That Republican led fiasco caused the collapse of the S&L’s and a market collapse in 1987.
     The minimum wage was left unchanged until 2007. No major advances in health care reform, other than the blank check for pharmaceuticals, took place. Big oil earned over $1 trillion in the eight years of Bush/Cheney. Bush tried to merge Social Security with Stock Market options.
     The Iraq War, on the heels of failure to heed intelligence warnings about Al Qaeda that led to September 11, 2001, has enough impeachable offenses to lock many of the key players away for years. Bush never found Osama Bin Laden, as he promised a crowd at "ground zero." The Republican led Congress investigated nothing, save the September 11 attacks, that had Bush and Cheney testifying in tandem and in private with no record of their statements. The Constitution was trampled on and twisted, with things like warrantless searches, "Rendition," Guantanamo and the Patriot Act.
     "No Child Left Behind" created so many nooses and bottlenecks for teachers that many left the profession. Children were taught how to pass a test rather than be educated, and children of special needs mainstreamed into classrooms where they created a distraction for the other students. One teacher told me she had children that were so emotionally unstable they would scream whenever the bell rang.
     The world view of the United States as a bastion of freedom was severely tainted. Now we learn the NSA listened as lonely soldiers, sent to fight a contrived war, spoke indiscreetly with their loved ones.
     The one consistency was lies, lies and more lies. The press failed to live up to it’s responsibility to tell Americans the truth with men like Cheney having inside connections to Rush Limbaugh, FOX News and The New York Times. A loyal CIA agent was outed while the former director got the Medal of Freedom.
     This has easily been the worst administration in the history of this country, and it’s damages will take years to repair. Trying to blame it on the "other guys" just isn’t going to work. Our own Pat Roberts was right there with them, and don’t forget it. Using denial, lies, fear and plain distortions of truth means you don’t have much to campaign on. Gov. Palin’s claim that the Democrats keep "looking back" is a weak attempt at taking the focus off of the GOP’s record of the last eight years. These people have been worse than any terrorists - they have caused more damage with greed and special interest than any domestic attack.
     I am an independent. I have voted for whomever I believed deserved my vote, Republican or Democrat. I believe patriotism cannot be defined by belonging to a political party, but rather by having a concern for your country and it’s security, both financial and militarily. The current mess isn’t going to go away. We may be stuck with it for many years to come. I fear for my children and grandchildren.
     So, I ask you, are you better off than you were eight years ago? Just remember who has been at the helm. Republicans, step up! It’s time to take responsibility for your actions.
     Everything’s the opposite of what it is, isn’t it?
    
     Kevin M. Centlivre
    
    
;Constitutionally Speaking
    
     Dear Editor:
     The separation of powers built into the Constitution by our Founding Fathers was one of their great masterstrokes. While not creating a perfect government, this separation lessened the likelihood that the State would strangle the freedoms guaranteed in our Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, under the Bush Administration, Congress essentially renounced its responsibility to act as a check on the abuse of presidential power, becoming a rubberstamp to its every whim–hardly the role Madison , et al, envisioned for Congress. One of the chief enablers of the lawlessness that has thus ensued from this presidency has been our very own Senator Roberts.
     I once wrote Roberts expressing concern about Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of US citizens. He wrote that he’d been "fully briefed on this program," finding it "legal and constitutional" (while saying the leak of the program to the press had been "criminal"). I reminded the Senator that a cursory reading of the Constitution demonstrates the program is in fact incontrovertibly unconstitutional with its requirements for warrants, probable cause, and the president’s ’faithful execution’ of the law. I politely challenged him to explain the fallacies in my reasoning. He declined. Clearly he’d missed the point: the whistle blower was a patriot standing up for the Rule of Law–it was the program that’d been illegal.
     Later, when evidence of Bush’s torture policy surfaced, Senator McCain pushed through an amendment prohibiting its use. It was naˆØve considering Bush had ignored (as he would this law) the already numerous domestic and international laws (not to mention the Constitution’s prohibitions against "cruel and unusual punishment") making these actions War Crimes, but as a statement of principle, it implored the US to put away the tools of barbarism and reclaim its position as a beacon of Justice in the world. It passed overwhelmingly.
     Senator Roberts voted against it.
     This action placed him on the same side of this issue as the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition, and squarely against 230 years of American principle and practice. Even before we became a nation, George Washington explicitly disavowed torture and forbade its use, even though Britain used it extensively against us. Senator Roberts thus has more in common with George-III than George Washington.
     This isn’t a matter of Democrat vs. Republican (though you might think it so since no KS Democrat has been elected to the Senate in over 70 years!); this is about principle, about protecting the hard earned gains human kind has clawed its way toward over the millennia. Make no mistake; Roberts’ positions are nothing less than ideological wrecking balls aimed at the foundation of our democracy. Jefferson, who helped lay the stones of that foundation said, "In matters of Power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." Senator Roberts has been instrumental in dismantling these chains–allowing unprecedented "mischief" from the chief executive. Kansans deserves better–something more than a presidential rubberstamp.
     Thomas W. Muther, Jr.