Facts getting in way of writer’s point

Facts getting in way of writer’s point

A response to Lazlo Stephan’s letter Aug. 11, “Higher taxes on the ‘rich’ is no solution”:

“Class warfare” is a subjective term designed to obfuscate the point — whether our wealthiest citizens should contribute more than today’s historically low rates call for. There’s no “class animosity” attached to the argument. The 69 percent that he refers to who want top earners to pay more — asking them if they want to pay 3 percent more — is irrelevant to the point.

Using “cooked surveys” applies to myopic conservatives, as much as it does to the far left. Those of us in the political center are tired of both “cooked surveys” and extreme “my team is always right” positions.

“The Obama administration’s enormous deficit and growing, strangling national debt.” Since when did Obama become responsible for the entire national debt? What about all the debt chalked up by all the previous administrations, including George W. Bush’s $4.2 trillion alone during his eight-year watch?

Mr. Krauthammer’s opinion notwithstanding, the majority of economists today think we have a spending problem and a revenue problem; some of these learned people have won the Nobel Prize. They continue to tell us there’s no possible way to solve the problem without also changing tax policy to create additional revenue, too. One of my favorite conservatives, Alan Simpson, co-chair of the Simpson-Bowles Commission, echoes this point of view. Even Mr. Krauthammer, in a recent column, acknowledges additional revenues can be created by prudent tax policy.

There was no “hate speech” in Ms. Harrop’s piece; that’s simply your subjective interpretation of what she said. Whose “truth,” Mr. Stephan? We all have our subjective “truth.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Robert Terson

Arlington Heights