Complaints against Bush unfounded

Jim Peterson began his Aug. 20 letter with some good questions all should ask considering the upcoming midterm elections. Then he goes and ruins it with some specious history regarding George W. Bush.

Like so many on the left, including our president, he makes the claim that Bush was responsible for massive deregulation. Quite the contrary is true. Bush expanded both regulatory spending and hiring of regulatory personnel by quite a substantial margin. And as far as the mortgage and lending industry, he's on record pushing for more oversight and regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Generally speaking, poorly enforced regulations, or inferior regulations themselves, are responsible for the ills Peterson and the left lay at Bush's feet.

Peterson also makes the mistake of believing that corporations are not people. This would be like saying that the United States is not the people of the country but the land itself. The wise appointees to the Supreme Court understand that campaign donations from corporations are merely the voices of those who run corporations, just as any donation is the voice of the donor. Who donates time or money to a campaign without some expectation? Why is it automatically evil when corporations do it? Seems like an un-American assumption to me.

Finally, Peterson can't end his letter without a swipe at "the top 2 percent of the richest Americans," who have been responsible for a greater percentage of total revenues to the federal government as a result of the Bush tax cuts than what went before.

There are legitimate complaints one could level against Bush. Peterson hasn't listed any of them.

Art Casper

Palatine