Obama foes should learn from history

I am writing this letter in response to Nancy J. Thorner's letter to the editor published in the Daily Herald on Jan. 15 (Are we sliding down a slippery slope?). I find it interesting that Ms. Thorner has "many concerns" regarding the proposed $1 trillion stimulus package proposed by Mr. Obama. But where were her letters of concern about the largest expansion in our country's history of the federal government, the highest recorded deficit spending by any president and his administration in history and, in my opinion, the worst bungling of our economy in the last century, perpetrated by George W. Bush? That aside, in Ms. Thorner's letter she looks down her nose at the newest stimulus proposed by Obama (a Democrat) to put fellow Americans back to work by finally investing in our country's transportation, infrastructure, health care and the promise of a new economic engine of an alternative energy industry, dismissing these ideas as a "Democratic wish list." My wish is that no more bridges collapse and that we gain energy independence from the Middle East among many other wishes.

In her letter Ms. Thorner wrote "In 1939, five years into the New Deal, unemployment still stood at 17.2 percent." She further claims that it was only the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entry by the United States into WWII that actually jump-started the economic recovery from the Great Depression. Could this be called intellectual dishonesty? You betcha! It is true that in 1939 the unemployment rate was at 17.2 percent, but she fails to mention the fact that the unemployment rate was at 24.9 percent in 1933. Because of the New Deal, between 1934 and 1939 the unemployment rate fell 30 percent to the 17.2 percent rate cited by Ms. Thorner and other right-wing propagandists. What does this fact show? It shows that the New Deal was successful and put millions of Americans back to work. It shows that the best way to recovery and economic stimulus is to put people back to work, thus restoring the now-decimated middle class, while also putting money in their pockets to spend. As far as her concerns about us becoming "a government with people" and her assertion that people should be concerned about the erosion of our constitution and the debt we are leaving to future generations, I would point out that those of us who have expressed this concern for the last several years have been dismissed by the likes of people like Ms. Thorner as nothing but liberal Bush haters, while she and others in her party have enabled the most incompetent president in history in his never-ending quest to redistribute the wealth from the many into the pockets of a few. Bush and his appeasers have damaged this country considerably, and now, once again, it is time for Democrats to clean up another mess created by more failed Republican policies.

Steven M. Skinner

Antioch