Good to finally see Bush exit office

Dubya was the first American president to hold a Master of Business Administration degree. So how did he do? Apparently competence is not a criterion for an MBA from Harvard.

Bush always had all the economic answers. So the economy is doing well? “Then we need to lower the taxes on the wealthiest Americans.” So the economy is going into a recession? “Then we need to lower the taxes on the wealthiest Americans to stimulate it.”

The appointment of Hank Paulson as secretary of the treasury was the greatest gift given to the corporate elite in the U.S. That was until Dubya snuck in the $1.4 billion tax break given to banks. This while we Americans were believing tales of impending financial apocalypse, preventable only if we threw massive amounts of our money at financial institutions to unfreeze credit, so we could borrow it back.

Paulson, ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, is negotiating with his buddies on Wall Street to protect us taxpayers.

What about John Snow, the ex-secretary of the treasury? What is he doing now? Could he be running Cerberus, the company that owns 80.1 percent of Chrysler and 51 percent of GMAC? The same GMAC that just received bank status so they too could have our money thrown at them?

While the nation’s first financial lizard slithers out of town, he has just given the American taxpayer the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. All we got was the debt.

Socialism for the corporate elite and capitalism for the rest.

I end with a quote from Oliver Cromwell:

“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

Michael Lee

Clovis

Criminal justice system lacking common sense

Despite all the economic and technology advances of our times, continuing social degeneration raises the painful question of whether we have passed the point of no return. The fact that criminals guilty of multiple felonies continue to be turned loose to prey on others again is not only an outrage, but a sign of moral dry rot that goes deep.

For more than a quarter of a century our legal system has been dominated by theories and attitudes that have let violent crime soar out of control. Yet there is no sign of a turnaround. The criminal justice system seems less concerned with protecting the public than with protecting the egos of those that indulge in fanciful theories and social experiments with criminals.

Do not expect common sense to return to the criminal justice system by itself. The commonness of common sense makes it unattractive to those whose sense of themselves depends on feeling wiser and nobler than the common citizen.

Common sense will return only if we, the voting public, refuse to be dazzled by buzzwords, intimidated by experts, or misled by media images. But with our education system turning out floods of people unable to think and conditioned to respond to the politically correct rhetoric, there may not be enough people left who can think clearly enough to see through the pretenses. If so we already have passed the point of no return.

Duane Jacklin

Clovis