Author Has Problems With Letter from Post

To The Editor:
The last time I wrote was three years ago, warning that if Obama were elected, he would take this coun-try on a forced march down the road to socialism. How is it going so far?
A Sept. 28 letter by Robert Post personifies the very ignorance he alleges against the editor. First, the stimulus Bill was not diluted by Republicans; it was diluted by Obama who used the proceeds to replen-ish state budgets to keep state government workers employed and the union dues coffers stuffed for transfer back to Democratic politicians as campaign contributions. The “shovel ready” jobs which the funds were supposed to be used for were “not as shovel ready as we thought” according to Obama. Further, about $200 billion of the Stimulus remains unspent and under the control of the Obama Ad-ministration. If the economy is to be “stimulated” by Keynesian spending, then Obama ain’t doing much stimulatin.’
Secondly, Post completely ignores the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Remember that one? No? Well, Jimmy Carter thought the banks were “redlin-ing,” i.e., not lending to inner city residents who lived inside an imaginary red line. The black com-munity jumped on that and claimed racism when in fact it was a decision to not lend money to people who had no way of ever paying it back. Then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created and Clinton pushed for and got a re-write of the regulations. All that resulted in banks being required to change their lending portfolios to include at least a 50 percent lending ratio of low-income borrowers. Under the new criteria, food stamps and child support had to be counted as income, as opposed to a real job with a weekly paycheck. If the banks complained, they were threatened with audits by the Treasury Department. If that did not do it, then Obama would repeat his community organizer activities and have Service Employees International Union picket the local bank branch. None of this is made up.
Deduction applies only to millionaires or billion-aires. The stimulus bill did not cut anyone’s taxes; instead, it continued the tax rates that had been in existence for the last 11 years. And as for “most economists agree that absent the stimulus, the econ-omy would be even worse…,” Post must be referring to Paul Krugman, the thoroughly discredited econo-mist from the New York Times.
We will be free of the current economic disaster when Obamacare, Todd-Frank, the czars, and the spending addictions of the current administration are repealed, fired and ended, and we all know how to accomplish that.
WILLIAM C. O’BRIEN
Palmyra