Thanks, firefighters

To the editor:

I just wanted to give a thank you to all the volunteer fireman in Haywood County. They go highly unnoticed for the work they do. Most have full time jobs, families and yet they give what little free time they have to serve the needs of their communities.

They also have to go before board members of their local departments and beg for money to purchase equipment they need to perform their duties.They should not have to beg for money in order to purchase necessary equipment to keep them safe and help us in our time of need.

The people of Haywood County owe you a huge “thank you.”

Mike Moody

Lake Junaluska

Need leadership change

To the editor:

Barrack Obama says he needs four more years to complete what he started.  Well, four years ago he said he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.  He increased it by 50 percent.

He said the unemployment rate would not go above 8 percent if his stimulus was passed. He promised that the unemployment rate would now be 5.6 percent. It is now 8.1 percent. After his election he passed the stimulus and the unemployment rate climbed steadily and reached 10 percent in October 2009. It hasn’t been below 8.1 percent during his term in office let alone drop to 5.6 percent.

He railroaded a healthcare bill through Congress that was supposed to cut health care costs.  It has already increased healthcare costs and stands to increase costs significantly more. His party controlled the White House, Senate and House of Representatives for the first two years he was in office.

He should have been able to pass anything he wanted.  The Democratic Party controlled Congress would not even pass his budget. He is yet to have a budget passed. During his term in office gasoline prices have doubled.

His answer to the energy crisis is to disapprove the pipeline from Canada and reduce the number of approved oil drilling permits. The nation’s economy is in deep trouble.  Obama has exploded our national debt. The economic recovery is worse than the recovery after the Great Depression.

He complains about how bad this recession was and claims he hasn’t had time to fix it. The Great Depression was worse than this recession and Roosevelt had a much better recovery. Reagan inherited a bad economy and had a robust recovery in his first term. Obama made a lot of promises about how he would improve the economy.  He just did not live up to them. His problem is not that he didn’t have enough time, his problem is that his policies are wrong. This is the worse economic recovery in history and four more years of Obama’s policies are not the answer to fix it.

W. C. Courtney

Cruso

Issues should not be oversimplified

To the editor:

Sometimes, letters are telling.  A recent letter expresses the author’s fixation with Big Man/Little Man syndrome.

He is obviously unable to think outside his box.  How sad.  That’s what’s wrong with the country now.  Everyone on his side is good; everyone on the other is evil.  Haves vs. have-nots has that writer bound to proceed without caution as we become increasingly polarized.

There is a great difference between simplicity and simplistic.  It would simplify the electoral process if people would take a critical approach and examine actions as well as words; it is simplistic to think that pulling the same lever for forty years will solve anything.  Comparing the major political parties, we can readily see that each has little resemblance to its former ‘self.’ Where is Harry Truman when you need him?  … Ronald Reagan?  Both parties are capable of choosing good and bad men, and it behooves the electorate (us) to ‘take the pig out of the poke and examine it.’  If we are not willing to do that, we get what we deserve … and that we have.

As for me and my house: we will pray to God for wisdom and guidance; it is impossible that satisfaction will come without these.  Like many others, I am tempted to ‘go the party line,’ but I know from where temptation comes.

David A. Williams

Waynesville

Ryan record criticized

To the editor:

The congressional district of Republican VP nominee Paul Ryan in southern Wisconsin is a familiar area to me. I once belonged to a church there, and two of my kids went to college there.

During the 12 years Ryan has been their representative, the district has lost thousands of family-sustaining jobs. Delco in Oak Creek shut down at a cost of 3,800 jobs. Chrysler in Kenosha had 850 jobs sent to Mexico. General Motors in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville eliminated 2,800 jobs with its pre-Christmas 2008 plant closing, while it kept open a low-wage plant in Mexico. This shutdown wiped out another 3,000 jobs in nearby supplier plants.

The three major industrial counties in Ryan’s district have endured devastating manufacturing job losses since 2000, with Kenosha County losing 30 percent, Racine County 33 percent, and Rock County, where Janesville is located, an astonishing 54 percent.

The effects of Ryan’s policies, and the resulting high unemployment and economic wreckage, have been accompanied by rising signs of social disintegration and distress: Foreclosures in Rock County have quadrupled since 2000, when Ryan first took office.

The GM shutdown in Janesville created such a surplus of workers begging for jobs that the average wage fell from $23.27 in 2007 to $18.82 in 2010. The city has been afflicted by a major increase in child abuse and neglect, its rate of child poverty has nearly doubled to 47.1 percent, and the suicide rate has also nearly doubled.

Yet Ryan has remained oblivious to this massive suffering. He has voted for cuts to the government protections and the social safety net needed by families in his district trying to hold onto their cars, homes, and dignity. At the same time he advocates bailouts to big banks and corporations and tax cuts for the wealthy, while declaring: “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that ends up lulling people into dependency and complacency.”

Now the Republicans want to put Ryan in a position where he can extend the devastation in his home district to our whole country.

I say, “no way.”

Doug Wingeier

Waynesville

There was a stump speech for the democrat party in the Mountaineer on October 1st 2012, Monday’s paper.  The point being that the democrats are here to solve problems and if those pesky Republicans would just leave them alone, all would be well.  I guess the gentleman who wrote the letter moved here from out of state.  I say this cause if he were from here, he would know that democrats have controlled North Carolina politics for 200 years.  Look how good were doing.

Sincerely,

Lisa Jambon

42 Brown Street

Clyde, NC 28721

To the Editor:

Supported by Florida native Mark Meadows, the Paul Ryan budget passed this May in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and described by Mitt Romney as “marvelous” raises taxes on the middle class.  The Ryan budget cuts the top federal tax rate from 35% to 25% and extends the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, but does not extend the Obama tax cuts for those with the lowest incomes which will expire at the same time.  Households making more than $1 million per year could see a net tax cut of about $300,000 annually while those making $30,000 or less would see tax increases.  The Ryan budget also cuts or eliminates middle-class tax deductions like mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and health premiums.

The source of this information is the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.  The Tax Policy Center also examined Mitt Romney’s tax plan and concluded, “Any revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed would provide large tax cuts to high-income households and increase the tax burdens on middle-and/or lower-income taxpayers.”

The Meadows-Romney-Ryan extreme budget would end Medicare as we know it, turning it into a voucher program which would increase seniors’ health costs by $6,350 a year.  The Ryan budget also privatizes Social Security, subjecting seniors’ retirement security to the whims of the stock market.

All House Democrats voted against the Ryan budget, and it was never considered in the Democratic-controlled Senate.  Western North Carolina native Hayden Rogers, Mark Meadows’ opponent for Congress, does not support the Meadows-Romney-Ryan plan.  Check out his stand on the issues at www.haydenrogersforcongress.com.

Carole Larivee

Waynesville