Ray Lehman and Garrett Fagan write that a Jan. 14 Republican debate showed the difference between the two major parties.
To the Editor:
The red, white, and blue "Greed Over People" clown car emptied out on a stage in South Carolina at the Jan. 14 Republican presidential debate.
Unsurprisingly, the Fox Business Network moderators, Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo, brought not policy questions, but trays and trays of ammunition for the food fight. It was like passing a car wreck on the highway: You just had to look.
The food fight was entertaining. Fortunately, we already knew the differences between the two major parties.
One party offers policies -- not all of which will align with your own ideals -- that have a track record of delivering prosperity to a majority of Americans. Its policies increase employment and reduce deficits. It is committed to addressing climate change and, if it had its way, delivering health insurance to all Americans.
This party runs debates in which candidates discuss real issues in an adult fashion. It believes in diplomacy abroad, but is willing to use force when necessary. Just ask the late Osama bin Laden or the 5,000-plus victims of drone bombing in Pakistan.
The other party is unhinged from reality. It operates in an ideological fantasy land of its own creation. Its policies have a track record of fiscal disaster, not the least of which was the Great Recession of 2008.
Under this party's regimen, fewer jobs are created, fiscal inequality and deficits soar, and access to health care is denied to millions. Wars abroad proliferate, and our allies are insulted to their faces. Climate change is denied as a hoax. Its debates, like the Jan. 14 one, are a farce of mean-spirited, insulting sound bites.
If anyone can watch these pathetic excuses for debates and be on the fence about which party to vote for, your infatuation with mindless entertainment clouds your judgment.
Roy Lehman
and Garrett Fagan
Woolwich Township
Tariffs better than minimum wage to lift incomes
To the Editor:
Centrist Republicans and liberal Democrats are forced to recognize to their own grief that people are beginning to turn away from party leaders and are turning toward populist movements.
It was the owners of the means of production and their politicians who enacted trade and immigration policies that have caused a surplus of workers and a scarcity of jobs. This hurts American workers in their negotiations with employers.
I condemn Republican employers who are devoid of idealism and know only their own despicable greed. But, it's how liberal Democrats turned their back on their fellow American workers that I find unforgivable. Remember, it was Bill Clinton who signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and the trade deal with China in 1999.
Now, Hillary Clinton, who is bought and paid for by Wall Street, goes about the country posturing herself as a social justice warrior fighting oppression. After going along with the globalization of American economic life -- which has rejected the American worker -- she'll talk much about income inequality and the minimum wage.
What hypocrisy it is to have allowed all so much low-skilled foreign labor into the United States, and then to present raising the minimum wage as the centerpiece of a solution to economic inequality.
I do not agree that raising the minimum wage will solve this problem. Rather, we need to raise import tariffs and get rid of illegal foreign labor. And if a politician is not advocating this, the politician is not genuine in his or her defense of the working class.
I support Donald Trump for president. I also I dream of the day when the American worker regains power in negotiations with employers.
Lee Lucas
Gibbstown
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