As to your editorial on Friday, Sept. 4, I think it's easier to swallow your editorial lies of the Bush administration than it is your fawning over "Obama the socialist." Intelligence, knowledge and literacy? Please. Have you ever heard him speak without a teleprompter? Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah. No!
You would have us believe that health care is a right. The way our Constitution's framers used the term, a right is something that exists simultaneously among people. The right to free speech is something we all simultaneously possess. My exercising my right to speech requires absolutely nothing from you and in no way diminishes any of your rights. Contrast that vision of a right to so-called rights to medical care, independent of whether a person can pay. So-called rights to medical care impose an obligation on some other American who, through the tax code, must be denied his right to his earnings. In other words, when Congress gives one American a right to something he didn't earn, it takes away the right of another American to something he did earn. Two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft. When government does it, we call it income redistribution, not a right.
It also didn't escape me your use of "thoughtful Americans" to describe those in favor of government health care, and "misinformed voters" for those against. I question who is misinformed. Our government already provides two medical coverage programs: Medicare (for senior citizens) and Medicaid (for low-income citizens). The president mentioned in his speech in July that those two programs are the greatest contributors to our skyrocketing deficit. Is that successful? So why not reform those programs rather than create a third government medical bureaucracy called "universal healthcare"? Why not regulate private health insurance? And, why not initiate tort reform?
Count me among the "fearmongers." I've watched this president, in eight months, double the deficit it took George Bush eight years to accumulate. Where is your concern? Where is your outrage?
Steven Mantey
Hailey
