[Vision2020] Walt Minnick

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Thursday 27 August 2009 07:43:23 Wayne Price wrote:
> Rose,
>
> I think your [sic] right about Walt Minnick being a "one term Charlie".

Possibly, but let's not give up the idea of re-electability before it has been 
thoroughly tested with the best effort possible.

> I am a Democrat, and find his stand now that he is elected to be very
> disturbing. He HAS lost the liberal Democrat vote and I can only hope
> that the party will find a DEMOCRAT to run against him, or the only
> choice voters will have is between a Republican that says he/she is a
> Republican, or someone that claims to be a Democrat but isnt!  "He is,
> in his own words a Democrat by default."

Personally, I give more than a tinker's damn for the sanctity of the will of 
the Idaho's First District electorate, and until it demonstrates some clearly 
more pronounced tendencies toward electing an actual red-blooded liberal, I 
will prefer to elect a Democrat with blue dog blood rather than some generic 
Republican whose circulatory system's contents are undetermined.

> I loved how he is against the health care bill because it will cost
> too much money, but he could support 600,000 +  people getting
> government subsidies for new cars!  Just what we need in an economic
> down turn, more people in debt!

Those people who are signing those loan papers get the use of a new vehicle, 
and those auto companies get a new leases on corporate life. This alternative 
to their corporate deaths is preferable to the economic domino collapse of 
the secondary and tertiary suppliers to the primary automobile manufacturers, 
and to the national economic stagnation that could easily result therefrom.

> He could support 3 billion dollars of additional money that will go to the  
> auto industry, but where is his support of the National Guard and Reserve  
> retirement program? For veterans, no money, for the auto industry there is 
> plenty!

The auto industry bailout is smaller than the cost of veterans' retirement and 
health care costs by at least an order of magnitude. Over the entire lives of 
today's veterans and soldiers in service, the difference may be two orders of 
magnitude, amounting to more than a trillion dollars in total dollar outlays. 
Stop and think about that for a minute. Over a trillion dollars for veterans' 
benefits -- that's a lot of money -- and it's just one portion of national 
entitlement commitments.

This nation has sobering economic challenges ahead, and we need to elect 
people who are willing and able to meet these challenges responsibly, not 
just add to them because the voting buttons for Yea or Nay are on their desk.


Ken