If you let the conservative media educate you, you won't be uninformed, you'll be disinformed. You'll believe the exact opposite of what is true.
A good example is the recent mailings I received warning seniors that Obama is out to cut Medicare. The facts are: Medicare is a Liberal Democratic program created under President Lyndon Johnson as the landmark, along with Medicaid, of his "Great Society" legislation. Conservatives have always hated this legislation, called it socialist, and sought to undermine it - but not publicly because it's far too popular. In 1982 Republican Ronald Reagan wrote famously in his diary "... I'm trying to undo The Great Society." Specifically he meant Medicare and Medicaid. Conservatives have been working at it ever since and Paul Ryan's voucher plan would allow them to ultimately cut it to shreds.
The Republicans are not the friends of those in need. If you have any doubt about that, find Mitt Romney's recent convention speech on U-Tube. At the end he makes the statement: "... America will care for the poor and the sick, will honor and respect the elderly." Until then the crowd had been cheering wildly, suddenly they are dead silent.
Romney's formula for retirement was to slam $25 million into a Cayman Island's tax dodge. If you're in a position to do the same, you should vote for him. Otherwise you should vote for the party that actually supports the middle class. When the great depression hit in 1929 a Republican, Herbert Hoover, was president. Like Romney, he thought the rich should get theirs first. Unemployment grew to 25 percent. The Good Generation threw Hoover out and elected liberal democrat Franklin Roosevelt, 16 years in a row. That resulted in the strongest middle class, economically, in the history of the world with an unemployment rate of 1.5 percent.
But, no president ever inherited a debt like Obama did. When Reagan came to office in 1980 it was under a trillion dollars; by the time he and the two Bushes got done, in 2008, it was $10 trillion. What Obama did to keep us afloat is remarkable. Anybody who thinks Romney is going to help the middle class more, doesn't understand history.
Phillip Washburn
Marietta
