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While the debate goes on and on over the Homestead Tax Relief Grant, anxiety at the local level continues to rise. We are in some of the worst economic times in decades and the state wants to burden property owners with additional taxes.
Correct me if I am wrong, but does the state not have a $1.2 billion rainy day fund? Maybe I missed something; did it get spent already? Why does the state not use that to fund the HTRG? Better yet, cut some of the pork from the DOT budget until they get their act together and quit squandering taxpayer dollars.
I recently wrote an article in favor of SPLOST VI; elimination of the HTRG will probably kill any hope of it passing. I know that I, in good conscience, could not vote for it while my family, friends and fellow taxpayers are made to suffer at the hands of the state.
Gary Entrekin
Gainesville
Democrats want to play by different rules
I hope Georgia's leaders in Congress will take appropriate action and fight this bogus stimulus bill. Shame on the Democrats for taking an economic travesty and used it to fast-forward pet projects that will not create jobs. Those issues must be taken up separately based on their own merits, not sneaked into a huge bill beyond our financial boundaries.
Republicans should be all over this, as the Obama honeymoon has been canceled by this economic witch hunt for billions of pork spending. Stall this porker and show Americans the stink that's in this massive bill.
Washington is destroying the American confidence in our system as we listened to the gloom and doom bundled this bill in the House with no time to really study and understand its complexities. Let's hope the Senate will be wiser.
President Obama has been forced to make excuses, just as he did during his campaign, for several Cabinet appointees who manipulated our tax system for personal gain. If we did anything close to what they've gotten away with, we'd be in jail and our money confiscated by the IRS. Instead we hear liberal-slanted news analysis, even from Democrat senators, as they take turns covering for each other, telling us it was an innocent mistake.
If the power brokers in Washington don't like to follow our tax structure for their personal taxes, why are they holding us hostage to this system? The Fair Tax system is the only way out of this mess. It would deliver more jobs, since more corporations would want to be here than overseas. Wouldn't it be nice to have your whole earnings in your paycheck and decide how you want to spend it?
Democrats have been playing the envy game for years for votes, but now they're making big business and their CEOs the bad guys, even as Congress makes its own stupid decisions. Now the White House is making decisions to cut CEO's payscale and perks with the companies our tax dollars have bailed out.
OK, let's hold Congress to the same standard and cut their pay when they go over budget. Better yet, create term limits so we don't have lifers with greedy powers and expensive perks.
It was government that got us in this mess by changing mortgage rules under Clinton. Now Obama is setting up more of the same with some of Clinton's people. How's Obama going to create "change for the better" when they're digging the same dirt?
Speaker Nancy Pelosi acts like a diva as she runs roughshod over the House with her far-left agenda. This is costing the taxpayers dearly, just as Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd ruined the housing industry and pocketed mortgage perks during the Clinton years.
Many Americans that have done right with their finances and mortgages. They should not be abused by others who used the system for a quick fix for home ownership or flip. Designer mortgages should have never been allowed, especially for those not credit-worthy.
All we can do is ask congressional leaders to be watchdogs and stand tall as they call others out over abuses. We need a strong voice for conservatism by protecting and preserving the rights our Founding Fathers delivered so long ago. Less government and smarter government is change I can believe in.
Jane Browder
Gainesville
Guevara was no hero, just a cowardly killer
As I read the editorial from Dr. Sean Herlihy on Ernesto "Che" Guevara, where he portrays him as a symbol of a selfless martyr, advocate of the poor and oppressed, I could not help myself from taking some time to express the reality that this man was a cold-blooded murderer and torturer who inspired terrorism and bloodshed throughout Latin America.
It is obvious that Dr. Herlihy's knowledge is influenced by books such as "The Motorcycle Diaries," which was edited and published by the bureau of a totalitarian regime. It included a foreword written by Fidel Castro and biographies by well-known Communist Party members with Castro's full cooperation.
Che's first assignment in the revolution was to oversee the trials of the political prisoners. Here he proved to be a henchman and a bloodthirsty executioner who took the lives of hundreds of political prisoners without the benefit of a judicial process. Che himself boasted that "he executed from a revolutionary conviction rather than from a judicial conviction."
Che's second assignment was as economic minister, and within a year, a nation that had a higher per capita income than Austria, Japan and Spain and a high influx of immigrants was rationing food, closing factories and losing thousands of its most productive workers from every sector of the society. All this was happening under the direction of a man attributed with "vast competence and high intelligence."
As to the quote from Mr. Sartre referred by Dr. Herlihy in his editorial, who called Che "not only an intellectual, but also the most complete human being of our age," under his direct order, 3000 books were stolen from a private library, set ablaze in a busy Havana street with death warrants for the authors because they were exposing the communist ideas of the regime.
After his failures during a military campaign in the Congo, he fled back to Cuba, where he fell out of grace with the Castro brothers and Russia. Because of this, he decided to leave Cuba and start a guerrilla campaign in Bolivia, where he failed to get any significant support. He surrendered with a full clip in his pistol, yelling, "Don't shoot, I am Che; I am worth more to you alive than dead," showing again his lack of courage.
I would recommend Dr. Herlihy to meet with relatives of political prisoners suffering in Cuban prisons, and thousands of exiles from all sectors of the society who fled their homeland. They left everything behind and took rafts through shark-infested waters to escape the oppression and terror of the Castro regime. He would learn that Che was a bloodthirsty executioner, a military blunderer, a coward and a hypocrite.
I would also like to recommend to Dr. Herlihy to read the book, "Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the useful idiots who idolize him" authored by Humberto Fontova with many eyewitness accounts of Che Guevara's cruelty, cowardice and imbecility.
These eyewitness accounts include interviews with men and women that fought by Che's side against Batista because, at that time, they believed in him and were willing to give their lives for a free Cuba.
Gus Menocal
Gainesville