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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 2/28/09

Please tell us the truth my dear Republican citizens

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Excuse me for saying the obvious to the Republicans:


This is just a short note to those who are screaming about the size of the deficit and the size of the new budget and all things fiscal.

You all are suffering from a severe form of short term memory loss or you are purposely dissembling to all. This new budget, unlike the ones submitted by the previous Republican administration that you ratified, takes into account the money spent in unnecessary wars that had been excluded from the previous budgets in the attempt to lie and dissemble to the American people about what these travesties truly were costing all of us.

At some point there just has to be an end to the ways in which the spin takes hold and hides the truth. I, for one, have had enough of it. I sit and listen to the constant lies and half-truths and partial information and know that most people are not aware of these tactics and how they are destroying any possibility of real bipartisan work on our nation’s toughest problems. I mean how do you conduct a conversation with someone who is not either telling the truth or is not telling the whole story.

I cannot abide this much longer and am going to be writing letters of complaint to all such dissemblers whenever I can because the damage they create is substantial and the end of it will mean a much better run government. I hope others will also take the time to write to these people who would rather lie and tell half-truths (and that means the Democrats as well as the Republicans) than deal with the reality of our worst and most unnerving crisis in most of our lifetimes.

I think Governor Jindall received his comeuppance when he was so deceitful and dishonest as he gave his response to President Obama’s not-yet State of Union address on Tuesday night. He rightfully was called for his twists of the truth and outright fabrications. When we all put aside the sense of power grabbing and deal with what is right in front of us, we will all benefit.

I, for one, would love to hear a real conservative argument against the plans the Obama administration has laid out. But I do not hear that. I hear this screaming about him being irresponsible (or not a citizen or some kind of racist attack) but not what would be a responsible way to deal with this crisis. If the only real solution the Republicans see is to  lower taxes to the rich, if that is their solution, I am willing to listen. I would like real evidence as to how this will work. I want to see that it has worked somewhere. I want job figures and growth in productivity. I want to see them show me the ways in which allowing the rich to hang onto more of their money while asking the rest of us to pay our taxes has helped the government to meet our needs. This would be a very helpful discussion and would help them to form their own arguments in as transparent and honest a way possible.

Yet what I hear more often than not is the constant ad hominem attacks, the bellicose gesturing about the deficit as if they had not been raising that level for years now and no other concrete and truthful responses to what this country is in desperate need of.

This is my call to all. Please let the Republicans come forward with an honest response to the crisis we face. Please let them prove to those of us who are interested why tax cuts work and how they would implement them. Let them use facts and figures we can verify and let us who want this bipartisan response to go forward be included in your discussions.

It would be a really good thing for this country if we could disentangle the right wing from their entitled feelings that they must be correct in their perceptions and to allow for a reasonable discussion of these issues. At the end of this crisis, if it ends soon enough for us to remember these trench warfare tactics, we, as a nation, will hold accountable those who helped and those who failed to help. We will do that in the voting booth as well as in our hearts. Splitting the country even further apart does none of us any good.
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Deborah Emin is the founder of the publishing company, Sullivan Street Press (www.sullivanstreetpress.com). She is also the impressario of the Itinerant Book Show as well as the program director of the REZ Reading Series in Kew Gardens, NY. Her (more...)
 
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