How we arrived here

Dear Editor:This in response to the Letter to the Editor last week titled "Third World Country," in which the author blames our country's downfall on the Obama administration and turns a blind eye to what really began our descent into third-world status: the Bush administration made up "facts" to involve us in two wars costing over a trillion dollars and then borrowed all of the money (mostly from Communist China), which we now have to pay back; it sent airplanes stacked high with bundles of U.S. currency in large denominations to pass out in Iraq and then it couldn't account for $6 billion which it "lost" there. It gave overpriced, no-bid contracts to Vice President Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton to do all kinds of services for our military in Iraq. Then Halliburton, after being overpaid by U.S. taxpayers, decided it was not financially advantageous to be a U.S. company anymore and moved its headquarters to Dubai. The facts are that our country's descent into third-world status didn't start with President Obama, but much earlier, as seen in the near economic collapse of our financial system which happened months before Obama took office. According to Sen. Bernie Sanders, middle class family income in the U.S. declined $2,200 a year over the eight years of President George W. Bush; now the top 1% of richest Americans hold approximately 43% of the money in the U.S., and the top 1/10th of 1% earn 11% of all income. The richest 1% earn more than the bottom 50%. This kind of income disparity is seen in third-world countries. In eight years under President Bush, the Republicans ran the U.S. economy into the ground. They took a $270 billion operating surplus inherited from the Clinton administration and left us with a $1.3 trillion deficit and in the process quadrupled the national debt, all before the Democrats turned on the lights in the West Wing. Ms. Leuven complains about President Obama giving jobs away: Senate candidate Carly Fiorina should know about that. As head of Hewlett Packard, she sent 35,000 American jobs overseas and then bragged about sending them to India, China, etc. When Meg Whitman was head of eBay, she paid herself $120 million right before she laid off 10% of the workers there. It is easy to blame all our problems on those who are currently in office, but it is important to have a perspective on what has really been happening to our country and how we got where we are. -- Anita Rivero, Downey

********** Published: October 21, 2010 - Volume 9 - Issue 27