Welcome to HickoryRecord.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

HickoryRecord.com - Hickory Daily Record

HomeNewsEntertainmentSportsLifestylesOpinionCommunityWeather Online Tools Jobs | Real Estate | Shopping | Classified

Too many pitfalls in health-care reform bill

Your Voice

Letters to the Editor

Published: October 14, 2009

The Congressional Budget Office has completed its analysis of the Senate Finance Committee's health care legislation proposal. It concludes that it would cost $89 billion and reduce the deficit by $81 billion more than 10 years. It sounds like good news until you look deeper.

The CBO makes the assumption that the feds will take the committee's word that the government can and will indeed cut the Medicare program by more than $400 billion. A few reminders are in order here.

First, the government has never effectively reduced waste and fraud in any program. Are we to believe they can do it now?

Second, since it is a virtual certainty that cuts won't be achieved through improved efficiency, how will President Obama keep his promise that the quality of Medicare services will improve while at the same time stripping the program of $400 billion?

Third, cuts in Medicare alone won't pay whole bill, so the other $400 billion is slated to come from tax increases put squarely on the backs of American families. Did Obama forget his campaign promise that 95 percent of Americans would not pay "one single dime more" in taxes?

Fourth, the cost projections of every entitlement program have been woefully understated. What evidence is there that these projections are any more accurate?

Fifth, the final bill will be 1,000 pages long, yet the Democrats have rejected a measure requiring that it must be available to the public 72 hours in advance of the actual vote. Shouldn't we demand that our elected officials read the bills on which they vote?

Every time the government takes over anything, it gets worse and our taxes go up. Demand that your representatives kill this oppressive legislation and start from scratch.

Tell them we will not accept having this rammed down our throats.

James McCall
Taylorsville

NAACP hurt credibility in lacrosse team case

In its editorial on the North Carolina NAACP convention in Hickory, the HDR states, "The NAACP has labored long and diligently to ensure equal rights and opportunity for all people" (Oct. 8).

"For all people?" The nature of an organization is sometimes discerned by its performance under extraordinary circumstances. Stuart Taylor is a contributing editor for Newsweek, a columnist for National Journal and co-author of "Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case." Taylor illustrates:

"What you would hope might come of a case like this (the Duke lacrosse case) is that the NAACP of North Carolina, for example, seeing what has happened to black people like the Scottsboro boys many times in the past ... what an opportunity to establish a coalition of people against abuse in the criminal justice process.

"Well, it didn't happen. The local NAACP and other local black leaders ... basically crusaded to attack the lacrosse players. They joined the mob. They misrepresented the truth regularly, repeatedly and grossly. They supported the rogue prosecutor long after he had been proved a rogue.

"They threw away the opportunity to build that cross-racial coalition, and they threw away whatever shreds were left of their own credibility." (Taylor in a BookTV.org presentation on "Until Proven Innocent," Sept. 11, 2007).

The N.C. NAACP's performance, to its credit, was not much worse than that of the New York Times and a large segment of the Duke faculty.

Tom Shuford
Lenoir