FLAIT

I wrote this Letter to the Editor. It was published in the newspaper but heavily edited. Not only were sentences removed, but changed. Here it is, as I wrote it, in its entirety.

According to conservatives, the solution to every problem the country is facing is always the same: "less government" and "lower taxes". But if look behind that rhetoric you'll see that it has a horrible record. For instance, with little government intrusion over the last 70 years, the "free market" not only created a heath care system that's the most asinine in the world, and designed to fail - except for the highly profitable and powerful insurance industry that controls and manages it - but so expensive that it's bankrupting families and government at all levels.

If tax cuts created more jobs and led to a robust economy, then George Bush's eight years would have been the best economic times in history. But they weren't; in fact, they were dismal. The best economic times we had was after Bill Clinton raised taxes, which the right said would cause the economic sky to fall in.

In 1998 the banking, investment banking and insurance industries were deregulated* for "competition" reasons while Wall Street's risky, secretive and extremely complicated derivative markets (collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps) went unregulated. And ten years later the global economy was brought to its knees. And we don't have to look any further then the coal mines in West Virginia and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to see what happens when you allow "the industry to police itself".

Instead of one side trying to win an argument with ignorant and redundant talking points, it's about time America had mature, responsible and intelligent discussions on all the complicated issues we face today. Because as history has proven, "less government" and "lower taxes" - as well as more God and more guns - are definitely not the answer; unless of course your objective is to turn the country back to the 18th century.

* It should be pointed out that Democrats overwhelmingly supported the deregulation and Bill Clinton signed the legislation. So both parties have their fingerprints all over the biggest theft of the U.S. Treasury in the country's history.