Letters To The Editor, Continued: Liberals Want Level Playing Fields

Liberals Want Level Playing Fields
Editor, Times-Dispatch: I object to Lee Rice's false and insulting description of liberals in his letter, "Liberals Love Utopia, Conservatives Reality." Rice claimed that liberals support Utopian and statist ideas. He said they are radical and "hold negative views of private enterprise, profit, and competition."

What baloney. Liberals are mainstream citizens who believe government -- through our elected representatives -- must at times be called upon to even the playing field and provide corrective measures when corporations and Wall Street bankers contrive to make our private enterprise system a plutocracy.

Liberals know that real economic competition provides economic efficiencies (lower prices) but they also know that corporate leaders and businessmen do whatever they can to keep prices high. They hate competition. The president, for example, wants a public option in the health care reform package precisely because big insurance companies would have to compete against this lower-priced program. This would bring prices down for everyone (of course many Republicans couldn't care less if people go without good health insurance). The liberal president, Barack Obama, is encouraging competition and is not advocating a government takeover of health care -- no matter what GOP fear-mongers like Rep. Eric Cantor say.

Liberals are mindful that large governmental bureaucratic organizations can screw things up, but they also know that corporate bureaucracies can be just as wasteful. Just ask someone who works for a large corporation. Liberals love America, are not radicals, and are committed to making our private-enterprise system work for every economic status. In the case of health care, the large insurance companies have taken control of the marketplace and, consequently, most of our citizens are being taken to the cleaners.

John Schuiteman.
Ashland.

Virginia is currently facing a $1.5 billion shortfall, which may grow over the coming months, and budget cuts include plans to lay off hundreds of state workers. At a time when the state is faced with eliminating jobs to balance the budget, decision-makers are wise to engage the National Academy to study an issue that could bring hundreds of well-paying jobs to a region that badly needs them. Southside Virginia (Danville, Martinsville, and Pittsylvania County in particular) have the state's highest unemployment numbers.

The National Academy of Sciences is an institution of Nobel laureates and our country's most esteemed academic and scientific experts. Their reputation is beyond reproach, and their research is conducted independently regardless of the source of funding. Virginians should welcome having the experts study the public health and environmental effects of uranium mining in Virginia, and trust that their findings will provide unbiased guidance to decisions of great importance to our energy future and our economy.

Heather Newcomb.
Lynchburg.

He has insulted our closest ally, Great Britain, by sending back a historically important bust of Winston Churchill that was given to us in empathy for our loss on 9/11. He gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod with his speeches on it (hubris, anyone?). He interfered in the internal affairs of our only Middle Eastern ally, Israel.

And now he is trying to reinstall a would-be leftist dictator in Honduras who was ousted for breaking constitutional law in that country. Obama has sawed off the limb that our Eastern European allies Poland and Czechoslovakia went out on for us by abrogating a deal to give them a missile defense system. He has apologized with profuse mea culpas on behalf of the U.S. for wrongs -- real and imagined -- to such countries as France, Germany, Russia, Egypt, and Iran. Many of those countries' entire histories are rife with genocide and greed. He will not talk to those who disagree with him in his own country, yet he grins and hugs Hugo Chavez and eagerly awaits a chance to speak with the megalomaniacal president of Iran. He gives obeisance to a Saudi King whose country is rife with human trafficking and who winks at slavery and terrorism committed by his own citizens.

And he wonders why people like me neither understand him nor have any trust in his programs for us.

Glenn Russell.
Aylett.

What does he have to say about President Barack Obama's latest radical czar who recently resigned, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom the president associated himself with? Does Kaine have any comment?

John Brown.
Sandston.