Letters to the Editor for Friday, September 4, 2009

Writer: Calls for civility are one-sided
I’m writing to voice my frustration with the talking points being directed at conservatism. The “civility” that is so often spoken of among liberal writers seems a little one-sided to me. Where were they when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was calling us “astroturf” or “mobsters wearing swastikas”? I don’t know about you, but I am neither and have yet to see any of them. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time that woman has lied to the American people.

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Nope, the only “astroturf” I saw were the supporters of the current health care bill, holding signs they had received from the table that the union people set up at the front door. They were the ones reading pre-printed talking points straight off the White House Web site. This was in stark contrast to the “unruly opposition mob” that had researched the issue, read the bill and could quote from specific chapters and pages.

What I and many others at these meetings are is a bunch of angry Americans who don’t like collectivism. We are fed up with the trampling of our rights that are guaranteed, not granted to us, in the U.S. Constitution. We are angry that our “representatives” don’t read the bills and likely have not read the Constitution in a long while, if ever, nor do they understand it.

I have attended both the Bedford and Campbell town hall meetings that Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Fifth District, held. It was like listening to a broken record.

In Bedford I even asked him where he and his fellow congressman get the authority to do the things such as “cap and trade,” because that authority is not found in the Constitution. His reply: “ The U.S. Supreme Court is the soul authority that gets to decide what the Constitution says. ... If people disagree with laws they have a legal recourse.” So I guess the congressman will give me the millions of dollars to fight for my rights? I’m not holding my breath.

Perriello is a shameful excuse for a representative. What is even worse is the fact that he only won by a few hundred votes. Shame on any conservative who didn’t turn up to vote that day.
KURT FEIGEL
Lynchburg

Canada’s not so great
We just visited Canada last month, and we need to share some very pertinent quotes from the paper in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The headline reads, “Canada deserves U.S. Criticism of Health System” and the article further states: “Canadians are funding the developed world’s second most expensive universal access health care system. With that level of expenditure, one might expect that Canadians receive world-class access to health care. The evidence finds this is not so. According to the available evidence, Canada’s waiting lists are also among the longest in the developed world. Canada now ranks a miserable 26th among 28 developed nations who maintain universal approaches to health insurance. And the decline is firmly set to continue. Medicare is failing Canadians.”

And here is some even greater evidence where socialized medicine takes us. Another article describes the progress that a set of quadruplet baby girls is making. They live in Calgary, Alberta, the heart of Canada’s oil province. But the article makes it very clear where they were delivered. It states, “Also their delivery in a Montana hospital — made necessary by a shortage of Canadian neonatal intensive care beds — made the baby girls the poster family for what critics say are flaws in Canada’s health care system.

Let me say it again, let us use our American ingenuity to come up with a better way to give health care to every U.S. citizen.
ESTHER POGGEMILLER
Lynchburg