Is it ‘demagoguery’?

Regarding Gordon Robinson’s Wednesday column, “Time to end demagoguery,” I hope that wherever he was in 2003, he then also strongly opposed and protested the “demagoguery” of President George W. Bush.

Bush’s Republican administration and its corporate puppet-masters squandered the surplus created under President Bill Clinton. They started an unnecessary war that has cost thousands of lives. They steadily steered this nation into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. 

President Barack Obama inherited this disgusting, indefensible, almost impossible situation, dating from the Reagan-era “trickle-down” debacle. Republicans are doing everything in their power to stall forward progress and to make the everyday citizens’ financial and domestic realities worse.

Michael Jones, Waco

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Gordon Robinson, president of Robinson Media — which owns the Tribune-Herald — called on President Barack Obama to quit “using demagoguery” in the debate over the federal deficit.

Physician, heal thyself.

Robinson blamed the president for “piling on more than $4 trillion in debt.” Yet even before Obama’s first day in office, the CBO projected a 2009 deficit of $1.2 trillion, and trillions more were projected for the years following.

It was brought on by a deep recession, two wars, a Medicare prescription drug benefit that was never paid for and huge tax cuts that weren’t matched by spending cuts — all in the previous eight years. Those massive costs are built into the federal budget for decades.

So Robinson says to “quit blaming Republicans” who were in charge during those years, but he’s quite happy to blame Obama, who wasn’t.

He does correctly note that entitlements make up a huge part of federal spending. Yet when Obama pushed for passage of health care reform, Republicans attacked him for $500 billion in cuts in Medicare spending and other measures designed to slow unsustainable cost growth in that program. They said he was trying to destroy Medicare. Now House Republicans have called for ending Medicare as we know it.

But Robinson says the president is trying to scare seniors who are rightfully worried about whether what the Republicans propose will leave them holding the bag for private insurance costs they can’t afford (if they can get coverage at all).

We all know how politics is played. Republicans blame Democrats, and Democrats blame Republicans for everything from deficits to seasonal allergies. But is it too much to ask that newspaper owners like Robinson not engage in the same kind of demagoguery they decry?

Dan Quinn, Waco

Texas wildfires

In regard to Gov. Rick Perry asking for disaster relief from the federal government for wildfires that are ongoing throughout Texas, perhaps the governor and all of the tea partiers who voted for him should be true to their cause and not ask for federal funds. The state of Texas should foot the bill.

Don’t we recall how they said that they do not want federal intervention in Texans’ affairs?

So let all Texans instead pay for the wildfires.

Clay Brown, Waco