Republicans

dug us a big hole

I am just about convinced that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Bush have a file cabinet labeled National Dirty Tricks that is causing my paranoia to blossom like a field of tulips.

Read this: “The panic of 1893 turned the State of Washington’s economy upside down. The turmoil resulted from the disastrous fiscal actions of Republican-led Congress under President Benjamin Harrison, which whittled away a $100 million treasury surplus, primarily through what writer J. Kingston Pierce called ‘enrichment programs for the wealthy industrialist’.”

Sound familiar? Read on: “That, coupled with the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, led to rampant inflation that hit the west particularly hard. The first sign of trouble appeared in Anacortes, Wash., in July 1893, when banker John Platt hung a notice on his bank’s front door. It stated his Bank of Anacortes had ‘closed its doors and was . . . suspending payment owing to the stringency of the money market’.” (From “First Views, A History of Skagit County, 1850-1899, page 97.)

Republicans have dug a deep hole of debt that swallowed up a healthy surplus and is now eating away at the very solidarity of our economy. Didn’t former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan use the “R” word recently to confirm that we are, indeed, in a recession? The GOP has almost brought the United States to its knees.

The Democrats better wake up and get moving, in lock-step, if they are going to salvage the country’s housing economy, military might, education, manufacturing industry, transportation and highway programs. It took a decade to recover back in 1899. That’s half a lifetime for a child! What do you want for your children?

Carol Byng

Coupeville