Dobbs is wrong <i>again</i>

Date: 3/7/2011

In The Reminder of February 28th, Editor Mike Dobbs has again posed a series of pointed questions to the conservatives in his readership.

His first question is how in a time of budget deficits can the military justify $7 million of defense budget funds going to NASCAR? Even a quick review of the issue would show that the U.S Army has analyzed that it can attract recruits from young conservative people and their parents by advertising and sponsoring a NASCAR driver. Recruits are key to the security of our nation. The Reminder relies heavily on advertising itself and so should understand the value of this use of funds. Of course, if one disdains the military, one might disagree.

A second question asks why Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's union bargaining bill would risk losing $10 million in federal transportation funding. But Mr. Dobbs answers his own question when he writes that efforts are underway to correct the bill to avoid this result. Many initial bills have errors. Have we forgotten that ObamaCare has been amended and amended and amended to remove errors and unforeseen effects and that he has granted hundreds of "waivers" to its more harmful provisions?

A third question asks why Tea Party members don't seem to be interested in how state pension funds were lost, and if they are "truly about questioning the role of government."

Mr. Dobbs goes on to accuse certain pension fund managers of "gambling away" some states' money and asks why his "conservative friends wouldn't call for the prosecution of people who drained these accounts for their personal gain?"

Mr. Dobbs offers no evidence to support that Tea Partiers are uninterested in the loss of pension funds; the accusation makes no sense. No one can deny that a few bad-apple fund managers did take unreasonable risks with state pension money, but it is actually more likely that most of the managers did their job appropriately. The only thing they did wrong was to fail to foresee how the actions of the federal government and its controlled entities Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac would bring down the entire market, and then the economy. Far from "draining these accounts for their personal gain," most of these financial pro-fessionals watched in horror as the market was driven down 50 percent by the errors and actions of government, and it cost many of them their jobs.

Which brings us back to the Tea Partiers, who seem to have a much better understanding than liberals about the role of government in this disaster. Tea Partiers have urged that Bernanke, Paulsen, Dodd, Frank, and others be brought to justice for their part in this crime, but that is not happening. Instead, unsupported slanders are directed at all fund managers in general, painting them all with the same brush. This is neither fair nor accurate.

You might wonder why anyone would ask these questions if the answers seem so obvious. I would suggest that what a person reads, and what s/he listens to, helps form that person's world view. Liberals would certainly accuse conservatives of having a skewed world view if they rely exclusively on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for their news. But it works the same way on the liberal side anyone who relies exclusively on the Huffington Post, MoveOn.org, Media Matters and other self-admitted left-wing rags for their "news" and information must actively balance this stream of garbage with some conservative input if they want a balanced world view.

Pat Henry

East Longmeadow