ABQjournal Opinion: Letters to the Editor
Government and Bridge Failed State Full of Deficient Bridges

AMERICA HAS built more transportation infrastructure per capita and per unit of gross domestic product than any other member of the G8. We may not be capable of maintaining it all, because we are enthralled by the mantra of “low taxes.” We are paying the price in lives lost at home and in Iraq. …

This is the cost of the success of Republican adviser Grover Norquist— famous for his widely-quoted comment that he would shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”— and let America fall apart. [mjh: I hope Norquist drowns in his own violent metaphor someday.]

That’s what the Republicans have done ever since Ronald Reagan was elected and Norquist founded the misleading “Americans for Tax Reform” (for the rich). Now we pay the price. Highways fail. People die. A Republican governor and president prove again they don’t know how to run and sustain a country, a war and a highway system. Remember how we haven’t recovered from Katrina, yet?

We can’t keep cutting taxes and expect success. We are a great country and we need to pay the real cost to keep it great— and fight our wars. That means we pay taxes today. We do not borrow against our children and we do not let America fall apart.

JOHN HOOKER
Los Ranchos
de Albuquerque

Amen. The penny-pincher’s credo is: “You’ll get my fair contribution to the commonwealth when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers — until we eliminate Death Taxes!”

The fair-and-balanced Journal, mindful of the accusations of its liberal leanings — pause to snort, howl, laugh, wipe tear from eye — answered Hooker’s thoughtful letter with another:

Can’t Pin Collapse on Bush

… Don’t these whiny Democrats have anything better to come up with? The liberal politicians in Washington don’t know how to lead, so they shift the blame of everything that goes wrong in this country over to conservatives. That is dishonest and disingenuous on the part of Democratic politicians. …

KIM BERGET
Albuquerque

Once again, I have to wonder if the conservative view isn’t really some bad joke from liberals attempting to make conservatism appear brain-dead. But, no, they really believe what they think.

Shall we ignore that Republicans ruled the land from 2000 to 2006 and 1980 to 1992 before that? (And acted like a guerrilla army in the years between.) Hasn’t the “conservative view” been very thoroughly tested and discredited? Had enough yet? mjh