With breathtaking sophistry and obfuscation, the Jan. 2 letter “House ‘of the people’ ” does its best to rationalize an imaginary link between the intent of the framers of the Constitution to the “unfunded liabilities of the entitlement programs.” As most thinking people can figure out, that dog don’t hunt.
According to the implied argument, the framers somehow intended the House of Representatives to be more equal than other branches of the federal government. In this view, retaining the House with a smaller majority was “quite significant,” but the fact that President Obama was re-elected and the Senate increased its Democratic majority deserves only an “even though.”
To refresh the writer’s memory, the framers created three equal branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. Of those, the legislative function was divided between the House and Senate.
The purpose of dividing these branches and creating differing methods of selecting their membership was to encourage the forging of compromise and consensus.
Unfortunately, the terms “compromise” and “consensus” are completely alien to House Republicans, especially the members of the so-called “tea party.”
For the most recent of many examples, note the inability of House Republicans to allow timely funding for Superstorm Sandy relief and not letting the Violence Against Women Act to come up for reauthorization.
Lastly, can we all please quit ascribing the intentions of the framers to today’s political issues?
As Ulysses S. Grant observed in his Personal Memoirs, written almost a century after the Constitutional Convention: “The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.”
Greg Brozeit
Fairlawn
Fiscal fall
Mayor Don Plusquellic put Akron onto a fiscal cliff a long time ago. My children, all but one, do not live in Akron. They are fortunate.
The lone Akronite will have a tough time. But, he will have a nice golf course (Mud Run) to play if he can afford the green fee.
His kids will have a nice field on which to play soccer. His kids will also have nice new school buildings in which they can learn how to pay taxes. He can go downtown (who goes downtown anymore?) and walk around on nice brick sidewalks among the trees.
And Plusquellic will have retired.
Robert M. Kraus
Akron
Bad aim
The National Rifle Association’s answer to mass murder in our schools is to place armed guards in all schools. Where next, hospitals, shopping malls, theaters and theme parks?
This could be endless.
What the NRA did not say was where the money to pay for this would come from.
Why not place a special tax on all gun and ammunition purchases equal to the cost of paying for all this extra security? Of course, the simplest answer would be to ban all assault weapons and clips holding more than six rounds.
John Royer
Norton
