Dear Mr. Giede, I am writing in response to your column of Feb. 3, in which you labelled Obama's presidency an abysmal failure.
While I respect your opinions on a number of issues (most recently, your suggestions for improving Prince George), you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are staggeringly ill-informed about what is going on with our cousins to the south.
I am writing to straighten the record for readers who may have been misled by your column, and to encourage you to inform yourself from sources other than Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
Taking your points in order: far from making healthcare more expensive, the ACA (aka Obamacare) has dramatically reduced the huge inflation in health care costs that the U.S. has been used to, while costing less than $5,000 per person enrolled. And let's remember that the 15 million or so previously uninsured Americans would be a far larger number if Republican governors had not prevented their own citizens from obtaining insurance.
You state that "wasteful spending on green tech has failed to create growth." I imagine you are referring to the government program that loaned money to Solyndra, which subsequently went bankrupt.
But consider,that loans program had earned the government $6 billion by 2014 and had helped such successes as Tesla Motors.
More people in the U.S. are now employed in the solar industry than in the coal industry.
More generally on creating growth, the U.S. has created more jobs under Obama than under both Bushes combined and the unemployment rate is now nearly back to where it was before G.W. Bush wrecked the U.S. economy.
Obama has had other notable successes, including allowing gays to serve in the military, preventing insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, rescuing the U.S. automobile industry, avoiding austerity and the consequent double-dip recession and reducing carbon emissions.
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
One of Bush's minions famously said that Republicans don't care about facts because they make their own reality.
I invite you to rejoin the world that the rest of us live in and inform yourself of what is actually going on down south.
Stephen Rader
Prince George
