Las Vegas Sun

June 4, 2012

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Criticism of the government off mark

Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.

It is time Democrats dare to be Democrats and stand up for what they believe in instead of caving in to the Republican mantra that government is a problem. The government is not a problem; it wasn’t true when Reagan said it, and it is not true now.

Because of the government we have schools for our children; we have roads, fire departments, police, armed forces and Social Security. Would you like to live in a society without these services?

These services cost money; that is why we pay taxes. The taxes in this country are ridiculously low compared with Europe, and still we complain about them. And, of course, the Republicans always want to lower them.

It is not true that everything the government does is inefficient — that is a myth the Republicans have fed us for so long that even Democrats have started to believe it. Inefficiency occurs just as often in private companies as in government.

Rules and regulations are not something to be done away with; look where deregulation of the economy brought us! Unbridled capitalism ends in disaster; the market is not the solution to everything.

Let us proudly declare that taxes and regulation are necessary in a functioning democracy. Don’t let the Republicans bamboozle us into thinking that all taxation and all regulation is bad.

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