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September 6: Klurfeld on Palin, no more tax cuts

September 6, 2008

Palin's not columnist's choice

In the piece "Palin is a stunningly wrong choice" [Opinion, Sept. 3], James Klurfeld does everything he can to discredit Sarah Palin as Sen. John McCain's vice president.

Though I do not abide by most of Palin's views, I certainly have to respect her accomplishments, and I would have thought that Klurfeld would have done the same. However, he not only showed her very little respect, but belittled the state of Alaska and its people.

Palin is the only one among the four candidates that has had any administrative experience. Though the town and the state of Alaska have small populations, Palin had to do the same tasks as any other mayor or governor of any other city or state. The quality of the experience always trumps quantity.

Calling Obama's resume as impressive suggests to me that Klurfeld would have been impressed with the resume of millions of people in this country. Is it possible that Klurfeld is masking his disappointment at the Republican Party's coup in choosing a female while the Democratic Party could have but didn't?

Harvey Karron

Coram

Klurfeld's histrionics about Sarah Palin prove yet again that sexism is alive and well in the United States. What else could explain such a threadbare and visceral response? To him, Obama passes the qualification test because he's a United States senator, has undergone a grueling campaign, and graduated from Harvard.

Funny, while bashing Palin for being mayor of a small town, chair of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission and governor of Alaska, he failed to tell the readers one thing that Obama has done. Wonder why? Obama is part of a D.C. club called the Senate, which has a low approval rating among U.S. citizens. Palin's approval numbers in Alaska are a mind-boggling 80 percent. They love her because she's made a difference in their lives fighting corruption, lowering taxes, and creating jobs. But alas, she didn't go to Harvard. Maybe that's what's bugging Klurfeld.

Ronald Piana

Huntington

Listening to the Democrats criticize Republican vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin's lack of experience only goes to show that the party of Jefferson, Roosevelt and Kennedy knows absolutely nothing about it own presidential history.

Take for example Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pick for vice president, in what would be his last term in office. FDR picked Harry S. Truman, a two-term senator from Missouri who held no diploma from a college or university and held only two publicly elected offices - that of a county administrative court judge and U.S. senator.

When Vice President Truman was called upon to lead the nation in 1945, he rose to the occasion, displaying a level of courage that most people can only imagine and making some of this century's toughest decisions. Nobody wishes ill upon any candidate, but if fate should call upon Sarah Palin, I am confident that she would rise to the occasion much in the same way a one-time haberdasher from Missouri did when called upon.

Stephen Vella

Ronkonkoma

No more tax cuts!

Op-ed contributor Christian Browne is correct ["McCain would spell tax relief for LI" Opinion, Sept. 2]: John McCain's tax plan might very well be better for some Long Islanders than Barack Obama's. But the question is, which plan would be better for the United States?

Browne argues that Obama would raise taxes on families whose income exceeds $250,000, stating that these are people Obama labels as "rich." How else could one describe a family whose income exceeds that of more than 95 percent of the nation's families?

And while McCain's tax plan would certainly help some Long Islanders, most of us would see only minimal differences between the Obama and McCain plans. However, the multimillionaire McCain family would save more than $300,000 a year.

Do we really want a repetition of the Bush tax cuts that made the rich richer but left the nation deeply in debt? Haven't we learned yet that "trickle down economics" doesn't work?

Bernie Stein

Merrick