Evidently, 'PencilPusher' not sharp on social programs

Editor,

This is my response to the comment from “PencilPusher,” which was published in Wednesday’s “From the Web” on page four. The comment was in response to “Tea Party rallies for local support” by reporter Andrew Lyman.

Again, I ask what the new ideas are. Simply returning to a Romanized version of history is not new. We have serious problems in this nation, and they are structural and do not stem from gay marriage or abortion.

But I would like to delve deeper into two of your principles: “balancing the budget” and “removing incentives for no work.”
I find it appalling, in this day and age, that people still think that no work is rewarded somehow. Do you really think that the unemployment rate today is filled with people who do not want to work and who receive incentives to stay unemployed? Do we not owe the unemployed and underemployed people some kind of social safety net?

Remember, rhetoric means real-world consequences for the men, women and children who face hardships. This goes to the heart of your principles. Balancing the budget and the Tea Party’s pledge not to raise taxes leaves only one idea, and that idea is to cut social spending. This again is nothing new. It sounds good, but what specific social programs will you cut? It won’t be the military. It won’t be farm subsidies, and it won’t be subsidies for oil companies, will it?

Therefore, the accusation of whiteness becomes a valid claim, and racism becomes a question that needs to be
addressed. Why? What is left to cut:

social programs that help the poor, such as preschool funding, school breakfast and lunch programs, food stamps, unemployment benefits and after-school programs? Funding for education itself therefore becomes a viable option to balance the budget. Should funding of “reentry” programs for women and men who are hurt on the job and need new training through no fault of their own become expendable?
You see, “PencilPusher,” these are not new ideas and have historically been tried in the past at great expense to actual human lives and the lives of children.

By not supporting taxes and social programs, your claim to “respect human life at the point of conception” becomes moot because all you are actually supporting is the right to “birth,” and that is not respecting the dignity of human life.  

Finally, in keeping this country great, what actually do you mean? Keeping it great for conservative white men? Or is greatness found in the ideals of the Constitution, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men (and women) are created equal.”
That is, for me, self evident. Are they for you and Tea Party members?

Douglas Daugherty
UNM graduate student