[lbo-talk] An Open Letter to Michael Colby

John Lacny jlacny at earthlink.net
Wed Feb 18 20:08:09 PST 2004


Michael,

I confess that I really have no idea who you are, but I did read your article that appeared on CounterPunch the other day:

http://www.counterpunch.org/colby02142004.html

In it you write:

"Before the delusional Democrats out there start peppering me with hostile emails about the absolute necessity of getting 'anybody but Bush' in the White House, just stop yourselves long enough to consider these facts: Kerry supported Bush's war on Iraq; Kerry supported Bush's tax cuts; Kerry hasn't proposed one major social or environmental initiative in over 20 years in the U.S. Senate; Kerry hasn't put forward any meaningful policy initiatives in his campaign for the presidency regarding jobs or healthcare."

Hm. Well, Michael, in those e-mails, has anyone commented on how the insistence of Cockburn & Co. on telling us what we already know (literally saying stuff like gee, did you hear that Kerry supported the Iraq War? -- anyone who thinks that they have to point this out is too stupid for words) is so boring it that it induces headaches?

What you write about the tax cuts is of a somewhat different order, though it is also symptomatic of people on the "left" who are objectively campaigning for Bush -- it falls in or in close proximity to what I will call for lack of a better term the "Let's Just Make Shit Up" School of Falsification. Or perhaps a better and more concise term would be a "lie," since any grade-school child with basic literacy and access to the Internet could have found that Kerry voted against both rounds of Bush tax cuts (the $1.35 trillion over 11 years on May 23, 2001 and the $350 billion over 11 years passed on May 23, 2003 in the Senate):

http://www.issues2000.org/2004/John_Kerry_Tax_Reform.htm

So did you lie, or were you just too dumb to look it up? Or am I unfairly taking out my annoyance on you when the real problem is that you have Alexander Cockburn for a fact-checker?

These days Kerry says that he favors rolling back the tax cuts for people making over $200,000 a year, although he would like to keep some of the cuts for middle-income people. Say what you want about that, but it isn't Bush. Unless you just want to make up more shit, that is.

Meanwhile, Bush is planning to block-grant Medicaid. The Bush crew is planning the destruction of public education over the long term through school vouchers, which they have already imposed in the colony of the District of Colombia. And Bush wants to privatize Social Security, even talking about it openly in his State of the Union address. Kerry differs with Bush on all of these, but I suppose these are all irrelvant side issues for those intrepid few, like yourself, who are busy making more fundamental change by writing counterfactual bullshit for CounterPunch.

Ta ta!

- - - - - John Lacny

People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!



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