IT'S ALL GEORGE'S FAULT

Nicholas Kristof has an op-ed piece today in the New York Times today about his hometown of Yamhill, Oregon. In the first few sentences we get this: “People across America will pay the price for Washington's indifference in lower-quality schools, fewer chances to go to college, less police protection and diminished medical care.” He then goes on with tales of woe about the spending cuts that are decimating the school system, police department and medical care. He tells of an epileptic whose lost his free prescription medicine (courtesy of the state) and now has severe brain damage from an epileptic episode in February. All of these spending cuts are at either the State or local level, yet Kristof, with the blanket statement about “Washington’s indifference”, is blaming George W. Bush. At the end of the piece, Kristof tries to cover his liberal butt by saying. “President Bush is not primarily to blame for this fiscal crisis. The causes include overly enthusiastic spending during the boom years as well as the popping of the tech bubble.” Guess what the next word is? “But...” He then goes on to blame Bush again. Typical liberal – no sense of reality or more likely just a liar.

What didn’t Kristof mention? Oregon’s tax revenue increased 112%, from 2.8 billion dollars to 5.9 billion dollars from 1990-2001. Adjusting for inflation and population growth in the same period, there was a net “fluff” increase of 66%. That means if Oregon had just kept spending in line with inflation and population, they would have over 1.5 billion dollars in the bank to cover the epileptics $13.00 a day worth of medicine instead of cutting him off. (BTW, where was his family to help with this? What about his “domestic partner”, Werth Sargent, where was he? Why does Kristof jump 3,000 miles away and blame George Bush first?)

Kristof doesn’t feel the need to mention any of this because he doesn’t want to editorialize on reality, that wouldn’t make George Bush look bad to the great unwashed out there.