President Bush

To:      Laura Ingraham

From:  Jack West

               Fairfield, NJ

Dear Laura,

Is it any wonder that more people are blaming Bush than Obama for this sad economy when not even conservative talk show hosts can ever find anything creditable to say about President Bush?  Does everyone forget about the 54 months of economic growth and the Dow Jones Average steadily climbing toward the 14000 mark after the Bush tax cuts took effect?  For the biggest part of the time President Bush was in office the unemployment rate was five percent and lower.  And doesn’t anyone ever give any thought to the effect the assault by the OPEC countries had on our economy when they gradually brought the price of their oil to the peak of $147 a barrel in 2008?  This was the thing that had the most direct effect on bringing about the downturn and no one ever says anything about it.  The cost of energy for every household and industry and most directly transportation costs wrecked everyone’s budget.

 Obama has been allowed to get away with making the false claim over and over again that he inherited a down economy.  He came into his “inheritance” two years before he took office as a result of the 2006 elections when the Democrats gained vetoproof control of the purse strings.  The economy was humming along well at that time in spite of the Middle East War.  The Internet indicates the unemployment rate to have been at 4.6% at that time and in 2008 it was 5.8%.

And who do we have to thank for not letting us be energy independent as we could be?  We have as much natural gas in this country as Saudi Arabia has oil.  We have enough oil not only in Alaska and offshore but in many parts of the “lower 48” – enough for our own needs as well as being competitors on the world market.  The revenue that would generate would give us all the capital we would need for research and development of renewable sources of energy.  We don’t have to live like paupers while we wait to be served by green energy.

 I’d like to see an end to this constant talk about Bush being as bad as Obama.  On the contrary, those who know how much the country is indebted to him know that that is a false claim.  It’s not going to help to unseat our Apologizer-in-Chief in 2012 by being fearful of saying anything complimentary about President Bush.