Craig Sarver starts his diatribe (Courier-Herald, Nov. 10) with his childish, supposedly funny names for Congressional members in which he states “Patty Murray is regularly voted by the media covering her as the dumbest member of Congress.” After searching for a while I could find no reference supporting his comment. By logical deduction his statement is a lie and therefor the rest of his opinion piece is just more right-wing nonsense.

Her’s something to consider. In the following categories (not something to strive for): Least Healthiest States, Least Educated States, Highest Teenage (ages 15-19) Pregnancies, States Where Divorce Rates exceed 5 percent, Most Corrupt States, Most Dangerous States to Live In and where the Violent Crimes Rate per 100,000 population is the highest. Statistics show that the top 15 states (30 percent of the United States) are predominantly “red” (conservative, religious right, Republican, “Family Values,” etc. – take your pick) states. These “Red” state citizens think they can run the United States better than the Democrats, when, in fact, they can’t even take care of their own states or they wouldn’t be leading in these categories.

Lest you think these are made up or somehow skewed: 1, get on the Internet; 2, start your favorite search engine; 3, enter the categories and see what pops up.

And now we have a House of Representatives full of right-wing, newly-elected, best that money (both foreign and domestic) can buy. If that ain’t “dumb” I don’t know what is.

The newly-elected Republicans have stated that they will be cutting discretionary spending across the board and extending the Bush tax cuts as well. Well, here is the “dumb” part. The Bush tax cuts will cost $4 trillion over the next 10 years. Current discretionary spending is about 12 percent ($437 billion) of which one could maybe cut 10 to 15 percent. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, 25 percent could be cut; it would take 40 years to pay for those tax cuts.

Call me ‘dumb’ but I don’t see this working out too well.

Rather than being part of the solution, Craig Sarver, and all those others like him, are part of the problem. Thinking that saying “no” to everything, whether good for the country or not, is not the way to govern. That kind of thinking takes “dumb’ to an all new level.

W. Baxter

Sumner