Is Bob Packwood responsible for our economic crash?

[grasswire]

Local columnist for The Oregonian writes his Sunday missive about Packwood and the loss of concensus and civility in the Senate. And the columnist falls for the framing!

Columnist Steve Duin: "Packwood -- who resigned under pressure in 1995 -- is now a stranger to the Senate, as are civility and sincerity. But when we spoke last week about his crowning political achievement, engineering the passage of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, Packwood convinced me that the lessons of that era, and compromise, might serve President Obama and the Senate leadership in the effort to rein in middle-class entitlements. That effort is, seemingly, an economic imperative."

Uh, no. It's only an imperative as long as the U.S. deploys a war machine that costs (among other items) $390,000 per soldier per year.
End imperialism, and there will be money enough to pay for the retirement promised to our elders.

But another item revealed to today's readers is that Bob Packwood considers the Tax Reform Act of 1986 his crowning glory. Is the misery of our citizens over the last several decades on his shoulders?

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2010/04/bob_packwoods_reflection_on_19.html

[CTyankee]

1. well, he was prochoice so liberals kinda liked him but his fiscal policy views

just reveal him to be an ordinary Republican at the core. Everything for the upper class and "reined in" entitlements for the middle and lower classes. It is ever thus...

[xxqqqzme]

2. There's a blast from the past.

Had to sweep away a few cobwebs and turn on some auxiliary lights to find that information.

[BlueIris]

3. When you have to look to Bob Packwood for discussion of civility,

you are really desperate.

:wtf:

They could have talked to anyone. They had to pick one of Oregon's most embarrassing political figures.

[sad sally]

4. box wine and tongue,

and all those little slips of paper "people" put in his pocket that became the tax bill.

Wrote him a letter once in opposition of the first Gulf War; got a two-page rambling reply, full of typos and unsigned on his letterhead...what a hoot!

[BlueIris]

6. Seriously?

I have never, in my life, gotten any personal correspondence from a politician.

[sad sally]

7. Before the days of emails and fear of "white powder" mail -

when members of Congress actually opened it and didn't toss them, I almost always got replies - and except for the one from Packwood, they were signed. I used to write individual letters to each and every committee member when an issue so moved me. My family used to say that I was probably on a "watch list" because of all the letters in our mailbox from Senators and Congressmen (very few women in those days).
I was led to believe that one letter carried the same weight as 1,000 people - I don't think is true with emails, as the replies I get from the Senators in my State and Congressman say the same thing regardless of the subject. I no longer write to entire committee members.

[slackmaster]

5. I thought Bob Packwood was a porn star

:shrug: