Kate O’Connor and Martin Sheehan of Princeton
It is disingenuous to suggest that jobs are being lost because our political parties are dithering. The confidence of the American people, and thus the seeds of our economic recovery, is being undermined and eroded due to the alarmist, exaggerated doom and gloom, catastrophic results message being communicated by President Obama, The NY Times, Paul Krugman, your edit pages, and many other media outlets.
To use Griffin Pipe as your job loss example serves no purpose other than to show everyone what happens when a company becomes too dependent on the latest fast-profit fad. Griffin has been in business almost five decades and is now going bust due to the declining demand in the housing sector for its products. More plausible is it over committed to one market segment, reflecting poor business management.
President Obama promised us an open, transparent government, based on honesty, integrity and full disclosure. He promoted himself as president of all the people and as ringing in a nonpartisan era. What happened? Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid draft this important legislative piece for him, filling it with far too many special interest projects to the peril of the American people. President Obama uses bully pulpit doom, gloom and imminent catastrophe language to scare fast passage of the too quickly conceived, but poorly structured American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This behavior is most distressing and quite disingenuous. It certainly isn’t leadership. Yet, not a letter, let alone a sentence, in your viewpoint piece about Presidential responsibility to walk his talk and show judgment, especially when using the bully pulpit.
It would be refreshing to read a piece — even an opinion piece — that accurately communicates the problems our newly elected government is facing, criticizes the different alternatives which might address them, and offers a range of behavior changes necessary to be truly helpful to the real needs of our nation and its people. We can only hope that such enlightenment will occur urgently. This is change we all need.
Kate O’Connor
Michael Sheehan
Princeton

