Letters to the editor

McCain's fiscal plan and faith

Re "Contrarian candidate," editorial, April 26

You applaud John McCain for not pandering to ordinary people but telling them hard truths about jobs and retraining. But McCain's economic plan is still based on large tax cuts, mostly for big corporations. Why is it that promising help to ordinary people is pandering but giving aid to corporations is serious economic policy?

Perhaps you should remind McCain that this is a double standard. It's time for him to tell the big players that they too need to adapt to the changing economy and that they too should stop counting on Washington to get them out of trouble.

As for the people who have lost their jobs, they don't need to be told. They figured out a long time ago that their jobs are not coming back, and they are retraining every chance they get. But Wal-Mart jobs don't bring a lot of bread to the table.

Perhaps it's McCain who needs some retraining on the realities of the global economy.

Jean Lecuyer

Los Angeles



In your editorial, you characterize McCain as boldly preaching an unpopular message, but it's the same old, tired, free-market deregulation dogma.

There's nothing contrarian about it -- it's the Bush line, which has put America in the terrible spot we're in today.

Won't you begin to assess this guy for what he really is? He's no maverick; he's a throwback, and more of the same poison that's been killing America (and Americans, and Iraqis) for seven years.

Fred Sokolow

Santa Monica



According to McCain, government can't create good and lasting jobs in the private sector.

All of the Internet, which now represents a significant factor in our economy, is traceable to the development of the ARPAnet by the Department of Defense. Most of the research that underpins drug development -- the part that is the most risky and least predictable -- is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Siegfried Othmer

Woodland Hills



Since when is realizing a trade policy has failed and saying so labeled "pandering"?

Thank goodness a few politicians, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, see that these policies have enriched corporations and a few individuals while devastating middle-class America and accelerating global warming.

Shouldn't we question McCain's support of globalization that enables human rights abuses, substandard wages, oppressive work conditions and total disregard to the environment?