Don’t be fooled: Huckabee is liberal

Re: “Meet the Next President: Huckabee Rising,” Sept. 13.

On the surface, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee may come across as a sensible lawmaker with a silver tongue, but if one takes a closer look at his record, you’ll see a hornet’s nest of fiscal liberalism.

In the 10 years that Huckabee has been governor of Arkansas, he has raised gas taxes, the state sales tax, and excise taxes. From 1996 to 2004, he has recklessly enabled state spending to increase by 65.3 percent. Earlier this year, he proudly signed a bill into law that would raise the minimum wage, adding that it should be done at the national level as well. It’s no wonder that the Cato Institute, a fiscally conservative think tank, gave him a “D” grade on fiscal issues in their 2004 scorecard.

And not only is Huckabee’s record on taxes very troublesome, it’s also contorted and confusing. Huckabee stated several days ago that he supported a nationwide flat tax. But then recently, he flip-flopped by arguing for a more progressive tax code. Which is it, governor?

Thanks to term limits, Huckabee is leaving the governor’s mansion this year. Let’s hope he avoids public office in the future so that taxpayers can have at least one less thing to worry about.

Andrew Roth
Director of Government Affairs
Club for Growth

Ronald Reagan was Democrats’ president, too

Much has been said about the Jim Webb campaign ad showing President Reagan praising Webb in a speech at the Naval Academy. Some say that Democrats will not vote for Webb because they will question his loyalty to the Democratic Party.

My view is that Reagan was my president too, even though I didn’t vote for him. I think voters judge presidents on what they do for our country and not what they do for their party. Many Democrats thought that Reagan was a good leader for the country, but they didn’t join the Republican Party.

The way I see it, my president was proud to have a highly decorated Naval Academy graduate in his administration. Democrats have pride in Jim Webb as their candidate for the very same reasons.

Bob Crowe
Alexandria

Fighting terrorists means less, not more

A simple question for those who claim we are creating more terrorists by fighting them: Did we create more Nazis by fighting them?

And since we never caught Robert E. Lee, Kaiser Wilhelm, or Adolf Hitler, does this mean we lost the Civil War and World Wars I and II? Besides surrender, what would you have us do? And lastly, what are you all smoking?

Tim Dudenhoefer
Silver Spring

Modernizing VDOT won't solve funding problem

Re: “VDOT overhaul plan announced,” Sept. 14.

Less than two weeks from the opening of a special session to address the ongoing statewide transportation crisis and unfortunately Virginia’s Speaker of the House still can’t seem to properly prioritize the issues. I would not argue that a three-part plan to address our transportation woes, particularly in Northern Virginia, should include modernizing VDOT and addressing land use and funding. It is the order in which the speaker proposes they be addressed that confounds me.

With an annual funding deficit of $1 billion, placing a bill “instituting an innovative and effective performance-based planning, management and contracting system” at the top of the list is ludicrous. Without new, dedicated funding for anything beyond 2010, we will immediately have to downsize VDOT to contract maintenance activities alone.

Twenty years of underfunding our transportation infrastructure cannot be reversed by reorganizing VDOT. Nor will addressing land use patterns correct our lack of political will from years gone by. Improving the relationship between land planning and our transportation network is a long-term strategy can help us avoid a recurrence of today‚s gridlock, but only after we‚ve addressed our lack of past investment. Many of us live our transportation nightmare every day — and it’s worsening. Priorities must be reordered in order for the upcoming special session to be anything more than lip service and Band-Aids: Funding first, then land use and VDOT reform.

If we address the toughest and most controversial issue first, the others will fall into place.

W. Craig Havenner
Fairfax

Correction

“Bush administration lets guard down,” Editorial, Sept. 15

While former USCIS security chief Michael Maxwell informed both the former and current director about the agency’s refusal to cooperate with several FBI espionage investigations in violation of a presidential executive order, he never personally spoke to DHS Sec. Michael Chertoff.