False Republican Promises

Dear Editor,

I've been receiving a lot of junk mail from Republican candidates.  Their mail promises help with the immigration/drugs, job creation, inflation, and housing.  The promises are very vague, as they should well be; because these Republicans have no way to back up their promises. There are no easy solutions.

 A few examples might help here.

HOUSING:  Most economists agree that there is a housing shortage.  Want to know one reason why?  Three large private equity corporations own a combined 227,000 single-family houses.  Ten million Americans own second homes.  Over two million single-family homes are available through AIRBNB and another two million through VRBO.  There are some obvious overlaps here, since many Americans rent their second homes through one of these services.  All of this has driven up home prices.  Harris has proposed subsidizing first time home buyers.  What specific policies have Republicans proposed?

DRUGS:  90 to 95 percent of illegal drugs come through ports of entry, the vast majority of which is carried by American citizens or by major means of transport such as vehicles or ships.  Only 0.02% of people arrested by the Border Patrol for illegally crossing the border were found to be carrying fentanyl (Do you hear that Mr. Hovde?)  We need more Border Patrol agents; but Republicans have blocked legislation providing money to hire more.

INFLATION:  Large corporations control an enormous amount of market share.  Four companies control over 55% of the meat market; four airlines control 80% of commercial flights; three companies control 92% of soft drinks; three companies control 73% of cereals; eleven grocery chains control over 70% of stores; Amazon controls almost 8% of retail sales and 38% of e-commerce.  Retail gasoline production is controlled by a handful of huge corporations.  Do you really think that any politician can control how these companies set their prices?  These companies have shown record profits ever since Covid.  They must be enormously pleased that Trump slashed the corporate tax rate.

IMMIGRATION:  Biden and Obama each deported more aliens than Trump.  Immigration is one of the most intractible problems facing any president.  The world has over 100 million displaced persons due to famine, war, and oppression.  The US is the richest nation in the world.  There is good reason why so many people want to come to our country, and immigration is essential for our economy to grow and prosper.  We need to have strong immigration legislation, but Trump told Republicans to prevent that.  This is an issue which requires input and cooperation from all legislators, regardless of who is in charge.

JOBS:  Fifty-one million jobs have been created since 1989.  Fifty million of those jobs were created while a Democrat was in the White House.  Over fifteen million jobs have been created since Biden became president.  Trump's score is minus 3.2 million.  Trump lost due to covid, and Biden gained many of those jobs back.  However Biden also created millions of jobs due to legislation like the bipartisan, trillion dollar, Infrastructure Act, the 53 billion dollar CHIPS Act, and the two trillion dollar Inflation Reduction Act.  

Michael Britt

Dodgeville, WI