To the editor:

I read Mr. Wayne Hood’s letter of March 3 with great interest.

I am afraid he is the one who has not been paying attention! The President turned over the drafting of the Stimulus and Health Care bills over to the Congress and the bills came out fully loaded with pork, which benefited no one but the members of Congress and their supporters on the left.

In the case of campaign promises unmet; most were the President’s, where he has total control and has done nothing meaningful. They were smoke and mirrors in the campaign and still are!

I have seen two examples of his cooperation with the Republicans. Once early and once during the recent health care summit; in both cases the President said to the Republicans – “We are not going to do it that way, I won the election.” Sure seems to me to be a strange way to encourage cooperation!

Clearly you are not paying attention to the unemployment numbers; either, yes, the most recent numbers are down a little. The most logical explanation is the 2.5 million folks who have given up looking for a job and are therefore no longer included in the basic Dept. of Labor numbers. The real number from the DoL is that total unemployment is in the area of 16-17 percent. The President himself has said that the basic unemployment rate will barely be under 10 percent by the end of 2010 and probably not below 9 percent in 2011!

I would also suggest that you pull out your history books. Big deficit spending had little to nothing to do with getting the country out of the Depression, many believe that it made things worse! WW II was the event that got the economy moving again. You might be correct that the 2011 deficit will be below that of 2010, which will exceed that of 2009. I am not sure how you can feel so good about trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. These figures are from the President and carried on the White House Web site.

Yes, I expect my representatives in Congress to read every bill they vote on! How else can they vote intelligently? In case you missed it, some several hundred page additions to the bills were added in the dead of night the evening before the vote in Congress.

Since I have lived, worked, and traveled overseas and also have relatives who live overseas; I know exactly what the world thinks of America. At the same time, I would not look to the Nobel Prize Committee for much of anything! I understand that a movement is under way to seek the recall of the medal given to the UN and Vice President Gore for their efforts on Climate Change, which has pretty much been found to be a fraud!

If it is so common to bow to foreign leaders; why did the President bow to Muslim leaders and not to the Queen of England, our longest and best ally!

Please do not tarnish the reputation of Sam Rayburn by comparing Nancy Pelosi to him. She is not very intelligent which shows when she speaks. At best, she is a disgrace to the office. I find it very scary that she is third in line to the Presidency!

I am sorry that I missed Joe Bleer’s letter that inspired Mr. Hood’s.

Patrick Spencer

North Fort Myers