I'm just going to throw this out there because I think it illustrates on a small scale the frustration I feel with this campaign and the media.
Here's a letter to the editor published in my local newspaper, the Yakima Herald-Republic:
Our crashing government
To the editor — The Democratic Party of 2012 isn’t the party of Roosevelt, Truman and JFK. Its objective is power, and to achieve it, the electorate must become dependent upon the government for survival. This is a basic principle of Karl Marx. The president signed an executive order that allowed welfare recipients to collect benefits without having to try to go back to work. According to Fox News, 41 percent of the populace collects some form of government aid. Case made.
Obamacare is designed to take over the insurance industry. That is socialism. To do so he has taken $716 billion from Medicare, which is already in financial trouble. How is the imminent collapse of Medicare going to affect the health care for the elderly?
Every great empire has fallen. Is Obama, Pelosi and Reid the power behind the crash of our government? Only time and an educated electorate will tell.
RON DONALDSON
Yakima
Readers are only allowed to publish one letter per month and I've already used mine. There were several good comments made on-line, but of course print readers don't see that. And we must join Facebook to participate with the comments (yes, I'm a codger).
So out of frustration, I sent an e-mail to the letters editor and had the following exchange:
From: Dan Schapiro
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 8:04 AM
To: YHR-Opinion
Subject: Question to the editor
Regarding Ron Donaldson's letter today, do you ever enforce your policy
of prohibiting letters with "significant factual errors" or do you just
rely on reader comments/letters to (hopefully) refute them?
Dan Schapiro
Yakima
On 8/28/2012 10:12 AM, YHR-Opinion wrote:
We really like it when other readers continue the discussion.
Karen Troianello
Letters Editor
Yakima Herald-Republic
On 8/28/2012 11:59 AM, Dan Schapiro wrote:
Thank you for the reply. I take it you'll publish anything I write in a letter about Mitt Romney since "significant factual errors" don't matter and other readers can just pick up the "discussion".
On 8/28/2012 1:08 PM, YHR-Opinion wrote:
In our defense, you should see some of the things we don't publish.
And there is it: "Hey at least we don't publish the real wackos." But we don't really have to do our jobs either because the Romney campaign itself puts out these lies on a daily basis.