Letters on Andrew Jackson, Medicare, fake journalist
Trump might be right about Jackson
President Trump has recently been pilloried for saying Andrew Jackson might have been able to prevent the Civil War if he had been president later, and that Jackson was concerned about it, even though Jackson died 16 years before the breakout of the Civil War.
Surprisingly, another president who shared this opinion was Democratic President Harry Truman, who wrote in his book, “Where the Buck Stops,” that Jackson held the Union together by stopping the secession of South Carolina in 1833.
On the subject of secession, Jackson was quoted as saying, “The Constitution … forms a government not a league. … To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a nation.”
Jackson was an extremely popular president whose influence extended far beyond the years of his presidency. Truman credits his work with stopping four slave states that you probably assumed joined the Confederacy in the Civil War – Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri. All of these states resisted secession, and roughly equal numbers of their citizens fought for the Union as fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.
Maybe some reporters should read U.S. history.
Clay Oliver, Wichita
Medicare not free
The government taxed my income for Social Security since I was 16 years old, and I also paid my federal income taxes and my private health insurance premiums. I am 73 years old now and receive my Social Security benefits. I get half my benefits tax-fee, $8,947 annually. The other half is taxed at 13 percent. The government also takes back $1,452 for Medicare insurance premiums, and I have a $166 deductible plus a co-pay on my medical bills. I do get one free annual wellness checkup.
I think everybody should be on Medicare and pay their fair share, including Congress.
David Robbins, Wichita
Not a journalist
While I was reading Ed Rogers’ recent commentary praising former talk show host Bill O’Reilly, calling him an “intellectual giant,” I kept waiting for the April Fools’ joke (April 23 Opinion). But no, using his Washington Post byline, Rogers continued to refer to Fox News as a “fair and balanced symphony orchestra” and O’Reilly as a “clear thinking, compelling logical” journalist.
Fox? O’Reilly? I knew immediately that something was not right. This was pushing praise beyond a real journalist’s prose.
Sure enough, some basic research revealed that Rogers is actually a paid lobbyist for Republicans, foreign governments and companies such as Raytheon. Rogers’ columns are controversial, given that he regularly writes in support of laws and issues that are directly tied to his own company interests.
Given that O’Reilly mainly supports interests that are financially beneficial to Rogers’ clients, it is obvious why he writes in support of O’Reilly and Fox. Media Matters, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting), and the Washington Examiner are just a few of the fact-checking publications that have called out the Washington Post for not being more public about Rogers’ conflicts of interest. I wish The Eagle would have noted this fact also.
Susan K. Osborne, Wichita
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This story was originally published May 6, 2017 at 5:04 AM with the headline "Letters on Andrew Jackson, Medicare, fake journalist."