The Weirs Times (Weirs, NH) Thursday, October 7, 1999 --page 1Steve Forbes for President
Candidate Wins Endorsement of The Weirs TimesThe Weirs Times is pleased and proud to endorse Steve Forbes for president.
We believe that Forbes has the right qualities to lead America to a new era of greatness. He is a man of principle, deeply committed to the ideal of individual freedom as the bedrock foundation from which springs all else that is good and decent in America.
He is the right man to lead the country as the first president of the 21st century. He has the personal qualities which this nation desperately needs in a president. He has coherent and well-thought-out plans for achieving real tax reform, preserving and enhancing social security and providing freedom of choice in both health care and education. He is decisive without being divisive and has the best chance of any Republican candidate of uniting the party by bringing its hard working and dedicated conservatives back into the fold.
Think about this. No one questions Steve Forbes' dedication, ambition or intelligence. No one.
That's because he is a rarity in American politics, a genuinely real person who is his own man, not afraid to set forth his ideas with vigor and clarity in order to let voters know where he stands.
In so doing he practices leadership, not poll-driven "followership" and demonstrates to us his great faith in the wisdom and intelligence of his fellow citizens.
Steve Forbes doesn't need an artificially created public image spun by a small army of media consultants to help make his case to the American people. Nor does he need people around him to tell him what to think or how to evade giving straight answers. He has done his homework. He speaks for himself. Wouldn't it be refreshing after these last eight years to finally have a grown-up running the country, rather than someone who only holds out the hope that they might mature sometime during the course of their presidency.
We all know that we'll never hear Steve Forbes say "that all depends on how you define truth" or give us some similar legally correct but morally bankrupt answer. We know that he will never embarrass us. Or himself or his family for that matter. There is no horror show waiting off-stage to distract his attention or ours from working towards the agenda he has set forth.
Forbes is the only candidate who has clearly spelled out why he should be elected president and in what direction he intends to lead the nation when he is elected.
And we like his message. We applaud his tax plan, which would replace the anti-family federal income tax code with a 17 percent flat rate tax. The generous exemptions of his plan, $13,000 for adults and $5,000 for children, mean that a family of four with an income of $36,000 or less wouldn't pay a single penny in income taxes.
Such breathtaking simplicity is perhaps too much for Washington, where legions of lobbyists specialize in procuring tax law changes which benefit the well-heeled at the expense of the average taxpayer, but would be greatly appreciated throughout the rest of the country. And we think most people agree that putting a few thousand lawyers out of work would be a small price to pay for such a meaningful change in public policy.
The personal retirement security system proposed by Forbes would stop Washington's raids on the Social Security Trust Fund and enable people to accumulate $1.6 million for retirement, compared to the average accumulation of $33,394 in Social Security at present.
We also like the medical savings account plan proposed by Forbes which would give patients, not HMO managers, control over medical care decisions.
And we support the school voucher plan crafted by Forbes, which would put control over education back into the hands of parents. The education bureaucracy and all-powerful teacher unions which have put our schools into a downward spiral will never change unless we empower parents to force them to.
Some people have complained about Forbes' wealth and his refusal to abide by campaign spending limits that would come into play if he accepted federal matching funds.
That seems to us to be a weak argument against his candidacy. In fact, we see it is a strong point in his favor. Rather than spending all of his time and effort raising money and becoming beholden to special interests, Forbes will have the freedom to speak his own mind and to pursue policies based on what's best for America, not what's best for his campaign contributors. RML