Anyone who says that Rock the Vote is not a partisan organization is clearly uninformed. Go to the Rock the Vote Web site (www.rockthevote.com) and you will find a list of reasons that a young American should vote and they are all negative about the current administration. In Jobs and Finances, unemployment is talked about in depth and it is mentioned how bad the current economy is. The current unemployment rate of 5.4 percent is lower than the 50-year average, but Rock the Vote doesn't mention this. The fact that minimum wage has fallen for high school graduates by a certain percentage is due to the fact that more young adults are actually going to college and furthering their education before they go to the unemployment office to land that coveted job at Arby's. There are more highly educated students than in the past, so the people who only graduated from high school are facing more competition for jobs than in the past. I'm not frowning on minimum wage jobs, because these are the jobs that make our country work. I am just saying that the Republicans are not being unfair to people working for minimum wage. They are giving every opportunity imaginable to those who want to climb up the income scale instead of saying they are stuck at the bottom and the rich are to blame, as the Democrats do.
What has the Democratic Party done for minorities lately? Any answer to that can gladly be emailed to my email address at chardy1@nd.edu. Minority home ownership is at its highest rate in roughly eight years. One million six-hundred thousand minorities have gained homes under President George Bush in the past two years alone. Taxes have been cut across the board and anyone who wants to call it a tax cut for the rich can consider this fact: the top 50 percent of wage earners pay 96.03 percent of all income taxes. Kerry is worth more than half a billion dollars, but he only wrote off $100 in charitable contributions last year. John Kerry and John Edwards are the two richest candidates ever to run, yet they criticize the wealthy.
The truth is that the wealthy are the people who pay all of the taxes, so logically they will get a higher amount of money back in taxes. The people who say the poor are getting the bad end do not realize that the "poor" do not even pay taxes in the first place, so they cannot get anything from a tax cut. The bottom 50 percent is paying a tiny bit of the taxes, so you can't give them much of a tax cut by definition. Yet these are the people to whom the Democrats claim to want to give tax cuts. Remember this the next time you hear the "tax cuts for the rich" business. Understand that the so-called rich are about the only ones paying taxes anymore.
Our Army is a volunteer army, but Rock the Vote would have you believe that a draft is just around the corner. We are a country at war and we have the best army in the world, composed of great men and women. A draft is not on the horizon and President Bush has never mentioned this, so why would the liberal organization Rock the Vote?
We want democracy to work in the best way and in no way are we discouraging people from voting. Do you have a problem with Democrats allowing and conspiring to have deceased people voting for John Kerry like they did with Al Gore, or are they all a part of the unrepresented minority that you so wish to have represented in six weeks?
Cullen Hardy
senior
off-campus
Sept. 21
