• Nader did have partial role in ‘defeat’ of Al Gore • Consumer always pays the taxes Nader did have partial role in ‘defeat’ of Al Gore I have to correct Claire Mortimer’s claim in the Aug. 20 issue of
• Nader did have partial role in ‘defeat’ of Al Gore
• Consumer always pays the taxes
Nader did have partial role in ‘defeat’ of Al Gore
I have to correct Claire Mortimer’s claim in the Aug. 20 issue of The Garden Island that Ralph Nader was not responsible for Al Gore’s “defeat” — I use the word advisedly — in the 2000 election. Nader was indeed partly responsible.
Despite the national polling data she cites indicating Nader did not take votes from Gore, Florida and New Hampshire turned out to be the key states in this election. Only in these states did Nader get enough votes to make the difference between a Gore victory and defeat.
The fact is that Nader got 97,488 votes in Florida and 22,198 in New Hampshire — far more than Bush’s margin of victory in each state. Even if most of the Nader voters had abstained, I think it’s inarguable that enough would have held their noses in one or both of these two extremely close elections and cast their ballots for Gore to give him either state’s electoral votes. Even with a victory in New Hampshire, Gore would have won the electoral vote by three.
Had all other factors remained the same — Gore’s inept campaign, Clinton’s malignant influence, Republican scheming, the badly designed ballots — Gore would now be president.
Nader thus accomplished his goal of playing the role of spoiler for the Democrats. As a Nader voter in Hawai`i, where it didn’t make a bit of difference, I can say the Democrats deserved the defeat precisely for the reasons on which Nader based his campaign — abandonment and corruption of Democratic Party values to the point where the party is now a weak imitation of the GOP.
But the nation is still worse off for Bush’s “victory.” Had I been a Florida or New Hampshire voter, I would have been one of those holding my nose to vote for Gore in such a close election.
William LeGro
Kapa`a
Consumer always pays the taxes
The “guest viewpoint” by Lowell L. Kalapa in Sunday’s Garden Island Forum was a long article that was probably meant to show how taxes are paid.
It seems to me that Lowell could have saved a lot of time and space if had just said “THE CONSUMER (THAT’S YOU AND ME), ALWAYS PAYS ALL OF THE TAXES, ALL OF THEM, NOT SOME, ALL.
No business or other entity ever simply pays the taxes it forwards to the State, County, or City. They always add it to cost of doing business and then they add their profit. If they can’t make a profit they are going to be out of business.
When the tax payer or non tax payer finally realizes that we are the ones that pay all the taxes, that’s when the government will start having to act like a business and run itself as though it didn’t have unlimited funds. Until then we will all be over-taxed, period. End of story.
Dr. Gordon “Doc” Smith
Kapa’a
