Marino's demagoguery is a waste of taxpayer money

The following letter is in response to the letter by U.S. Rep. Thomas Marino, "Four follies in fighting the new war against terror," published in the Dec. 18 Courier.

To the Editor:
Tom Marino seems to have forgotten, in his "Four follies in fighting the new war against terror," that giving it "everything we've got," he says — sending hundreds of thousands of troops to the Mideast, which Usama bin Laden was praying for — is exactly how we got to where we are now, compliments of his friends George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Also lost to his memory is the fact that Mr. Bush sent more Americans to the afterlife in his illegal war in Iraq than terrorists have since the beginning of this country. But this will pass: terrorists are just the right-wing hysterics' bogeyman du jour. It feels like only yesterday that Mexicans were going to destroy us and our way of life.

Speaking of statistics, Mr. Marino has spent his highly paid time in the U.S. House of Representatives with voting 51 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. His alternative to the saving law that will soon have signed up 30 million Americans who previously had no health care? "Let Them Die," as one of his anti-Obama co-religionists shouted at an Obamacare scare-fest.

Marino might do well to recall on his own, as opposed to channeling the Koch brothers in Texas and Sheldon Adelman in Nevada, that since the 2001 WTC and other attacks, 400,000 Americans have been killed by firearm violence, which means each of us is as likely to be struck by lightning twice and thousands of times more likely to be shot by someone we know than be victimized in any way by a terrorist. Refugees in particular, the demographic group that settled and continuously built up this country, are in for particular opprobrium in Marino's demagoguery.

What a waste of ink and oxygen. And taxpayer money.

Anthony Splendora
Milford