This is turning out to be a very interesting election season with a lot of distractions. Leading the hoopla is Fox News and their Tea Party. Glenn, Sarah, Joe, Michelle, Christine and others are amusing to watch, but I hope when it comes to placing votes, people go with candidates with a bit more intellectual horsepower.

Then we have the tax cut debate. The tax cuts were enacted 10 years ago. One party wants to keep the cuts for the middle class and let the millionaires go back to paying their fair share. The other party says no way. (They want to protect people like Paris Hilton so they can buy more $50,000 necklaces for their pets.) These cuts were supposed to create jobs (trickle down); it’s been 10 years! Where are they! Warren Buffet (an expert at finance) has just come out and said to let them expire, and even raise the rates on the upper 2 percent!

At the state level we have a candidate running for governor who brings the same old song and dance and has the exact strategy that we have had for eight years. Cuts for the less fortunate, education, health care, but don’t you dare even bring up any ideas about his rich buddies and how they could help with this mess. Leave them alone! I trust that when you go vote in a few weeks that you remember we are in a BIG hole. It took eight years of reckless spending, and tax cuts for millionaires to get us into it. We are starting to climb out. Let’s keep moving forward with progressive ideas, not backwards to the failed policies that put us in this mess in the first place.

Al Helgerson

Albert Lea