Who Knew He Had The Courage To Listen To KMJ??

Mountain man Alan Cheah speaks out in the Bee again about the lunatics who populate talk radio in Fresno. I still can't believe we no longer have Air America! Good letter Alan!!


On Jan. 8, President-elect Barack Obama gave a speech regarding his government economic stimulus package to create jobs in infrastructure rebuilding, the green economy and a nationwide medical record database.

I didn't realize how controversial it was till I heard KMJ's Inga Barks interpret it as a government jobs program. The whole premise of her show was invalid, but almost everyone calling in treated it as a statement of fact. Ms. Barks exclaimed that there's nothing the government can do that the private sector can't do better.

That too is inaccurate. The overhead of Medicare administration is 3%. Overhead for private sector medical insurance administration is 30%. The stimulus package is not about creating more government workers, but giving contracts and incentives to private companies to work on bridges, roads, wind power, solar, medical databases. It's about attempting to restore the 3 million and counting jobs lost in the last eight years and to get credit flowing again.

Too many times, Inga speaks of that which she does not know. Perhaps it's easier because the facts might get in the way of promoting the anti-tax, anti-government, pro-trickle-down, pro-private-sector, de-regulation ideology which got us to where we are now.

Alan Cheah

Oakhurst