I read with interest the syndicated columnists articles and how they are painting a rosy picture about all the good the stimulus packages are doing.

Yet when you delve into the facts and spend a little time sifting through the facts, I wonder what kind of Kool-Aid they were drinking as they wrote their articles.

I live in Pinal County, Arizona in the winter and I take the main paper that covers the county while I am here in Oregon. Now back in January, the Obama presidency froze foreclosures and told the banks to work on re-fi loans for those people that were underwater with their mortgages.

About a month ago they lifted that ban on foreclosures. This is the last four weeks of foreclosures in Pinal County: Four weeks ago, 22, three weeks ago, 55; two weeks ago, 119; last week, 155.

Then if you delve into the facts, there are over 10 million mortgages that are under water, and the majority of those will be foreclosed on over the next three years, that is worse than the last go round.

Then you have the credit card problem where about 40 percent of the card holders are behind in their payments.

The commercial real estate market is coming apart at the seams, sky scrapers are being foreclosed on, how bad is that? A large sky scraper could come close to having the same value of all the houses in Umatilla County, it would not take to many of those to break a state.

I am sure you have heard the news that the housing market is getting better; not true. Look at the facts, Cash for Clunkers helped the auto market while it was running but now it is in the hole and dealerships are going broke. Well the $8,000 incentive program has sold a lot of houses but it is over in a month, and guess what will happen to the housing market? It will stop.

All of this is being done by a bunch of people in Wash. D.C. that have never run a business and they are spending your tax dollars like there is no tomorrow. I would wager that every man, woman and child now owes over a million dollars to pay off this disaster.

We have had change. Did you vote for it? Do you like what you got? Your great grandkids will never be able to pay off this debt.

If you want real change, vote for common sense in 2010 before it is too late.

James Burns

Weston

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