To the editor:
I can hear it now: A collective groan along streets and alleyways, followed by "How can she offer us such off the charts, untrue gobbledegook? Doesn't she realize we're in deep economic trouble with no exit possible?"
Is this really so?
It's true that you're confronted with major issues such as being caught up in un-winnable wars that are robbing you of valuable monetary assets and many human lives.
Adherents of Wall Street make out like robber barons while Main Street is caught in an economic backwash. Empty storefronts, sinkholes on streets, skyrocketing property taxes while citizens look woebegone are more than noticeable. They are cautionary.
How to respond? Really look at all that's happening. Check out the experiences of participants in trying to keep some desperate victims afloat. Search the increasingly circumspect media for truth. Shy away from vitriolic exchanges and turn to rational discussions in the style of our president who mediates more than he puts his foot down.
Measured groupthink can yield solutions when none seem within reach. Analysis, intensive forums that are participatory, conclusions based on people being heard and a winnowing of input will produce reasoned outcomes. Take them and put them to work in everyone's behalf.
One issue that causes consternation and possible feelings of annoyance is coming up with required tax payments. Take note of the news that 12 multinational corporations are avoiding such payments altogether. Then, insist on a system of progressive taxation that would make the Bush tax cuts for the rich a moot point.
Abolish offshore tax havens. Examine and exert control over unregulated free market policies that produced economic mayhem by 2008. There's a lot of work to be done.
Keep in mind that fairness has to come first. Taxes are the cost of a civilized way of living and large corporations and its CEOs need to act in civilized style along with the rest of society. The formation of community with its advantages ensues when people trust and support each other.
Huge bonuses for the heads of companies, including not-for-profit health care venues, are granted even when they are faltering and failing. On the other hand, take the measure of Mom and Pop stores where hours worked and effort expended are beyond belief and yet they are barely hanging on in this economy. Do common sense or fairness figure in here?
Protests are underway. You don't hear much about them. The Tea Party gets attention instead.
Television programs have let us down for the most part when it comes to being truthful and trustworthy in balanced ways. Luckily, you can turn to Rachel Maddow for help with this. PBS, Global Post and Link TV do their jobs, too.
Your money flowing to the Pentagon exceeds $1.2 trillion overall in the context of an overall budget of $3 trillion with both parties agreeing to a spending increase of $516 billion over last year's. How can you rein in such spending? One approach is to present such figures to the public, ungarnished with talk of "making you safe".
Over 800 U.S. military bases exist throughout the world. Our country simply can't police every nook and cranny everywhere. The expense of this can't be borne.
Multinational cooperation is called for along with mutually agreed upon ways to communicate and effect changes that benefit more and more people. Terrorists would fade away as they lose a reason for being.
Health care for all has to be a goal, too. Look up the expense of that in Sweden, a country where the populace is deemed the most contented of all the nations. The population here really wouldn't be coddled by universal healthcare.
They wouldn't be the victims either of a government that interferes with their freedom and ability to come up with creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Consider the fact that the military-industrial-congressional complex have stymied many efforts at cutting the budget and will resist any effort to bring about change to the health of our bodies and contents of our wallets.
Break free of this and proclaim the fundamental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Being alive is primary and being alive in the best possible ways contributes to the strength and vigor of society.
You should all be part of that so the need to guarantee a chance at good health along with supporting one another in the pursuit of every issue brought up here is paramount.
The issues are waiting to be picked up and acted upon.
CYNTHIA FISK
Chapel Street,
Gloucester
