Thursday, February 24, 2011

Letter to the Editor from Caroline Warner

Budget Deficit Solutions: I'm hearing about all the choices states and the federal government have to
balance their books. And apparently all the choices get narrowed down to the backs of the common
worker and low-income people. I say NO to this ridiculous solution! We (I'm one of the low-income,
as a female senior living on my own earnings, based on 69 cents to a man's $1.00 all my life) did not
make the huge economic hole we are all in now. Wealthy CEO's and short-sighted, out-dated, ignorant
legislators made the decisions to kill off or maim our future workforce and fund military actions we
couldn't afford to sustain long term. We funded foreign countries, under the guise of “protecting” the
U.S. That's known as “bribery” to keep the oil flowing so oil corporations could continue to rip off
Americans at ever-increasing gas prices.

Then Wall Street and other banking and corporate CEO's decided that cheating and lying to workers
who want to buy homes was a good way to make a fast buck! Before that, automobile corporations
were dragging their feet not to re-tool as a way to avoid producing smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles
so they lost production to foreign companies that would cause them to lay off U.S. workers and out-
source a portion of what they were producing, all the time increasing prices to the consumer. Then
Americans who didn't want to buy gas guzzlers and who support union workers were accused of being
Un-American. What a dirty trick to divide American workers!

Re: the discussion of tax code revisions. Since the wealthy corporate executives are in a position to
buy (bribe) legislators and the legislators are among the wealthy, and have given huge tax breaks, tax
loopholes and extravagant benefit packages to themselves and their friends, they have NO interest now
in investing in a nation that they've destroyed. They're sending their money to Dubai and Switzerland!

Workers and the poor have NO way to pay for a debt they did not create. Our current national debt is
way beyond the amount of “entitlement” payments distributed to those who proved they deserve to get
it in order to stay alive. Simply put, the wealthy have been evading taxes through laws and loopholes
they put in place. Now it's “payback” time. It's time for them to replace (with interest) the handouts
they've been giving themselves for several decades!

Reducing an average family's income and benefits will not produce enough money to cover the huge
debt and interest rates incurred by the irresponsible decision-making of the wealthy. Balancing
a budget on the back of the poor and disabled is just one more outrageous act by irresponsible,
aristocratic, authoritarian, ego-maniacle and self-assured elites who set themselves above the law.
They continue to refuse to pay their fair share of taxes. That's all the rest of us ask: fair share.

OFF MY BACK! You can't steal the dignity and integrity of a hard worker. ALL Americans have the
constitutional right to justice, protection under the law, the right to human dignity and happiness. We
will do everything in our power to stop the elite from destroying our Democratic nation and replacing
it with a corporate dictatorship! We cannot allow self-interested, wealthy, hypocritical, religious right-
wingers to force our nation into becoming a 3rd world country!! in order to protect their greed and their right to money and power!