Thanks for your letter about your belief that balancing the budget is a bottom-line consideration of yours. I just have one question: If your mother were in need of lifesaving medical care that would cause your budget to "unbalance," would you refuse it? As a nurse and midwife, I have discovered, as I'm sure that you have, that, on occasion, long-term survival necessitates short-term improprieties. This time in our history is one of those occasions.
It's going to take extraordinary measures to rescue ourselves from the global and humanitarian destruction we are looking at—from the environment, the economy and international relations to human health, the health-care system and education, just as a partial list.
We must make big expenditures (and wise ones) to save ourselves and the planet. Meanwhile, we must also move to reduce the power of corporate and economic monopolies and make individual and collective moves towards local and sustainable businesses and lifestyles.
Pamela Plowman Weston
Hailey