Let me get this right. We must cut spending on children, education and social services, and deny health care to millions of Americans, and watch as their jobs are sent overseas—and yet apparently we can afford to throw billions and billions of dollars into two illegal and unwinnable wars. Oh, and also maintain approximately a thousand military bases in foreign countries around the world. Can anyone tell me—for just one example—how we can possibly need 268 bases in Germany?
And at home, while our government chisels away at what remains of the middle class, Wall Street and the big casinos—sorry, banks—and giant corporations gleefully celebrate huge profits and soaring bonuses. I read with interest that the 20 "top" hedge fund managers paid themselves each a billion dollars last year. I also learned that the richest 400 people in the nation now account for more wealth than about 200 million of the rest of us. Is there something wrong with this picture?
Watching on television the brave people of Wisconsin out in the streets of Madison protesting the stripping of their legal rights, I realized that we are watching the death throes—the deliberate destruction—of the democracy which was once the pride and glory of this young country. We are witnessing the takeover by corporate capitalism of everything we hold dear and honorable and true and fair and—American.
What are we to do? What can we do?
Diana Fassino
Ketchum
