Dear editor,
Big election coming up. One party panders to religion, patriotism, and rednecks. If this party takes power everybody will have a Bible, an American flag, and a gun. This party talks the most about freedom, but it wants to come into our bedrooms. If the other party comes to power the government will take care of all our needs and borrow from China to pay for it.
Of course these are just stereotypes, but the extent to which they are true shows that both parties appeal to our gut and not our brains. They both focus on getting votes for the next election instead of solving problems for the next generation. We elect people who promise to preserve and expand entitlements while at the same time promising tax cuts. Our common sense should tell us that this is impossible, at least in the long run. If we want goodies, we should expect to pay for them somehow.
We lament the hypocrisy of politicians who defend entitlements that are unsustainable and offer tax cuts that don't add up. Any politician who seriously proposes any entitlement cuts or tax hikes (euphemisticaly called "revenue") will lose the election.
Our country is going bankrupt. At the federal level it is due mostly to medicare and the unnecessary trillion-dollar wars. At the state and local level it is due mostly to the bloated public employee pensions. We see the wave of city bankruptcies starting in California. Other states will follow. We are in a hole so deep that it will require both entitlement cuts and tax hikes on almost everybody. But we don't want to hear the truth, so we elect people who lie to us. We can't kick the can down the road much longer. The politicians are just a reflection of us. Like Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and it is us!"
Bruce Williams,
Warren