Rally signs

Dear Editor,

Most Saturdays I can be found from noon to 1 o’clock standing outside the Warren Courthouse holding a sign. I have been told by many — liberal as well as conservative — that it is a waste of time. I don’t agree.

I now hear that the signs have stupid messages. Again, I disagree. I find many of them witty as well as meaningful.

I cannot speak for others, but I will share the messages on my signs and explain why I wrote them.

1. Everyone is Entitled to Due Process Under the Law. Everyone. Including immigrants. Including illegal immigrants. That is in the Constitution. If you don’t like it, form a movement to amend it. Or move to a country without that guarantee (there are plenty of them to choose from).

2. Rape is a Crime Even if the Rapist is Rich. Rape. Sex trafficking. Especially rape of underage girls. It is wrong. Young girls feel powerless. They are threatened by the wealthy. They are not believed.

You may not care. You may not care even if the victim is your own daughter, sister, or granddaughter.

The people on that corner? We care. We will advocate for your daughter even if you will not.

3. Think About Somebody Besides Yourself. I am white, male, a U.S. citizen, not poor, and I have adequate health care. It would be easy to ignore the problems in the world. But I am Christian. I follow Jesus.

I have been commanded by Jesus to do for the least of those around us — the vulnerable, the sick, the poor, the hungry. When we serve them, we serve Jesus. Jesus came to serve, not persecute.

Ironically we are often advocating for services for the very people who yell obscenities at us as they drive by.

4. Our Parents Fought for NATO. Don’t Let Bonespurs Destroy It. My dad fought in World War II in Africa, Sicily, and Italy. At 135 pounds. Age 20. Highly decorated. The result of that war was the most successful alliance in history. NATO.

Our alliance is being torn apart by a man who avoided the draft five times citing bonespurs, an affliction that prevented his service but did not prevent him from being the self proclaimed greatest athlete in the history of New York City.

5. Our Fathers (my father and father-in-law) Fought Bravely in World War II. Both suffered from it. Hepatitis. Malaria. Bullet wound. PTSD. Others have died from Agent Orange exposure.

What does our President call them? Suckers and losers. How stupid of people to serve their country. How stupid of soldiers to allow themselves to be captured and tortured by the enemy. We have a president who likes service men and women who don’t get captured.

Missing limbs. Blind. Deaf. Disfigured. Our president wants nothing to do with them. Don’t feature them. Don’t talk about them. “No one wants to see that.”

How can you follow a man that insults the service of you or your family members? How can anyone respect a man who calls those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country suckers and a losers?

We need leadership, not dictatorship. We need compassion, not bullying. We need allies, not enemies. We need understanding, not arrogance.

James Spangler, OD,

Warren

Who pays for handouts?

Dear Editor,

This is in response to the letter “Bigger thinking here” (March 14). At first, I thought I was reading someone with economic sense asserting that microgrants — aka, taxpayer money in the form of welfare, pork, or handout windfalls for private businesses — were not an acceptable ethical, economic, and civic event to occur in a community.

This position has traditionally been attributed to the likes of Mark Twain in his satirical novel “The Gilded Age” as outlined 150 years ago. At that time, such businesses as railroads, land speculators, steamboat port locations, et al. were satirized as being infested with fraud, favoritism, graft, waste, inefficiency, and corruption due to pork barrel subsidies (what we used to call ‘grants’) being allocated by lobbying groups interacting with weaselly legislatures.

One example given by Twain involved land speculations of a steamboat port on the Mississippi resulting in the competitive lobbying efforts of citizens influencing the deliberations of the congress on its exact location. Waste, fraud, and inefficiency resulted with that interaction of government resources, corrupt self-interested actors, and the development of sites that if not chosen would — with the stroke of a pen — be rendered useless. But, due to character limitations, I digress on that classic literature.

Instead, the writer asked for bigger, fatter welfare handouts for private businesses. Unfortunately, on that point, I am not shocked by the lack of forward-thinking regarding the introduction of the Potemkin Village Plague on Warren. It seems to be so ironically common as to be the economic and ethical (mal)adaptive philosophy of many of the more educated citizens of a city like Warren.

More so, unpleasantly, the writer is involved with the Redevelopment Authority. His position is strictly this: He is in charge of the manufacture of the Potemkin Village. I reckon you could dub him the “Potemkin Village Mayor”.

This is comical because grants — again, we are talking about public money for private hands — for businesses are a modern invention (their expansion to such low-margin, high failure businesses as restaurants, bars, and coffee shops beginning in the 1990s) and track causatively with the parabolic increase of state and national debt. For those of us who have studied the basic functions of how debt works, we recognize that pork barrel welfare is allocated by bankrupt states through schemes involving the federal government via the Federal Reserve and their wonderful money printers.

Michael Hultin,

Warren