We’re losing America

We’re losing America

EDITOR:

As our stupid leaders in Washington D.C. squabble over how much to give the greedy bankers on Wall Street our taxpayer money, does anybody really understand the big picture in Washington? While politicians of both parties live in a glass bubble with top salaries and benefits, most of them don’t realize how America is becoming nothing but a Third World nation owned by foreign interests.

Many politicians say we are a global economy and must adjust with the times. Adjust to what? Becoming poverty stricken people in a third class nation? Both parties don’t seem to mind wasting billions of dollars on banks and mortgage companies that don’t really need it. But the automobile industry asks for a few bread crumbs off the table and many politicians in Washington put halos over their heads and say our last great manufacturing industry must help themselves. Meanwhile they take bribes from lobbyists who will sell us out to the highest bidder.

China and the Arabs own much of our capital in this country. One day they will pull the rug from under us and our brilliant politicians will wake up asking what happened.

The American people have nobody to blame but themselves for electing leaders to Washington that only cared about themselves. We have lost the battle. We will soon be a nation of the very rich and the very poor and watch the social upheaval in years to come. Many younger people will wonder whatever happened to this great nation.

GARY GERGEL

Youngstown

The big three grovelers

EDITOR:

It’s time to say goodbye to the Big Three: GM, Ford, and Chrysler. Instead, say hello to the Big One: The Peoples Automobile Company. That’s right. For a sum of cash, the once great automakers are selling out their companies and selling their souls to the federal government. Government, that can’t do anything right, will now be manufacturing our cars — cars no one wants and won’t buy.

Although I knew it wouldn’t happen, I longed to see the Big Three executives fly into Washington on their corporate jets and march into Congress to lay down the law in cold and blunt terms. No groveling. No begging. Just an honest explanation of how governmental interference in their businesses had brought them to this end — with the emphasis on the word “end.”

With that said, I want them to march out and take action to immediately shut down their American operations in order to concentrate on their profitable overseas markets where they are able to make and sell cars people want and will buy — cars that cannot be sold in the United States because of irrational laws, federal fuel standards, and a host of other bureaucratic obstacles.

Had my scenario played out, it wouldn’t have been long before Congress would be groveling at their feet, begging them to reopen the American plants with pledges of reduced corporate taxes, elimination of the fuel economy standards, and whatever else necessary to bring them back. But alas, that didn’t happen. Instead, we were subjected to the embarrassing spectacle of impotent men afraid of their own shadows rather than business leaders in charge of their own destiny.

This spring I will be purchasing a new car, and it most certainly won’t be from one of the groveling auto executives or The Peoples Automobile Company.

JOSEPH K. WALTENBAUGH

New Castle, Pa.