Throw the rascals out

Throw the rascals out

EDITOR:

Our pending demise as a world leader was summed up quite well when Xue Chen (Shanghai Institute of International Studies) said “The U.S. has a lot to ask from China. On the other hand, The U.S. has little to offer China.” Sadly it often takes an outsider to tell us the truth since our elected officials won’t.

In October of this year the unemployment rate was 10.2 percent, but was actually around 17.5 percent if those workers who had just given up or those who were forced to settle for part-time work had been included in the statistics. The unemployment rate has exceeded 10 percent twice since World War II, today and in the 1980s. Manufacturing jobs often pay much better than those in the service sector and once constituted 19 percent of total payroll but is now only 9 percent.

Foreclosures are at an all time high and are about seven times higher than they were in 1982. President Obama has mentioned that instituting a public work’s program similar to the one from the Great Depression may be needed to get Americans back to work. The proposal is only a temporary remedy and does not create jobs in the long term.

Between 1998 and 2004, 43 percent of members who left Congress became lobbyists. Unless one is very wealthy, a candidate for Congress needs to accept corporate campaign contributions during an election if they wish to win. Nothing is truly free in life and the supposedly generous corporate contributors expect to be repaid in some form. Corporate income taxes went from being 35 percent of federal receipts in 1945 to 7.8 percent today.

Greed is a human trait that left unchecked on a national level leads to civil unrest and anarchy. After each congressional race, both major political parties will put a spin on what the election results imply.

I propose that all of our presently elected congressmen be voted out of office regardless of their party affiliation. I sincerely believe that this approach would send a clear and very loud message that our elected officials are supposed to be public servants and not the other way around. Both major parties would have to admit that the general public is fed up with their usual way of doing business.

It is very unfair as to what the general public has had to go through with the loss of jobs and will continue to do so for only God knows how long. The only recourse that the general public has is at the voting booth.

A doctor once told me that there are two things that motivate people, money and pain. My question to the public is: “Have you had enough pain?”

GERALD HEITKAMP

Youngstown

As the Earth turns

EDITOR:

I do not need a lecture on global warming. I have seen Lake Erie.

Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes were formed when the ice age ended and the glaciers “retreated.” All that ice covering most the country melted. Not a coal fired factory, steel mill or automobile anywhere in the entire world, and the ice still melted.

Global warming is a natural, cyclical phenomenon. The glaciers melted because the world warmed. No fossil fuels burning to cause it. It just happened.

The world warms and the world cools. How arrogant to believe that mere mortals can control that.

DON JOHNSON

Liberty Township