Letters to the Editor
uprwesidguy
Published Letters: 9 Editor's Choice: 2
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Democrats must campaign on this!
[Read the article: Be very afraid]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Democrats can only win national elections if we restrict our national campaining to populist economic issues and their immediate consequences. I don't mean that we should abandon other issues; I refer only to campaign tactics. This article shows a great example of the right thing to campaign on: the abandonment of public health. There are so many daily examples, with this horrible scenario even playing to the affluent.
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Who's to blame?
[Read the article: Ask the Pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I dunno but I'd feel a lot better about skirting multiple saftey margins and about the composites and all of it if this country's government was run by people who weren't intent on destroying government.
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Alaska Airlines maintenance...Is there a principle here?
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Patrick,
I don't know if Hermanns is pro-union like me, but I would be hysterial too if a cost cutting measure had threatened my life. Cost cutting won't knock all of the airplanes out of the air at once, so it will never be obvious that there is a problem. In fact, the reduction in safety might be very slow and subtle, like global warming. Therefore, as with global warming, it is best to stick with a principle. In this case, the principle is that long-term unionized airline maintenance workers are safer than people working for subcontractors. And what about the mine disaster Wednesday? There were 200 violations, but the mine wasn't out of compliance because there were too few inspectors to declare it to be so. What if there were 210 violations, or 190? Is there a point where you say that things just aren't being done in the best interests of the public? Every twenty years they paint the bridges in New York...after chunks of metal start falling on the heads of those below (but only small chunks). Is this OK? At what point do principles kick in?
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Glen Beck
[Read the article: Beckoning Fox News]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, his opinion about ten victim relatives of 9-11 being opportunists is a very mainstream opinion. There was even a long article, perhaps in New York magazine, about a few clowns exploiting the death of their relatives to raise money for right-wing causes and to create obstacles to every decent proposal for a memorial that wasn't totally funerial and right-wing. It got to the point that even the Republican mayor was attacking them for being obstructionist.
As to the point about the rioting over the credit cards, I think this is a petty example, but there are some very contradictory issues about the Black Nationalism being pushed in New Orleans even seen from a very liberal perspective. Hundreds of millions of dollars should not be spent so people can live below sea level regardless of the race of their state senators or mayor.
I'm not sure, based on these comments, that Glen Beck is that far off the mark. I would have to hear more.
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People do want explanations
[Read the article: How to run good]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Surely, the Dems could benefit from nominating extroverted people with good public speaking skills, however, "Middle America" seems so ignorant to liberals for several reasons even though most people do crave explanations.
First, all the real explanations involve critiques of capitalism in one way or another, and people have long been denied access to such critiques. Most people rightly believe that capitalism and imperialism are the source of the success they do have. Of course, most would be better off with a different system, and certainly most poeple in the world and the planet would be, but given the political realities, most people really aren't really interested, and I can't blame them.
Second, having no labor unions, there is no one to explain to them their real interests. I believe that people can understand their intersts, but few can originate that understanding. Personally, while I am a liberal for emotional reasons, I can't honestly claim to have worked out in dollars and cents whether I would be better off financially in ten years if the Republicans or the Democrats won the next presidential election. The choice is obvious, without deep analysis, only for the poorest people.
Third, historically, the great majority of the populations of all imperialist countries have supported the imperialists until the costs have become much greater than they are now with Iraq.
Fourth, most people don't care that the Iraq war was started based on lies. Most people consider that the lies were clever and necessary to trick the Eastern defeat monkeys into supporting the war. Sixty thousand Americans died in Viet Nam, but are the lies concerning the Tonkin Gulf considered a big deal? Nope. Personally, I am waiting with bated breath for the American people to rise up in outrage at the likelyhood that the U.S. Navy sank the Battleship Maine to get an imperialist war with Spain going. Most people understand that some clever strategem is needed to get our diverse population to pull together.
So, I think that people do want explanations, not just changes in style. But, only a labor/socialist party could even state the real explanations withoug gagging. Unfortunately, we have a political system that does not reward third parties or coalition-building and the political evolution that comes with it. If fact, our political system is so rigid that it has only agreed to change after prolonged struggles in the streets: Civil Rights movement, eight-hour day movement, recognition of industrial labor, exempting educated youth from fighting imperialist wars, etc.
The next "liberal" president will most likely privatize social security!
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Don't attach stuff to carbon!
[Read the article: I, Nanobot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What are pesticides? They are poisons attached to carbon, especially halogen gasses (chlorine, etc). Amoral business interests have nearly poised our environment and us by attaching dangerous stuff to carbon. But where there is profit to be made, "learning lessons" or being "conservative" is easy to dismiss as fears of an old fuddy-duddy.