Letters to the SJ Mercury News Editor and Congresswoman Lofgren

Thesse four letters were email 9/7/08
I don't know right now if any were published.
By the way, check out my articles at http://www.helium.com/users/410399/show_articles

1
Editor,

I was surprised that Jim McCandless (Monday 9/8/08, letters) gripes about having to see articles by Krugman, Steinem, and (voicing a leftist viewpoint, he claims) the far right extremist Pat Buchanan. How I wish I picked up the paper that day if this is true. Everytime I see the Merc, articles and editorials by right wingers like Hansen and Navarette clog it up and render it unreadable. ON the day McCandless’s letter was printed, I count 7 total letters printed. Four (the majority) were unabashedly pro-GOP. The fifth was largely pro-Palin, with a barely detectable tongue-in-cheek swipe at her. Another was apolitical (on lighting in Los Gatos) and the last appeared leftist, and was conveniently cut off mid sentence very early in the letter, another casualty of media consolidation. Why right-wingers would see the corporate media as advocating anything other than the same failed radical free market purist agenda is a mystery.

2

Margaret Fletcher (9/8/08, letters) blames Democrats for the budget impasse. If the state GOP can find inefficiencies to cut, I’m on board. But the only cuts that come close top budget-balance are to cut education and health. The real sources of the deadlock are: we require a 2/3 vote to pass a budget or a tax, and GOP legislators signed the Grover Norquist no new tax pledge. So it seems the only way out is for Democrats to agree to cut vital life-saving programs. We should pursue this elitist class war the GOP is waging and achieve the GOP cheap labor dream of turning society into the third world. For example, who hires illegal immigrants? Answer: rich right-wing business owners.

3

We should pursue the GOP cheap labor dream of turning America into the third world by trying their most extreme ideas: deport all illegal immigrants. Schools are open only to the wealthy - for them a voucher actually leads to an education since they can afford the rest of their private school tuition. Bleed our country dry with childish whimsical wars of choice, borrowing from the Chinese throughout and throwing off occasional trillions to our wealthiest fraction of one percent. All consumer regulations should dissolve; no one except aristocrats should have health care. No one should pay taxes or expect roads, bridges or FEMA to function. Destroy the lower-income 99% and give everything to the top 1%. Third world, here we come!

4

I would say we should try the GOP dream of changing America into a third-world country, but we already gave them a chance for the last decade. For six years they controlled every aspect of government and drove America into the ground. At the beginning of this reign of willful incompetence I said it will be interesting to see how they blame the left for the problems the right causes while running everything. I was wrong; their strategy is not so much to blame the left for the scandalous disasters of the right. Instead they admit the GOP caused the disasters, yet only the GOP can clean up the mess. With a compliant media, they are getting away with this absurd logical quagmire.

Email to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren 9/17/08

Thank you for voting yes on 6604.

It is amazing the lengths to which the media will go to trumpet the non solutions of offshore oil and ANWR that might bring down gas a nickel per gallon in more than a decade. At the same time there is a total blackout on communicating to America that many experts believe regulating speculators will lead to a 50% decrease in the price of oil in a matter of weeks.

Let's please try this. I know the veto threat looms - the fight must be won through the media. Someone must use whatever pedestal of notoriety they've achieved to say simply, let's try this solution. Everything else is window dressing in comparison.

If regulating speculators fails to achieve the expected results and takes two months to lower gas prices only 40%, do you think the American people would be dancing in the streets for that type of failure?

Think about this - the only argument I've seen against this is (false) that transportation, airline, trucking compaines need this market to be unregulated to hedge costs. Look who is sponsoring the stopoilspeculationnow.com effort: it is the very transportation, airline, trucking companies these phony free market purists claim to protect. The airline and truckers want oil speculation regulated, and so would the American people if the media gave it one-tenth the attention they give to non solutions, or they did to the arcana of the Iowa Caucus system.

David Moglen

Assoc. Economics Professor
Foothill and Evergreen Valley Colleges