Editor, Times-Union: Obviously the Eppenbaugh person has no intentions of answering my question or is unable to understand them, so I’ll move on. I did not go to the website you gave me because the words “mainstream media” raised a red flag. You refer to our media as mainstream, I refer to it as corporate media. Corporations own our media. They have slashed budgets for investigative journalism leaving us with filtered, censored, corporate trash and celebrity gossip camouflaged as news. I could refer you to “Openleft” or “Firedoglake” but they would register zero on the Eppenbaugh believability meter; thus rendering each other’s sources useless. Did you not read my letter? I said Barack Obama is not a progressive and went on to list reasons why he is not. To this list add the appointment of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, as some sort of jobs czar, whose chief accomplishments have been creating jobs in China and tax evasion. President Obama’s idea of wealth redistribution is the same as George Bush and the GOP, taking from those who have little or nothing and giving it to the wealthy and multinational corporations. I readily admit to being a progressive. It is shameful that 25 percent of our children are on food stamps, that seniors and veterans are deprived of colas while medical and living expenses skyrocket, that 45,000 people die each year because they cannot afford healthcare, our educational system is being gutted, our infrastructure in need of repair, and most Americans have a decreased standard of living. All the while the 400 richest families have accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth, CEO pay of large corporations is more than 300 times that of the average worker, the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, we have ever increasing income inequality, and two-thirds of large corporations pay no income taxes. So in answer to redistribution of wealth, I say, you betcha. President Obama bailed out the auto companies, not the unions. While this saved some union jobs, GM promptly showed its appreciation by moving more production of vehicles bound for the U.S. market to China, Mexico, South Korea and Japan. See Mr. Haskins’ excellent letter on unions in the March 30 issue. You portray me as a freeloading, parasitic, welfare queen. For the record I have worked hard nearly all my adult life, paid my taxes and bills on time, tried to be responsible, productive citizen, and managed to save a little for retirement. My efforts have been rewarded with joblessness, no health insurance and relegated to living off my savings, which has resulted in a rather hefty tax liability. On April 18, as I reach for my checkbook, I will try not to dwell on the fact my congressman, Marlin Stutzman, will receive a welfare check in the form of an ag subsidy. I will try not to resent the fact that income tax evasion sent Al Capone to prison, yet today it will net an appointment as secretary to the U.S. Treasury and a seat on the Supreme Court. For the past 30 years Wall Street, big business, the wealthy, lobbyists and politicians had themselves a big party based on privatized profits. Now the rest of us are told that we must socialize the debt for the clean up from the party. We were not invited to the party, we did not make the mess. On the interest of national “sacrifice” they should be told to clean up their own mess. Janet Collins Etna Green
