Editor, Times-Union: The folks at Fox News and Republicans are aghast that the poor won't just go away and die or at least have the decency to learn how to live on high wind and water. Meanwhile, MSNBC and Democrats are salivating over the scandalous behavior of a couple GOP governors for alleged crony capitalism, intimidation, and corruption, among other things. In other words participating in what we have been brain washed into believing is democracy. This sort of thing is fairly common by both parties starting at the lowest form of local government and spanning each level of government up to and including 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. As the saying goes, the best government money can buy. A far more important issue that rates nary a mention by the corporate media is the jobs-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership, another free trade deal involving 12 more countries to export jobs to for more poor quality made trash put together by slave labor. Have we learned nothing from Clinton’s NAFTA and his advocating admittance of China to the World Trade Organization? If this TPP passes, the sound of jobs being sucked out of the U.S. will be deafening. With the GOP smelling blood in the water over the idea of taking back the Senate in the 2014 election, the Democrats are now catering to their base. After being ignored for five years, the person currently occupying the White House is all of a sudden gung-ho on raising the minimum wage and beating to death the issue of income inequality. We already know that, we’ve lived it for years. Well gee, Barack, I’m just not buying it especially because of your support of the TPP. I remember candidate Obama promising among other things the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and promising to “put on my marching shoes” as he courted union voters. But I don't remember seeing him in Wisconsin or Indiana marching in support of teachers, nor have I seen him marching with fast food workers in their attempt to gain a living wage. Unions, what's left of them, should stop blindly supporting Democrats until they get something in return. Democrats can also stop pointing fingers at the Republicans for not extending unemployment benefits. After all they voted to pass the pea-brained compromise made between Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan which did not include unemployment benefits; just more talking out of both sides of their lying mouths. I think we can put to rest the ages-old discussion of whether the U.S. is a constitutional republic or a representative democracy. We are neither, we are an oligarchy, government ruled by a few select people, the one percent. In fact with few exceptions, neither party is fit to run the country. Janet Collins Etna Green via e-mail
