Dear Senator Sanders,
I realize that the deadline for essay submission has passed, but I would like to present my ideas for your consideration in any case. As this essay cannot be considered for your contest, I reserve the right to exceed the stated limit of 500 words.
As you said in your recent email, “this country has a $1.3 trillion deficit and a $13.8 trillion national debt.” It is my firm belief that any attempt to balance the budget in a fair and responsible way must begin with fundamental change in the way that business is conducted in Washington, on Wall Street, and on Main Street. Our culture is a culture of greed and fear, a culture that has largely abandoned the spirit of men like John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was murdered 47 years ago last week because he fought for peace and justice, spoke out for the common man and refused to back down when he was confronted by those who were corrupted by power and greed. He understood that “if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” Indeed I reject the notion that we live in a free society when we are faced with the tyrannical behavior of “our” government. How can we call our society free when our president gives authorizes the assassination of our fellow citizens? How can we call our nation “a light unto the world” when our military runs prisons all over the world where the inmates are tortured for months on end, without hope of reprisal or rescue? Is it any wonder that the majority of our leaders have abandoned the needs of the poor in this country when its citizens are treated like cattle at our airports by the TSA; their constitutional rights routinely violated in the name of “security” by the police, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies?
Mr. Sanders we must recognize that the men you speak of so passionately, our “wealthy friends” who are are corrupted by power and greed, who relentlessly fight for more power and more wealth at the expense of all else, who seem to care about nothing but themselves, actually care about nothing but themselves. These men are predators, and the other citizens of this nation, the innocent men and women murdered by our illegal and unjust wars of aggression, of which Iraq and Afghanistan are only the most recent, our oceans, our skies, and the very land we walk on is their prey. We must abandon the notion that we can compromise with these people. Their actions must be criminalized, they must be prosecuted, and they must be imprisoned as soon as possible.
As you say, there is a war in America, and the middle class is losing. People of conscience and decency are losing. One fair and responsible action we could take to balance the budget would be to reform the tax policy in this country, which is becoming more regressive each year. The poor and middle class are taxed heavily, and it is primarily the wealthy who benefit from those taxes. We must work to institute truly progressive tax policies designed to heavily tax non-work income sources, and most especially those individuals and corporations that fall in the upper tax brackets.
We must cut back military spending and limit it to what may be truly classified as “defense spending”. I propose that all offensive weapons programs be terminated immediately. The United States accounts for approximately half of all military spending in the world, it is the largest supplier of arms and armaments, and military spending accounts for between 20% and 54% of all federal spending, depending on the source. Our “wealthy friends” make untold billions of dollars by selling weapons to our own government, to the governments of our friends and allies, and even to nations that may one day be our enemies.
We must end military aid to Israel. The approximately $3 billion dollars that we send to Israel each year is used to buy weapons from our “wealthy friends”, and these weapons are used to slaughter innocent men, women and children in Gaza and the West Bank.
I support your efforts to expose the actions of our “wealthy friends” through the amendment you introduced to the Wall Street reform law, and I propose that we must go further than that. Perhaps the most important thing we could do to save our economy would be to end the Federal Reserve system and restore the federal government's power as the sole issuer of legal tender in this nation. Since the federal reserve was created in 1913 the dollar has lost 96% of its value through inflation, and this is the biggest tax of all. We have lost our buying power and our wealth has been burned up by a fiat currency. The dollar is nearly worthless. The federal government must act immediately to restore responsible monetary policy. If the dollar collapses into hyperinflation we truly will become, in your words, a banana republic, or worse! The Federal Reserve is responsible for the debt crisis in this country, it is responsible for the sub prime crisis, and it is responsible for the theft of our nation's wealth by the bankers who run it. Thomas Jefferson understood this in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
If you truly care about the poor and the middle class of this nation, I challenge you to introduce legislation to Congress calling for the repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the gradual creation of a new currency, one backed by something with real value.
Sincerely,
James D Lovinsky
