Letters on Clinton, Trump, Federal Reserve, war

Clinton’s economy plan is ‘interesting’

The Hillary Clinton plan to improve the economy is a very interesting approach. She has stated that she will create millions of new jobs by using money from taxes on corporations and the ultra-rich. The implication is that the rest of the taxpayers will not be affected and millions of new jobs will be created.

The thing her campaign ad does not say is that corporations do not pay taxes; they simply pass it on to the consumer. What will happen when the prices go up, sales go down, and each company loses sales resulting in a need for fewer employees?

The export tax, as it is called, on products made by U.S. companies overseas is particularly interesting. If this tax were at a level that would make it unprofitable to make products abroad and force companies to manufacture products in the U.S., it would require a double-digit tax increase. Even if the overseas tax doesn’t bring jobs home, Americans are going to pay this tax also.

Even President Kennedy, who wanted to create jobs and encourage economic growth, knew enough to lower taxes. Raising taxes reduces growth and jobs.

Clinton’s economic plan still needs work.

Trump syndrome

It is apparent to me – from an assessment by prominent psychologists I recently heard – that the Republican candidate for president suffers from a pathological disorder: namely, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, verging on psychosis. (Look it up.)

The question is: Is there a complementary disorder present in the supporters of this demagogue who is without empathy? I cannot name it, but it is apparent, in their own lack of personal capacity for difference, that they have also fallen for his lack of empathy, his self-aggrandization as the only one who can satiate their hatred. They have been swept up in an hypnotic desire for “strong man” leadership. They have embraced an autocratic ideology.

Money flood

Those of you who only read what the media feeds you need to wake up and realize that there has been a 10,000-year flood in America … and flood levels are continuing to rise. It is devastating millions of families and wiping out their futures. And the federal government is doing nothing about it. In fact, the federal government is the cause of this flood.

I am talking about the criminal flood of paper money that the Federal Reserve is pumping out every day to fill up the already overflowing deep pockets of crony capitalists and Wall Street bankers while draining the increasingly meager purchasing power from middle-class savings accounts and the pension funds and retirement accounts of labor. Nothing like this has ever happened in world history.

While federal governments are more than happy to counterfeit more money to buy federal and corporate bonds and even stocks to prop up soaring deficits as well as the bond and stock markets around the world, their presses seem to have trouble counterfeiting enough to assist the everyday folks who are in real need – like those in Louisiana who just went through a 1,000-year flood.

Is this how you want your government behaving? If not, do something about it.

Harvest of war

After a second reading of Ted Hirschfield’s poems, I felt motivated to call reader attention to this soldier’s perceptions about World War II. The poet was born in Prussia, Germany, in 1941. But he didn’t write his poems about the war until he recollected his memories 50 years later. He described what war is like and how it is experienced through a child’s eyes.

In 1991, he confessed: “We are the children of the war, the war that will not go away.” How similar that sounds to us, with the U.S. experience ever since Vietnam, if not earlier.

Is it any less true for citizens of North America, whose governments exported violence and damage repeatedly to Colombia, Japan, Vietnam and the Near East? Why should we be surprised that we are now reaping the harvest of what our country’s military technology has dished out to other humans in horrendous proportions?

The wars have come back to haunt us with a vengeance in multiple deaths that appear to be mindless and erratic. With a lengthy series of school and other shootings, we find at last that we fear to desecrate the dead by our apathy. We want to pay attention.

Hirschfield describes “a psychic journey from loss, dislocation, and suffering through the healing catharsis of art, which transmutes all grief into beauty.”

Chairs needed

Many local senior and community centers are badly in need of basic armchairs, such as those found in waiting rooms and conference centers all over the city. When the time arises for a construction or renovation project, and you wish to find a new home for any chairs that are still in fine, usable condition, I would urge you to take the time to see if there is a place, not only in Wichita but the surrounding rural areas, that might have a need.

Many of our seniors spend hours each day on old, cast-off chairs that are not only uncomfortable but precarious. Keep these small establishments in mind. I know they would appreciate your concern.

This story was originally published August 26, 2016 at 5:03 AM with the headline "Letters on Clinton, Trump, Federal Reserve, war."