Letter from Glada Costales
Politics – April 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Editors:
I heard on CNN last week that our federal government’s debt — the accumulation of past budget shortfalls — now totals more than $7 trillion. Do you know how many 0’s this is? $7,000,000,000,000.00. It is certainly immoral to run a national debt exceeding $7 trillion, every penny of which our children and grandchildren will be responsible for paying back.
Since the Bushites have taken over the White House we have seen the Clinton budget surplus of $230 billion at the end of 2000 disappear. We have seen over 2 million jobs outsourced to foreign countries. We have seen tax cuts designated for the wealthy and corporations. We no longer have a “democracy by the people, for the people.” We have quickly become a country which is being run “by the corporations for the corporations.”
The concept of “liberal media” has become an urban myth. All our national media are owned and controlled by corporations. The talking heads we see and hear on television and radio are merely speaking what their corporate handlers want the public to hear.
I am beginning to understand why some people are starting to compare the United States today with Germany in the 1930s. Some of the warning signs of “fascism” include preemptive war and militant nation alism, contempt for international law and treaties, alleged terrorist attacks much like the Nazi burning of the Reichstag to instill fear in their own people and blaming the Jews for it; the suspension of liberties; fantasy economic growth, based on unprecedented budget deficits and massive military spending. Benito Mussolini’s definition of “fascism” was “corporatism, because it binds together the interests of corporations and states.”
During the 1930’s Germany and America both faced financial and political crises … the Great Depression hit both countries. During that period Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany responded to those conditions by empowering corporations and rewarding the society’s richest individuals, privatizing many government functions, stifling dissent and creating an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America responded to the Great Depression by passing minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforcing anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and creating Social Security to become the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure and promote the arts and replant forests.
Glada Costales
Cañon City