Letter:

Our country is in grave danger.

Not because we have a scary president that’s being impeached. The question now and for many years is whether or not our citizens have confidence in our elected president and representatives? Are these politicians dedicated to the common good as required by our Constitution or are they, as I believe, dedicated to the financialization of everything  for the profits of the multinational corporations along with the giant banks that are too big to fail? 

President Eisenhower warned us that without our vigilance, the military-industrial complex would take over every aspect of our lives — even the spiritual. Thus, the values of loving our neighbor or ministering to people with a different identity (like Jonah) have been sacrificed to anonymous worshipers of mammon.

Rather than thinking the military-complex is just composed of military contractors, we must realize that the drive to industrialize everything, including our agriculture and food system, has resulted in, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized, corporations and big banks acting like our government is just another one of their subsidiaries. (Please Google his speeches.) 

You can hear economists claim that corporations’ bottom line and their stock price are indicators of a healthy economy, yet it’s OK now to ignore this false prosperity being generated by a trillion-dollar federal deficit. 

Besides, there really are no such things anymore as American corporations or Chinese corporations or American intellectual property. The stocks of these corporations are owned and globally traded anonymously.

Conservative politicians point fingers at poor people accusing them of having no “personal responsibility.” How cruel. The faceless victims of this political cruelty are many children born into this world with inadequate financial support or, worse yet, the scars of being unwanted.

Corporations have no personal responsibility because they are not persons and they never die. This simple fact escaped the conservative majority of our U.S. Supreme Court in their Citizens United decision.

Corporations outsource jobs to countries paying less than two bucks an hour keeping wages low or meaningful jobs nonexistent. They allow global supplies of corn and soybeans, including those raised in former Brazilian rainforest, to keep prices devastatingly low in order to feed their hogs, chickens and cattle in giant confinements and feedlots.

There is only one presidential candidate who the people can trust to restore our sovereignty and guide the nation in times of trouble. He is someone who has voted against all the corporate free trade agreements and high-tech corporate defense scams.

I plead with independents, Republicans and Democrats to join me at 7 p.m. Feb. 3 at your local Democratic caucus in supporting the candidate who has always represented “we the people” — Sen. Bernie Sanders.

George Naylor  

Churdan