Wanted: A New Kind of Candidate
Re: “Beyond Banning Soft Money”
2/26/02

Right on! Finally someone is writing about how we need to make it possible for those “without access to wealth” to run for office, especially for higher offices like the presidency. I totally agree. Why should it be that you have to either have money or know a lot of people with money in order to run for office?

We do need to change how candidates run for office. Now I read the news every day and I’m out and about in my community, but I never hear of any “meet the candidate” meetings or neighborhood meetings. It seems that if you want to voice an opinion to a candidate, you have to join a Democratic or Republican political club. There are campaign offices for two such candidates right across the street from my house, but even there the candidates are inaccessible. It is impossible to walk into one of these places without being bombarded by campaign managers and volunteers with flyers on how great their candidate is.

I wish someone would come along and say, “I’m a good listener”, “I’m a hard worker”, “I know how to write a proposal and push it through”, “I’m going to spend more time in my community than in Sacramento (or Washington)”. Where is such a person?

Sue Voelkel

 

Enron Insure
Re: “Ken Lay’s Nest Egg”
2/21/02

Kenny-Boy’s annuities may not be all that safe. It is looking more and more like the entire Enron crew was engaged in an “ongoing criminal enterprise” as defined by RICO guidelines. If so, the proceeds he put into those annuities may be tainted.

Robert Lewis

 

Lousy Lefties
Re: “The Progressive Duck-and-Cover”
12/5/00

I think the reason we don’t hear from progressives is because they’re aren’t any. The days of an opposing party are long gone.

Mary Niesluchowska

 

That the Democrats are a bunch of hopeless wimps is self-evident, so one wonders what Gitlin’s point is here. On one hand he states that only Congress can declare a war, yet only paragraphs later says that Democrats are afraid to act while the country is at war (which it isn’t).

What sort of sense does that make?

It is obvious that these cowards, the Democrats, are so scared of losing their precious positions of power that they have no spleen to stand up for what is right: to tell GWB he’s not yet the nation’s dictator. But at this rate he might well end up being just that.

Nicholas Downey