Another View on Afghanistan Policy

Ed. note: Occasionally I post letters from other writers whose views are compatible with mine. Here is one.

Mr. President,

If it were not for the war in Vietnam, Lyndon Baines Johnson would be remembered as a great president (remember Medicare, the War on Poverty, the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and space exploration).

One day people may likewise say, “If it were not for the war in Afghanistan, Barack Obama would be remembered…”

We are at a crossroads. If you would do community organizing among Pashtun people, you might hear that malnutrition is a greater concern than terrorism, as Pakistani-British author Tariq Ali has pointed out. Ali calls your administration’s expansion of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan “inexplicable.” He warns that the widely hated military presence is destabilizing our allies there and in Pakistan.

Please have the courage to help our country step down from a doomed policy. We will survive and prosper only through respect, moral leadership and cooperation, not endless attempts to project power without empowering the people. Stop the cold-blooded “drone” attacks; stop all attacks and disengage from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

It is no doubt true that disengagement and policy reorientation would expose your administration to even more vocal hostility from “conservatives” on the Right. That kind of hostility will happen in any case. You need to take firm stands that will activate people to defend you and defend democracy. A reorientation to realistic policies will create a surge of good will and trust, here and abroad. Please help us build a sustainable future, and disengage from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

Garrett D.
Chicago, IL

Meetings Are Not All Excessive

March 16, 2009

Dear Senator Durbin, Senator Burris, and Congresswoman Schakowsky,

I have been as appalled as anyone at the reports of excesses of various corporations receiving bailout funds. But I also work in the events industry. I’m a small-time event planner and I do occasional corporate work. I have friends and colleagues, also small-time operators, whose bread and butter is corporate meetings and events.

I can see the wisdom of prohibiting holiday and entertainment events for corporations using bailout funds, or at least putting a financial cap on these items. Conferences and meetings, however, often serve a legitimate business purpose, and huge numbers of people rely on them for employment. Many of those jobs are low-wage service jobs: coat check, delivery driver, bellhop, waiter, desk clerk. And some of them are better-paid and/or union jobs: janitor, electrician, projectionist, chef, pilot.

The legislation that Senator Kerry proposes prohibiting the use of bailout funds for meetings effectively tags an entire industry as unnecessary, at least in the public perception. It’s an industry that has been hit hard this year, anyway, and lots of people are losing jobs. (A friend of mine who worked for her sister and brother-in-law at a corporate events firm got laid off–by her sister! That’s how bad it is.) I hope that if this bill shows up in committee or on the floor of the legislature it will be revised so that it can help the events industry while curbing the excesses that repulse so many of us.

Sincerely,
Lisa Gordon

Policy in Afghanistan

Ed. note: The White House website now permits letters of up to 5,000 characters, a much more practical length.

February 25, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

I agreed with many things in your speech last night, but disagree vehemently with the part of your foreign policy that deals with Afghanistan. Occupation in Afghanistan will make us no safer than does occupation in Iraq. In substance, there is very little different between the two wars. In both cases, we invaded a country that had done us no direct harm, subdued the inhabitants, and set up a government favorable to our own interests. Despite all our efforts, the government in Afghanistan has not succeeded. In my opinion, it cannot succeed because it is not an indigenous, democratically elected government.

The standard line that the 9/11 attackers came from and were trained in Afghanistan is only partly true. If we actually know their identities, most of them were Saudi and have disagreements with the American government because of our policies in that country. Afghanistan was merely a convenient location for them to plot from. And it would never have been in the control of the Taliban had the US government not backed the Muslim fundamentalists with arms, money, and training against the Soviets in the 1980s. We have meddled enough in that country to no good effect. We must find a way to remove our troops and let the Afghanis determine their own destiny for a change.

We need a new Marshall Plan for the 21st century. We are wasting our money on war and need it more for priorities at home as you outlined in yesterday’s speech. Foreign aid is much cheaper than war and much more effective. Diplomacy, law enforcement, and foreign aid for education, health care, and economic development will better reduce the threat of terrorism than any amount of invasion and destruction.

Sincerely,
Lisa G.
Chicago, IL

More Thoughts on Economic Recovery

February 10, 2009

Dear Congresswoman Schakowsky:

Now that the big spending package seems to be moving toward a bill to be reconciled between the House and Senate versions, I would like to weigh in on it again.

The cable TV talking heads and everyone connected to investment firms, from all I have heard, are uniformly opposed to the bill in its current form. Many of them lament that it will do nothing for the stock market. Today, even, the stock market fell after the bill passed the Senate. To me, this is the best recommendation for the bill in its current form.

Past so-called stimulus packages have been heavy with tax cuts but have included no spending. The stock market has loved those, probably because those bills benefitted the people and businesses of Wall Street directly. This bill seems to contain benefits for those of us who are not Wall Street businesses or high-rolling investors. For that, I support it.

In my opinion, the tax cuts are not necessary. The last two attempts to stimulate the economy came in the form of tax cuts. If tax cuts had worked, we would not need to do anything further toward the recovery of the economy. As a small business owner, I can tell you that a one-time tax cut will not do as much for me as a few more customers would. And I doubt that other people will spend their tax-cut money on my services, judging from the past.

As for the cost of this bill, I recommend that our elected representatives who support the bill also make a point of reminding Americans that we can finance a portion of it by purchasing savings bonds or treasury bonds. We do not have to rely on Chinese bankers for funding. It would be better for the country as a whole if the interest paid on the debt stayed in the country. Just as World War II was financed by the sale of war bonds, recovery from this current crisis can be funded by Americans.

Sincerely,
Lisa G.

In Opposition to Tax Cuts

Ed. note: The body of this message contains 402 characters. The White House website would have allowed 10 more characters. Needless to say, this note was sent without the niceties of a salutation or signature.

January 31, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

Economic stimulus by tax cut has been tried in recent years, yet our economy still needs a stimulus. Clearly, tax cuts do not work. We can’t consume our way out of this economic mess. We must create new wealth to make our economy productive again. That means investment in infrastructure & jobs. We must resist the conservative mantra that taxes are bad. Tax money will be needed to create the new economy. Our economy will never be sound while our national debt is such a huge drain on it.

Sincerely,
Lisa G.
Chicago, IL

Arts Funding is Job Creation

January 23, 2009

Dear Representative Schakowsky and Senator Durbin:

As you consider the contents of economic recovery bills in the near future, I hope you will keep in mind one constituency that sometimes gets lost in the rhetoric: artists. I urge you to include substantial support for the arts in any broad economic package.

Arts funding is support for real jobs. When we talk about jobs in the arts, we are not only speaking of the dancers and actors and painters who come to mind immediately. Jobs in the arts also include stagehands, box office personnel, ushers, development people, curators, managers, publicity people, conservators, designers, gallery owners, and many others who are never visible to the patrons of the arts. These are generally not high paying jobs in the non-profit sector, but they are good enough jobs for people to raise families on and buy homes with. Some are even solid union jobs with good benefits.

You may have seen the study done recently by the Illinois Arts Alliance to determine the economic impact of the arts on our state. They discovered that non-profit arts organizations in the state of Illinois alone contributed close to $2 billion to our economy in 2002. That amount had doubled since 1996. In more difficult economic times, the contributions of the arts to the economy are, no doubt, curtailed–along with all other economic activity. Since not-for-profit arts organizations rely on donations and government funding to fulfill their missions, this would be an ideal time to increase government funding so that these institutions can retain staff, create jobs, and continue to contribute to the general welfare, both by their economic activity and by bringing art to communities all over the country.

Sincerely,
Lisa G.
Chicago, IL

Our Divided Country

Ed. note: This is the letter I was trying to send (see post below). I will send it to the president when I can send it without dividing it into four separate messages.

January 20, 2009

Dear President Obama:

Congratulations on your inauguration today. Now the real work begins.

For all the talk of unity I heard today from the inaugural ceremonies, I can’t help noticing how divided this country really is. It’s not the racial or the class divide that strikes me the most. It isn’t even really the distance between Republicans and Democrats that I think is the most important. What I see is the division between those with inside power and those with outside power. And I see you poised precariously between the two.

Your electoral power comes from the grassroots organizing, the thousands upon thousands of volunteers, the participatory process that energized people all over the nation. This is the outside force at work. And the people who elected you to office have very progressive values. We want real, substantive change out of your administration. We want a government for the people. We want government of the people. We want government truly by the people. We want democracy in all its radical glory.

On the other side of the equation are the experienced politicians and governors you have appointed to cabinet posts. In this group also are the Republicans and conservatives you have stretched your hand out to for inclusion in your administration. These people with inside power are, by far, a more conservative force than the people clamoring at the window. Even the most liberal among them is more conservative than those of us who vote for them. And yet, you would get nowhere without them, because you need the power they have in order to accomplish anything. At the same time, you need the democratic forces on the outside if you want to be re-elected in four years.

You stand in a precarious position, indeed. Perhaps you hope to pull along the conservative forces who work for you by the twin strengths of your agenda and your conviction. Perhaps, instead, you will be sucked into their view of the world when you are not in contact with the electorate every day. In any case, your presidency is likely to expose this buried tension in our nation. This could be good for the nation if it leads to the healing of festering wounds. It could be bad for anyone caught in the middle of the struggle.

I wish you the best in your balancing act and look forward to some of that real change I’ve been hearing about lately.

Sincerely,
Lisa G.
Chicago, IL

500 characters?

To comments@whitehouse.gov:

I was trying to send a message to the president but discovered that my message is limited to 500 characters. I may be a little wordy, but that is not even the first full paragraph of my letter. I can’t get my message across in so limited a space. If the president is truly committed to “creating the most open and accessible administration in American history,” he will have to permit people to express themselves fully. How about a 500 word limit, instead? Or another forum for longer letters? Matters of policy and opinion often require expansive thought or background information. Please give this some thought. I would appreciate a response.

Thank you.

Lisa G.
Chicago, IL

One Man’s Garbage Is Another Man’s Paycheck

January 14, 2009

Dear Mayor Daley:

According to something I read in the paper recently, the City of Chicago has passed a new ordinance requiring all garbage dumpsters to be licensed by the City for a fee, which will be based on the cubic yardage of the dumpster. As the treasurer of an 18-unit housing cooperative, I am concerned about the impact this new ordinance will have on our business. We operate on a small budget and an even smaller margin, so any new expense is noticeable.

I spoke to a representative of our disposal company this afternoon, and he confirmed that any license fee paid by the company to the city would be passed along to their customers. While $180 per year for the dumpster we use does not seem like much, it amounts to almost a 10% increase in our disposal costs, which comes on top of the increases we have seen this year caused by the high price of diesel fuel. Of course, any increase in expenses we have to cover comes directly out of the pockets of our members, who are self-employed people, senior citizens, and working families.

The other objection I have to this new license fee is that it is intended to pay for keeping the alley clean. Perhaps there are some neighborhoods where the city cleans the alleys, but I have never seen a city worker cleaning our alley in the seven years I have lived in this building. Either a private hauler takes away the trash or else it remains there. In addition, our dumpster is kept on our private property, not in the city alley. We are responsible for keeping the area around the dumpster clean, not the city. The new fee does not provide us any services.

There is a second issue related to disposal that has been proposed by the City, to which I also object. This is the proposal to franchise waste hauling in Chicago. As I understand it, under this proposal, the City would be divided into a number of zones and private haulers would bid for the right to be the exclusive disposal company in that zone. No business would have the right to contract with any other disposal company for hauling services for a term of seven years.

There may be some good to come from a system such as this one. For instance, more efficient trucking routes might result in fewer greenhouse gas emissions. I believe, however, that there are other ways to achieve the same results without removing the competitive environment for hauling services that we have now. A little over a year ago, our co-op took competitive bids for disposal services from four different hauling companies. By changing suppliers, we managed to cut our disposal costs by almost two-thirds, resulting in significant savings to the building. At the same time, we improved the recycling services available to our members. I put a lot of time into overseeing this process and I think I can say that we have been uniformly happy with the results. I am not at all pleased with the prospect of losing either the savings or the improved services as a result of a franchise system. Having seen the services available via our bidding process, I do not believe that we could do better than what we have right now. The best we could hope for under the franchise system would be to retain our current disposal company, which is, at best, a crapshoot.

I urge you to drop the franchise idea. I do not believe it would benefit small businesses in Chicago. I also add my voice to the chorus of disapproval for the new dumpster license fee.

Sincerely,
Lisa G.
Chicago, IL

The Importance of Domestic Spending

January 11, 2009

Dear Mr. President-Elect:

I hear conservative commentators talking about economic issues all the time. One of the frequent things I hear is that you and the new Congress will have to pick and choose which of the social and economic programs you can implement because there simply will not be enough money in the budget to accommodate all of them. It will be necessary to be “realistic” and “practical” about the funds available. But I have never heard one of these people make the same recommendations about the budget of the Pentagon.

According to official U.S. government figures, defense is 20% of the overall federal budget. I believe that that refers to budgeted expenses only, not the costs of any wars, which are unbudgeted. It is also well to remember that the overall budget figure quoted by the official sources includes the amounts spent on Social Security and Medicare, despite the fact that those funds are kept in trust and are not supposed to be mingled with the general funds. If you remove the trust funds from the calculation (which would result in a more honest calculation of the national budget), defense spending becomes a much larger percentage of the budget, perhaps something close to half of it. Then, add on to that the amount spent on wars abroad. On top of that, I think you can add the amount spent on veterans’ benefits (another $94 billion). Once you add all these expenses, it is likely that war spending is at least half of our national expenditures. In other words, out of every dollar I pay in federal income tax, approximately 50 cents goes to pay for the military.

I bring this up not because I think we need to abolish the military immediately but because I think that we need to evaluate our priorities in this country. If, as the talking heads on TV imply, we can cut domestic spending at will but can never touch military spending, then obviously military spending is a higher priority. I would argue, on the contrary, that domestic spending is at least as important as military spending. We can have the strongest, best defense in the world, but if the country is crumbling, then what are we really defending? We have to have a country worthy of the defense we lavish on it.

There are other considerations here, of course. Various people have a monetary interest in any kind of federal spending. If someone has grown wealthy on his federal military contracts, not only will he be unwilling to give up his lucrative contracts, but he may also have sufficient discretionary income to pay for effective lobbying in Congress and to make substantial campaign contributions. Those of us who benefit from governmental domestic spending (unless there are lucrative contracts there, too) are its beneficiaries precisely because we have no discretionary income to send lobbyists to Washington. If we are lucky, we just have sufficient time to write letters to our elected officials.

Who gets to decide our priorities, then? If setting them were up to me, I would prefer that our defense budget be reduced to a smaller portion of our total spending and that the funds be put to work on our domestic issues, instead. If defense spending were actually only 20% of the overall budget, that might be a better proportion. One little-known corollary of Murphy’s Law is that spending expands to fit the funds available. If the Pentagon were required to work with a smaller budget, the good people there would find efficiencies that would make it possible to do their work without the extra ability to spend–just as all the other governmental agencies have managed to do. The hard part is convincing those with an interest in the status quo that this is the right thing to do. I hope you agree with me that we must re-arrange our priorities, and I hope that you can muster the necessary arguments to make it happen.

Sincerely,
Lisa G.
Chicago, IL