Letters to the editor

What’s in a year?

For most of us, the days and months are filled with too many projects and not enough time to get ‘em all done! Yet, it’s always positive to reflect on exaclty what did transpire.

For Sanders County Conservatives, 2010 brought much for us to cheer about. Our website, sanderscountyconservatives.org, was launched to inform, educate and network. At our meetings and special events, we educed citizens on such topics as harvesting small wood products without government subsidies; wolf hydatid disease; coorindation between federal agencies and local government’ animal rights groups trapping ban initiative; property tax assessment fraud’ refresher courses on the U.S. and Montana Consituttions; property tax reform and three billion dollars lost in government pension funds.

Many actively sought local elected offices for the first time ever. We engaged every candiddate to complete questionnaires, hosted candidate debate forums as well as a town hall event with a Montan Supreme Court Justice Candidate, and empower a Get-Out-The-Vote whistle-stop tour throughout seven communitites. After considerable effort, six conservatives out of 14 successfully won local elected positions.

We enlightened Sanders County with a “Main Street Pril 15th Tax Day” rally, joined Helena citizens advocation second and tenth ammendment rights in June, and represented ourselves on a parade float at the counthy fair in Sept. We have developed working committees focuses on legislation, preparedness and school watch.

We will continue to actively promote our goal in Sanders County as entrepreneurs of a grassroots conservative movement and encourage civic awareness and involvement with one’s community, we will strive to achieve E4 in all we do-education; enlightenment; empowerment and entrepreuneurship. Join us as we look forawrd to an even better 2011!

Kathy Hassan,Trout Creek

Invisisble elephant and invisible people

In light of the most recent Tucson shootings and the consistent stream of similar events that have been symptomatic of our American culture for decases now, why is there no national discussion about the root stimuluses that propogate the growth of such atrocities? Why does American society tend to bomb the symptoms and sweep the fall-out under the proverbial rug, as opposed to doing the research necessary to enact an all-inclusive movement toward a healing recovery and cure of our national cultural sickness, as it is the environment that determines the quality and nature of growth?

Of all the developed nations, America is the only one without universal mental and physical healthcare for her citizens, the only one where profitilization of basic health care is legal. A capitalist society with an economy based on the people’s debt and perpetual war for profit. 24 percent of the worlds prison population are imprisoned in America for profit corporate prison complex, and we are number one in drug abuse, which is five times higher in the are of pharmaceuticals, number one in domestic and societtal violence. We spend more on a standing military that does the rest of the combined world. On top of all that, we employ even more corporate mercenary contracts than there are troops. History is littered with collapes empiracle powers, so why take that road?

The top one percent of our population owns more wealth than does the bottom 90 percent, yet those of corporate wealth pay lower tax rates than do the middle and lowers classes. Even though that top of teh puyramid wealth has quadrupled since the beginnig of Reganomics, and is growing still while tens of millions lose their jobs, homes, healthcare, education, retirmetn benefits, etc.

Our schools whitewash the history books as does the corporate for profit media whitewash our daily news, making proppoganda instead of information. These are a part of the peoples commons, we have a right to know the truth in full and it should be their moral and ethical obligation to furnish us with that truth. And our descendants hav ea right to know their true history rather than some white washed version. Is it to e we the people or we the corporatocracy?

Is it really necessary to start arming our children with toy replica weapons often before they can walk and talk? why is so much violence so glorified? Children’s war games (often monitored by the Pentagon) T.V. programming, full length movies, a constant steam of violence fed to our children. But the media is oh so careful to not show the realities of being on the receiving end of those bullets, bombs and missiles, etc.

Of all the world’s developed nations, the inequality gap between the haves and the have-nots is by far, hands down, the most immense here in America, and that canyon is greater nwo than ever before in American history, which is indirectly tied to Americas crime rate growth, as is all of the above.

And for all of you out ther generating fear of the word socialism, I guess this means that you are anxious to reject social secuity, medicare, medicaid, public education, libraries, police and fire protection, criminal justice systesm, national and state highway systems, etc. as these are all socialist programs created to enhacne the peoples’ commons.

Personally, I believe that a healthy, well educated population with living wages and a strong social safety net will emulate a higher degree of peace and secuity, as opposed to a society with a dog eat dog, I get mine you get yours mentality which is what got us into this monopoly game of corporate corruption, legally withotu restriction or limitation anonymously buying our elections. The last time the taxes on the wealthiest among us were this low, was jsut before the great depression adn the colllapse of thousands of banks, but that couldn’t happen again becasue teh American people will bail them out, right?

Food for thought: educated nations with the highest percentage of females in positions of power accomplish the lowest population growth rates. Important considereing pollution, global warming and/or climage change. Give Peace a chance.

John, Trout Creek