LETTERS

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AMERICANS UNITED What caused the election for president in 2016 to go to a complete outsider? There was no question that with the many candidates running for president of the United States in the 2015/2016 election cycle, one established insider was destined to win. That was what we were told on a daily basis, and that was simply the way it worked. Statistically speaking, this was the way it was supposed to happen.

Polls were established to persuade you that your vote had already been counted toward a given party. The leading candidates were already selected for us, with the Democrats being told and directed to a single candidate. And we were not to pay attention to the disenchanted youth who were trying to make their own choice. After all, what did they know about what was best for them?

Then the world got a glimpse of what had been placed on the back shelf of history, the spirit that made this nation great. A spirit that said “enough is enough”… enough of our so-called leaders taking what they wanted and selling us out, of handing themselves benefits far greater than the people they supposedly represented, and of putting themselves above everyone else – and doing this by trying to separate we the people into groups and categories when the hard fact is that we are all Americans. We are not Caucasians, African-Americans, Hispanics. We are Americans.

It started with a brash, politically undisciplined and fed-up American patriot who had had enough of the abuse of the political elites, enough of the media who distorted all facts and circumstances and who were/are controlled by special interests. It was reinforced by our experience of loss of our nation’s jobs to other countries, the assault on our religious freedoms and churches via politically correct nonsense, a failure of our education system, the failure of our health system, the deterioration of our national infrastructure, being overrun by illegals, and being methodically nudged into second nation status by “untrained, undisciplined and self-interested politicians” and greedy nation builders.

Little by little, the sleeping giant of the true American spirit was awakened; little by little the voice and actions of one man’s irreverence united the single voices which were building, but needed a spark to ignite and unite. The spirit that made this nation great leapt off the back shelf of the past and squarely into the face of those who would steal our freedom and our greatness of a strong yet benevolent nation.

The rest is history. We the people have spoken. We the “American” people have spoken. We go from this point forward united as one. We are no longer a polling group, placed into categories in order to divide and conquer us. We stand together united. We stand together as Americans. Graham Murdock Springfield

STATE COMPROMISE? As the saying goes, I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m referring to the bit of prevailing optimism that we could have a viable state budget soon. The trouble is, it’s going to take compromise on the part of our legislative leaders, a word they don’t seem to know, or at least know its true definition.

Compromise takes an attitude on the part of both parties accepting the fact that each may have to give on some things they feel very strongly about in order to achieve the ultimate result of a decision that neither may particularly like but both can live with, even if grudgingly. Families compromise all the time on issues that the husband and wife disagree on; governments are obliged to do no less.

The governor may have to back off on some of his antistate government union measures and the speaker likewise may have to back off on some of his pro-state government union measures. There no doubt will be some cuts in programs, and at the same time, some revenue increases, both of which are loathsome to one side of the aisle, to the other, or to both.

Nonetheless, the end product needs to be a balanced budget with a viable means to finance all elements of it, with no unrealistically high estimates of revenue nor unrealistically low estimates of costs. Dick McLane Springfield