Dear Editor:
Yes, Bill Clinton lies (as any gentleman would have) about his stolen afternoons with ripe Monica in the Oval Office, and there was such a hullabaloo in the media that he was almost impeached by Republicans in Congress. Okay. George Bush lied too, not over a peccadillo, but a lie which got us into an aggressive war (a crime for which Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg) a war which killed thousands, wrecked a sovereign country and is, alas, far from over. And why did Bush lie? So his corporate cronies could plunder Iraq’s oil and siphon off its rivers to the chosen country, leaving Joe Taxpayer with the estimated 400 billion $ bill to clean up the bloody mess. Wow! Big-time High Crimes and Misdemeanors, I’d say. So is Bush skulking and hiding out in the White House basement, fearing impeachment, or worse? You kidding? From that pathetic bunch of eunuchs who call themselves Democrats? In fact, Bush is swaggering around raising obscene amounts of campaign cash from plutocrats who’ll profit from his re-election.
Which brings us to Tom Jennemann=s article (June 29) about the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by candidates in our recent City Council election. All that money! All this in a little square-mile town! What’s even more scandalous is that a citizen-activist , Dan Tumpson, who’s done as much to save Hoboken from over-development as anyone, but with no money to get his message out and no fatcats behind him hoping to ride his coattails to riches…Dan got only 19 votes in his ward. His suggestion (Reporter, June 8) that a brief “candidate’s statement” be tucked into the sample ballot mailed to every household, is a good one, and would help level the field a little between the fatcats and the alleycats, but total reform of the process –locally and nationally — is needed if we are ever to enjoy the blessings of democracy. If one has to spend so much to get a job that pays so little, one has to wonder.
T. Weed