Monday, June 17, 2013

Dear Mr. President.

As I was about to post this to you, I received your response to an earlier letter. Your response outlines all of the legislative actions that your administration is doing and has done. These are all great and good actions. They all deal with serious effects, and are quite necessary in the short term. What I am addressing in the following letter is a different kind of issue. I think we need to recognize and start to deal with the causes of these drastic effects. Until we do, we will be engaged in trying to patch up a ship that is surely sinking around us.

This morning I received a note from Campaign for America's Future which informed me that the Congress has cut funding for Meals on Wheels, another leak in that boat. This program is a wonderful example of how to use our money, that is the tax payer's money, to support the Common Good and the General Welfare. I am pretty sure that both you and the First Lady are well aware of this program, as am I. My experience came from the fact that it kept my mother fed for a couple of years.

Besides feeding our hungry elders with food that is actually good for them, there are a few other values of this program that are not apparent. It uses our money to employ people in a program that actually serves the Common Good and the General Welfare. It gives some elders, for example, those employed as drivers or delivery people in the program who are quite able bodied, something to do that serves the country.

Having met several of these folks, I was impressed by their sense of commitment, and their own personal appreciation to be able to do something that was worthwhile for others. The other thing that Meals on Wheels delivers that is of great value and costs nothing is the human interface. The persons who delivered the food to my mother were always able, happy even, to spend 5 minutes or so chatting with her.  I am pretty sure that most of our elders who are in these situations suffer far more from a lack of human inter change than they do from hunger.

But my reason for writing to you this morning is a bit larger than this one, wonderful human sustainable program. The elimination of this simple, effective and economically smart (Keeping people fed, usually keeps them out of emergency rooms and so forth.) program is a glaring example of how our money, that is taxpayers money, is disbursed in a way that actually guarantees the failure of our country as a self sustaining democracy where government of the people for the people and by the people, that is for the Common Good and the General welfare, is known to be the only way that such a country can exist.

It would easy to list the programs which support the Common Good and our future as a nation of enlightened people and those that support the hysterical paranoia which infects the minds of those small groups of individuals who control the wealth of the planet and who are terrified that some other group of billionaires is going to try to take it away from them. This dichotomy is so stark, so apparent... Billions for the paranoid delusions of a few. Billions so that more billions can be amassed and put in "off shore" accounts. How many personal homes, planes, ships, islands are enough?

And of course, we can afford nothing for even minimal food for our elders. We can be sure that the elders of the few are very well fed.

In reality, while awful, the damage to the fabric of our society, of our people, that the defunding of Meals on Wheels will cause is small in comparison to others. Realize the  harm, the long term devastation, wreaked on the systems by transferring hundreds of billions from programs that actually guarantee our future as a nation such as the education of all of our children. These funds, our funds, are being sent to other programs whose primary purpose, while cloaked in all kinds of fear generated and hate oriented sheep's clothing, is to, simply and plainly, transfer our common energy, our tax dollars into those off shore accounts.

So, I cannot imagine that you are not well aware of all of this, and I realize that you are the President rather than the king, and that you are well acquainted with the razor's edge. I have been pondering on what we, us and you, can do to right this glaring wrong which, we both know, is a not just a local U.S. issue but a planet wide problem for Humanity. What I get in my pondering as to the way forward is Light.

The exposure in clear simple facts, which are abundant, from you and your administration revealing the long hidden selfish agendas of the power elite will enlighten, and help to wake up those who are still sleeping in the canyons of comfort. When the facts or truth of the situation is put out there the people will get it. Light brings revelation and generates real change. It is magnetic, and it will draw out the kind of support and power from  the hundreds of millions of us who are aware of this situation. It will help people to speak up where ever they are and to act on whatever level they can.  After all, the Big Document says "We the People", not you the president.

One concrete thing that only both of you (I mean the First Lady) could do,  and that you are both masters at doing, is to come to us much more often and everywhere through our communications systems, just you two, not all of these people who nobody knows, but you who we do know, who we voted for, twice,  talking plain and clean about who we are, encourage us to stand up and demand what we want which is simply justice and freedom for ALL.

lots of love

-tom