I salute and congratulate Barack Obama as the 44th president of this great country, that could be the greatest in the world.

One negative aspect has been the budget deficits Congress has been accumulating. The members of that legislative body have never implemented the 2,478 recommendations included in the Grace Commission Report in 1984, that would have saved $1.9 trillion through year 2000, or $2.09 trillion in today’s dollars, as a result of government waste and pork — expenditures beneficial to individual districts, but that are not included in the president’s budget, and not priority items, but each member of Congress votes for them, to ensure his/her re-election.

Barbara Ehrenreich said, “Bill Clinton spent eight years making the Democratic Party look more like the Republican, with welfare reform, Star Wars, drug wars and NAFTA.”

Mr. G.W. Bush, as a true Republican, represents capitalism, with its obsolete economic ideology of trickle-down economics, that will make the rich richer and the poor, middle class and the working poor all that much poorer.

Republicans figure that offering the proper tax breaks and subsidies to the corporations and wealthy individuals, these classes would voluntarily provide jobs and affordable prices for the services and products they sell to consumers in the private and public sectors. When, and if they use honest practices, consumers would benefit.

But experience and history shows that most employers, if not properly regulated by responsible government departments and agencies, consumers actually become victims of selfishness and greed.

We hope our humble opinion will somehow reach our president.

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Luis M. Segui

Santa Maria

November 30, 2008