Tax priorities

Policies that ignore this reality stain the nation’s social safety net. The only investments corporations are making is in shifting billion-dollar bonuses to top executives while the pension plans of workers and stockholders are ravaged and massive layoffs become the norm.

Social Security and other federal programs resulted from the 1920s stock market crash and were intended to ensure citizens had minimal needs met. Gutting these programs and encouraging investment of pensions in the volatile stock market leave retirees vulnerable to lose their retirement savings. The growing segments of the population who are laid off, senior citizens without pensions and others who have been shut out of the American dream cannot wait another decade for a trickle to reach them. Investing in America means investing in our citizens first.

We know the strength of a nation is not determined by the might of its military but by its response to the most vulnerable. As we gut education, services for the poor, the elderly and the disabled, and now contemplate allowing our indigent dead to rot in our streets, we must ask ourselves how strong this makes our nation and our state.

Venieda Chenault,

Lawrence