LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Stop the Drug Cycle

Amen, to Hank Kalet's article (Stop the War, 3/99 PP). As a clinical social worker and volunteer at our county jail, I have witnessed the devastating effects of this so called "war." Families are broken up, more and more women are incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses leaving behind thousands of children. Many times these kids end up with unsuitable relatives or foster care.

The women inmates I've met are usually poor, minority and single. They are not a threat to our society. They just don't have the insurance, money, education or support needed to turn their lives around and their childrens. So they become "criminals."

Until we decriminalize drug addiction and treat it as a medical/psychiatric/public health problem, we'll continue to pour more money down the black hole of prisons.

More and more children will follow in their parents footsteps creating another generation to live behind prison walls.

We must speak up and challenge this corrupt and demoralizing system. We can no longer afford the cost of human potential and lost lives and most certainly can't afford to continue to foot the bill for more prison beds.
JO NARDECCHIA
McKinney, Texas
Email jnardecchi@aol.com

Lay Off Our President

Now that the six-year-long attempted political assassination of President Clinton has failed, the House Managers and other Clinton-hating Republicans, have changed from vicious attack dogs to whimpering puppies, their tails between their legs, yelping in pain if they get a dose of their own medicine.

Should the Democrats do their best to send these would-be career destroyers back into the real world to look for real jobs? You better believe it!

Barr, Hyde, McCollum and the rest of those schoolyard bullies showed no mercy when they ganged up on our President and tried to bloody his nose. Then, when the Senate and the American people saw through their sanctimonious bleatings, they sued for peace, begging the Democrats, "Please don't do to us what we tried to do to you!"

When the elections come up in 2000, let's hope America won't forget that these mean-spirited Republicans could not accept the fact that a commoner from a poor southern state, a counter-culture outsider with an uppity wife, could first defeat an incumbent president and then a revered majority leader, both establishment insiders, to become the first Democratic president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to be elected to two terms.

When that happened. powerful, well-funded, ultraconservative Clinton-haters sent a clear message: Whatever it takes, get rid of this man, or at least make it impossible for him to govern effectively. Keep digging and digging until you find something to do him in. They then unleashed "independent" counsel Starr, who has dogged and harrassed our president with an obsession worthy of Inspector Javert.

In so doing, they have taken a good man with some character defects--which we all have--and tried to make a shambles of his presidency, but to no avail. Unfortunately, the collateral damage in this war of aggression was the people's business, much needed legislation that did not get passed because Congress was distracted with manufactured "scandal" after manufactured "scandal."

President Clinton has his failings. He has a roving eye and has evidently strayed from his marriage from time to time. That is a personal matter between him and Hillary.

On the other hand, he has stayed married to the girl he loved in his youth, in the lean times before he made the big time. He is still married to his first wife, the woman who sacrificed to help his career.

Can his enemies make the same claim? What about Bob Barr, who also allegedly lied under oath during his divorce proceedings? What about Newt Gingrich, who reportedly tried to browbeat his first wife into signing divorce papers while she was still semi-conscious in a hospital recovery room after cancer surgery? They both deserted the women who stuck with them in their early careers and married trophy wives who they thought better fit their images. Many other Republicans, who also spout "family values" whenever a microphone or a camera is thrust in front of them, have done the same.

If there is any justice in this world, the GOP (which now stands for "Get Our President") should suffer a resounding defeat in the year 2000 for what they have put our country through with their hypocritical politics of setup and investigation.

Yours truly,
PETE LUNDGREN
Stanley, Wisconsin

Death of Outrage

Outrage has died in the United States because Americans know that their political system is, and has been, out of their control for quite some time. If Americans felt they were in the process of LOSING their political system, outrage would certainly be represent. There is nothing to be outraged about when hope is gone. When the President is guilty of perjury and the Senate enables it, how can anyone believe the government is accountable to the people?

To truly determine the sentiment for the federal branches of government, three simple and basic questions should be presented to voters. These questions should be presented to all voters, not just small polls that rarely reflect more than a few thousand responses.

Question 1: Given the choice, do you want to remake and reinvent the executive branch of the federal government, which is the office of President of the United States?

Question 2: Given the choice, do you want to remake and reinvent the legislative branch of the federal government, which is the Congress: both the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States?

Question 3: Given the choice, do you want to remake and reinvent the judicial branch of the federal government, which is the Supreme Court of the United States?

The answers to these questions will surely empower Americans and enable them to direct their future in the way it was originally intended.

A simple YES or NO answer will go a long way in giving Americans the right to determine their future.
BRANDON QUINLAN,
an expatriate American
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Email b_quinlan@hotmail.com

Y2K? Get a Mac

I just received a sample copy of The Progressive Populist, Vol 5, No 2, February 1999. Since you are an alternative source, I'm surprised that I didn't see any mention [of] Apple Macintosh in any of the 3 articles about Y2K, especially the one by David Morris that starts "The February 13, 1984, issue ..." That is the year of the first Macintosh. Macintosh has never had a Y2K problem. See www.apple.com/macos/info/2000.html.

"The Mac OS and most Mac applications will handle the year 2000 (and the next 27,940 years), no problem."
ROY RENDAHL
Las Vegas NV 89123
Email: royrendahl@macconnect.com