Beyond Today

Dear Senator Durbin, Senator Kirk, and Congressman Quigley,

I hope that you and you family are in good health and full of hope at the beginning of this beautiful winter season. I write to share with you my thoughts on some of the most important issues of the day that you will need to address as our representative in Congress.

Protect Social Security

I have been working and paying into social security since I was fifteen years old in 1968. In the past few years, the Social Security Administration has been kind enough to send me an annual accounting of my contributions and an estimate of the amount of benefit I would receive when I retire. This listing is a history of a worklife in metal shops, mines, factories, schools and pizza parlours. I have never earned more than $50,000 in a year and ever penny of it has come from my labours. I have a kind of contract with the SSA. I have been handing over a portion of my wages for all these years, to help pay for those who were retiring at that time. The SSA held my contribution in trust, and I gave it freely and gladly. It is to me the ultimate betrayal to propose that as I reach the age of retirement, the age should be pushed back : the promise made broken. It is a kind of swindle, a ponzi scheme, where the slick outwit the rubes. Social Security is a sacred trust and a national treasure. My mother survives solely on her SSA survivor’s payment of $1,200 per month from my father’s 40 years of work and contribution. Don’t even think of touching Social Security unless you are talking about ways to improve the benefits.

Taxes

I consider paying taxes one of my duties and responsibilities as a human involved in this big enterprise of nationhood.

I am so happy to see my hard earned dollars spent on:

• Education,
• Health,
• Caring for the needy,
• Protecting and restoring our natural resources, and
• Protecting our peoples from those who would do us harm.

I am sickened when my dollars are used to:

• Protect an empire of private enterprises through the maintenance of hundreds of military bases around the world,
• Mess with other people’s affairs, undermine their governments and economy, and seek control of their natural resources and lives,
• Underwrite giant banks, corporations involved in building military hardware, private security firms, multinational corporations who have allegiance only to making gigantic amounts of money.

It is a matter of common sense and decency that people with gigantic amounts of wealth ought to be taxed at a much higher rate than the poor and working folk. One hundred dollars means one thing to a factory worker, and another thing to a multimillionaire. And a dollar earned through honest labor must not be taxed at the same rate as a dollar "earned" thru investments. The constant enabling, thru governments, of the accruals of dynastic wealth is destroying our ability to develop as a healthy community of peoples. Poverty and crime hounds us every time we leave our doors. It remains the key obstacle to quality education. It is the key obstacle to desegregation and greater understanding between different people’s.

Public Health

So many of our social problems would be ameliorated if every person living here had access to full, free national health care. Insurance companies have no business being in health care. This is a settled fact in every developed country in the world except ours. The arguments against free, universal, single-payer national health care are obfuscations for persons and enterprises current growing rich off the health needs of the nation. This is a shame.

Our Shared Planet

Enterprises and corporations that extract the natural wealth of our shared planet, that cash in the rich bounty created by nature, and leave in its place a ruined, depauperate wasteland for the coming generations, ought to be severely limited, carefully regulated, and heavily taxed in order to compensate for the true costs of the damage they do, and their use of resources "owned" by all of the inhabitants of this planet.

Therefore…

The current debates about stimulus and deficits rings hollow in the face of the wasted treasure that goes everyday to continue the endless cycles of war and intervention. Me, my family and many in my community have never supported any of the wars that are bankrupting the nation. I am too old, and have heard too many of the same stale justifications for war since I was a boy. I have spent a good part of my lifetime learning the backstories of these horrendous adventures and I have no patience with new excuses for spreading mayhem around the world.

The Golden Rule

There is a well accepted premise called the Golden Rule that asks that a person act towards others they way that they would like to be treated. How many countries have we bombed since WW2? How many have bombed us? How many governments have we overthrown? How many have overthrown us? How many agricultural and hunter-gathering people’s have we pushed off their land in order to have at the wealth it contained? How many have done this to us? What would we do if China, or India, or Iran or Russia insisted on building military bases around our shores? What gives our country the right to hold a sword over the rest of the world?

Have Courage ~ Towards a Common Consensus

We need political leadership that is willing to take a stand, to risk being lambasted by corporate media and their allies, in order to bring a new common consensus to our people. There is a great hunger for compassionate truth telling, for a restating of what is our common good and purpose. I am hoping that some of that leadership will come from you. And I wish you the courage it will take to stand up, and I pledge our support and appreciation when you do.

The very best to you and you family,

Pete Leki
2546 West Hutchinson
Chicago, Illinois 60618
(773) 463-8968