Liberals, capitalists have worked together
David Chrisman must not know many liberals to make the statement that liberals hate capitalism.
First of all, a true capitalist society does not exist. It would be extremely difficult, actually impossible, to point to a single Fortune 500 company in this country and not find evidence of it feeding at the public trough.
General Electric paid no corporate taxes last year yet received billions in tax subsidies and billions more in guarantee government contracts. The owners of all major sports franchises in the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, extremely wealthy people, are lavished with new stadiums and arenas and billions in local tax breaks all paid for by the communities they reside in. Exxon, Chevron and all the other major oil companies are the beneficiaries of billions in tax subsidies. We even send our armies to war to protect their interests in the Middle East. The profit goes to Halliburton and Texaco while the tab is picked up by the general public.
Fly on an airplane? How do you do that without government paying the bill for airports and air traffic control. How can a product be shipped to market without seaports, roads and bridges? And who builds those? Not capitalists.
Both political parties buy into our socialist-capitalist model. Eisenhower built our freeways. Nixon introduced the Environmental Protection Agency, Bob Dole; food stamps, George W Bush, prescription drug coverage; Ronald Reagan strengthened Social Security and Medicare. The market crashed under Bush and has boomed under Barack Obama. By the way, the television was invented in Scotland, the automobile in Germany and none of our tech gadgets would work today without the pioneering work done by the Department of Defense, government again, not capitalists.
Republicans and Democrats alike have built the economic system we live under. None hated capitalism — even the two-term president Mr. Chrisman failed to mention — the guy who was in office during the tech boom of the 1990s. His name was Bill Clinton and he made cuts in social welfare that Reagan could only dream of.
I did not vote for Republicans but I hope they govern successfully and the country moves forward. It would be unfair of them to leave another mess that Hillary Clinton will have to devote her first term to cleaning up.
Gary Hattenburg
Kailua-Kona
Real or faux, fur harvesting is cruel
It’s hard to believe in this day and age people are still buying real fur, the product of an inhumane and cruel industry.
I turned the pages of Elle magazine to find pictures of models wearing designs using mink and fox fur. So I checked out the fall fashion section of my favorite store in Kona. I couldn’t find a label that didn’t say “Made in China.” And there were quite a few “faux fur” clothing items, all from China.
There was a documentary I saw several years ago on “faux fur” from China. “Fake” fur, in actuality, is the real fur of huge numbers of small dogs raised in tiny cages and killed when their coats are mature enough to harvest. It was all too obvious these little imprisoned creatures had long since lost their sanity. It was an image I have agonized over for a long time.
So in this 21st century, animal cruelty still runs rampant. In Canada every year, thousands of baby seals are beaten to death by hunters who send the pristine white fur of these babies to unscrupulous companies that sell fur apparel, rugs and more to fashionable consumers.
Animal rights organizations have been trying for years to stop these horrible, inhumane crimes against animals. There has been marked progress, but I wonder if there is any end in sight, any real hope of protecting innocent animals from lives of confinement and torture.
When I was a child, a neighbor raised rabbits to sell their fur. I will never forget how the terrified scream of a rabbit sounds. And my mother, an animal lover, would turn away in pain to explain emphatically, “That’s how that man makes his living.”
We really don’t need to wear the fur of animals. We can refuse to buy fur products. As a civilized society, we need to speak out for animal rights, to support organizations that defend and protect them. Cruelty, in any form, is never right and it seriously hinders the growth and forward progress of an evolving human race.
Dorothy Denny
Ocean View