TRI In The News

Good Job Telling Story

From The Lebanon Daily News
Original article available here

I want to acknowledge a few recent items.

First, kudos to Paul Heise for his Oct. 13 column, "Protesters take fight to trouble source." Indeed, we are. I say "we" because I am one of the 99 percent.

In his column he credits both the right and the left. Kudos to the LDN for not acting like the rest of the fathead corporate media pretending they don't understand when they really do.

Kudos to Rahn Forney for his column Oct. 20 for confessing he is a libertarian and for thoughtful coverage of all aspects of our nation's current problem.

Cheers for John Whitehead's column of Oct. 23 for demanding an end to the "war on drugs." It was never about drugs. It was about racism and destroying the poor, including poor white people.

About the "Occupy" movement: It worries me that this is starting to look like a lefty-fest. It had better occur to the right and the strangely elusive center that they have just as much stake in these protests as everyone else.

Wall Street and its ownership of our entire political system, right down to the boroughs and townships of Pennsylvania (that should be eliminated) is only half of the problem. What about the property taxes that our state politicians have been promising for years to mitigate and eliminate? Doesn't make much sense to keep a person's home from being repossessed by the bank only to have it snatched by the school board. Why try to buy one at all?

This housing crash was hilarious. The banks are losing

money, and the school boards have less property to tax. Did they learn anything? What do you think?
Third, what does William Tashlick have against libertarians and anarchists? In his letter against Jerry Shenk on Oct. 18, he confuses libertarians and anarchists with bigots and rabble-rousers. Does he know how many anarchists were killed to free the slaves? What about for safer working conditions and sane scheduling (like the ever elusive five-day week)? Does he know how many anarchists were beaten by racist and classist cops during the civil-rights movement?

Libertarians and anarchists have their differences, but they have at least four things in common: They are not bigots; they love freedom; they love justice; they stand up to and get slaughtered by tyrants because they realize that if you can take one person's rights away, you can take everybody's rights away!