LETTERS: POLITICIANS IGNORE VOTERS, TAXPAYERS

To the editor:

It's a shame people feel they must riot and demonstrate to get the attention of Congress. But it's quite obvious that letter writing and phone calls won't do the trick. Congress must know, as we do, that the majority of the people are against the World Trade Organization, foreign aid, excessive immigration and many other things that benefit our enemies and damage our own country. But we are ignored. It seems as though the incentives for helping foreign countries to the detriment of the United States are greater than the combined salaries, perks, pensions and unearned voted showered on our congressmen by the American taxpayers and voters.

The number of people who rioted and demonstrated against the WTO in Seattle proves that the American people are getting fed up. When you realize that probably less than 5 percent, maybe even 1 percent, of the people who oppose the WTO actually participated in the demonstrations, then we can readily see how the majority feels.

The downside to demonstrations is that better results can be attained at the national elections. The thing politicians fear the most is getting kicked out of office. They can ignore letters and phone calls, as is their regular routine, but they cannot ignore being voted out of office.

Of course, the people may have to take back the job of counting the votes. Since the politicians have taken over vote counting, many dubious things have taken place. For instance, the news media can now predict the outcome of an election by a margin of 1 percent or less at times. They never could do this before, but not it's commonplace. It's not really a mystery when you consider the fact that the politicians and the major big-city newspapers and television stations are controlled by the same un-American groups, and the politicians do the vote counting. Of course, they don't count the votes themselves. They just use the taxpayers' money to pay someone whom the voters know nothing about to do the counting. This is another way, which is so prevalent today, of putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

RAY UMBDENSTOCK

Cape Girardeau