Readers Write: Election a victory for haves already winning

The Island Now

The never ending campaign ended on Nov. 4 and now we will have to live with the results. 

First, let’s be happy that locally we have managed to elect three people in this area who will fight for the things that will benefit the 98 percent. 

Schimel, Israel and Rice. 

Unfortunately, a very promising candidate, Haber, was not able to surmount the advantage of an incumbent.

We are hearing theories about what the national results mean. 

Was it a way of repudiating a failed presidency? 

Really? Have the people tired of nothing happening so they have selected those who will get something done? 

The critics were ready to blame Obama for everything that went wrong. He came to office with a huge number of problems that a Republican president’s crew had left him. 

Wars that left us with a debt that could not be paid for because they had reduced taxes for the billionaires and powerful profiteering corporations. 

A Congress who were agreed not to compromise on anything. A disastrous Supreme Court decision on the Citizens United case that allowed unlimited campaign contributions from corporations because they are now “persons”.

It was now legal for the hugely wealthy class to contribute money to PACs (political action committees) anonymously so that the general public would not be able to trace it. 

They diabolically turned public discontent toward blaming those who did not have a voice. 

The middle class, whose real wages had been decreasing for a generation, were persuaded that those whose plight was even more desperate than theirs was the cause.

Do we really believe that helping the very rich will solve our problems? The most highly touted solutions have up to now only made the rich richer.

They are shortsighted and ultimately disastrous. 

Instead of voting to reconstruct our infrastructure, crumbling roads, bridges, or investing much more heavily in renewable sources of energy that  will benefit our people here and now, take note of the industries most pursued. 

Drilling for natural gas, prohibited abroad, is destroying water and air here, evidence that the ads lie. It is not safe!

Furthermore, much of the gas will be exported. Right here on Long Island, environmentalists are fighting the Port Ambrose port off Long Beach. 

The ultimate use of the port will be to export natural gas, lies aside.

The prospect of building the XL pipeline the whole length of our nation terrifies many. It supposedly will save the environment because the thousands of trucks which now transport Canadian crude oil long distances will not pollute. 

How about the inevitable spills? And it will transport the worst quality crude, cheap, and perhaps not worth the effort. 

The projected jobs will not be permanent and the oil will be sent abroad, not kept here for oil independence. What is wrong with investing all that money here on huge permanent non polluting sustainable sources of energy?

Genetically modified foods threaten to take over agriculture. 

In the short run, the drive for quick profits threatens to produce destructive weeds that will destroy crops. 

And even more scary is the fact that the effect of GMO food on humans is not known, And we cannot pass regulations to label these foods.

Are we raising a generation whose educational needs are being thwarted by ever decreasing federal aid to education? Add to that the brain drain when foreign students are not permitted to remain here after earning their degrees. 

Add to that the laughable fringe who, in the halls of Congress and at the state level, encourage the use of school curricula to deny science, for example, evolution!

We already are feeling, even before the Republican Congress takes office, the challenge of making our needs known. 

We must be wary, well informed and determined to create a strong populist movement that fights to get what we really want. 

There is ample evidence from numerous polls on many issues that our voices are not being heard.

Esther Confino

New Hyde Park

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