Dear Madam,
Many decades ago, when I was a brilliant intellectual and a breath-taking physical specimen, someone recommended that I read books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn if I wanted to understand how life was in the Soviet Union under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. I took that advice, and read a lot of his books, including The Gulag Archipelago. Thanks to Solzhenitsyn, I came away with a pretty grim view of life under a communist dictatorship. And then there were the periodic stories of Cubans trying to float their way across the 90 miles to Miami so they could enjoy night life on South Beach; there were a lot of stories about the policy of wet foot/dry foot; the Mariel Boat lift; and, of course, the heart-wrenching story of Elian Gonzales and his mother’s sacrifice to get him out of Cuba. I thought we had our own Gulag Archipelago right here in this hemisphere.
Little did I know that my view of life under communism in Cuba was tainted by my reading of Solzhenitsyn and a media blackout of anything positive about the Castro regime. Also, there was an oppressive Cuban embargo of travel to that Caribbean paradise and of all the wonderful goods produced down there. Because of the media blackout, however, I don’t know of any of these goods except maybe cigars and rum, but I’m sure there is an abundance of them. Also, any privations suffered by the Cuban people are, of course, the fault of the good, ol’ USA, as usual. All this I learned from a letter to the editor right here in The Pocahontas Times.
I also learned from that letter of the immense health benefits of living in a communist society. You can throw away your Ozempic, your diet books, and your weight-watchers scales because there are NOT a lot of potbellies associated with Communism. Food and eating regularly just does not have the exaggerated importance that it does in the western world. Also, you end up walking everywhere since there is not much gasoline, either. In Cuba, though, you can go to automobile shows of beautifully restored cars from the 1950s, ogle the voluptuous Cuban women, and have a group sing of Guantanemera with a genuine Cuban choir What’s not to like!
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun.” This quote is from Ecclesiastes 1:9 of the New International Version Bible. As with most things in describing the human condition, the Bible hits the mark. Because of people like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the wonders of communism have been much maligned, but as the Bible says—things come around again. The election of a communist as mayor of New York City, and the love affair our young people have with socialism gives us all hope. Viva la Revolucion!
John Jackson
Huntersville
Editor,
The latest buzzword floating around is affordability, with the Democratic Party blaming Trump for high costs. Lots of factors are at play. Let’s consider some of them.
What happens when you import 10-20 million low-skilled illegal immigrants into the country. Since basic supply and demand are a factor, this has multiple impacts. The supply of workers for low-skilled service jobs increases. When supply goes up demand for employees goes down and there is no incentive for employers to raise wages.
The same thing happens regarding the cost of rent, more tenants, the same amount of rental properties leads to higher costs. Shoplifting also has an impact on prices. Large amounts of theft are perpetrated in many Democratic cities with no accountability; this raises the prices of many items. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act pumped massive amounts of money into the economy, more dollars chasing the same amount of goods is a basic cause of inflation.
The Democratic Party’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while well intended, resulted in the shutting down of older fossil fuel plants without cost effective replacements. This has driven up the price of electricity impacting a range of sectors and, yes, the growth of data centers and bitcoin mining also plays a roll.
Blue state California shutting down refineries in the pursuit of local environmental goals and micromanagement by massive over regulation is also spiking fuel costs for a significant part of the economy to include major agricultural areas.
The Trump tariffs with some of the cost being passed on to consumers played a role. These tariffs, unlike the out-of-control spending, primarily by the Democratic Party, which were intended to enrich donners and buy votes, have the long-term goal of reshoring many strategic industries that fled because of lower costs.
Continuing to export critical industries for short term profits is economic suicide. The Democratic Party claims they will reduce costs, a nice promise but their predilection for costly regulations, bigger government and other failed policies like price controls on rent or a Wealth Tax promise only worsen results. These so-called solutions have been tried in the past, and they always fail, making things worse.
Rent control leads to properties that are unprofitable being taken of the market further reducing supply over time and a wealth tax means those with money that are the core of the tax base leave. So, before you blame Trump and sign on to the socialist programs of the Democratic Party look a little deeper at the real causes. For those that will respond that my view on tariffs is oversimplified, I will agree, to address the pros and cons would require a dozen pages. Improvements need to be made to include eliminating tax loopholes for the rich bought from corrupt members of Congress. The tax rates are fine; they just need to be paid.
Term limits are needed. When getting reelected is your main goal, you have a conflict of interest that results in more out of control spending to buy votes by both parties.
Let’s not cut off our foot because we have an ingrown toenail and go down the destructive path pushed by the Democratic Political Machine.
The people of Venezuela voted for the train wreck their country has become believing in feel good empty promises not considering human nature. Their attempt to vote out those pushing these policies have failed because the socialist government has turned the country into a repressive dictatorship.
Cuba being another example, it started out socialist before becoming a communist dictatorship.
Joe Kaffl
Hillsboro
