LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Buy The Houses

As a constituent, I'm concerned with the government's trigger happy approach to spending money on aiding a sickly banking industry. In fact, I find myself asking exactly what this is doing for the average American, while more people are losing homes and jobs, and ending up in shelters and on the street. My mom teaches kids whose families are afflicted by the economic crisis, and her school has been helping to shower and clothe kids in this position.

On the flip side, spending increases the deficit, and someone is going to have to pay off the government's debt, be it through taxes or inflation. Meantime, not spending on the crisis will result in more lost jobs, more foreclosed homes and increased crime rates. The government needs a solution.

Instead of giving, or loaning banks money, why can't the government buy all the foreclosed property (something tangible) at a fraction of the cost, rent the housing based on income to start getting a return on the initial investment, while keeping families off the streets and out of shelters, with the possibility of those families buying back their houses in the future.

Once the market has been revived, sales of this property will help the government dodge part of their own hyperinflationary bullet, while securing an income to start paying off the deficit spending that has to occur now to hold off disaster.

The banks need money. People need housing. Taxpayers need a way to jump the economy by not just spending money, but investing it to pay off future debt. While Democrats tend toward social reform and Republicans towards the fiscally conservative, it seems like this might just be the answer to a bipartisan compromise that doesn't make corporate America the only winner in the game back to economic success.

James Weaver

St. Petersburg

In The Distance Stands The Hero

We may need to look through the centuries, back to Greek tragedy, as expressed in Aristotle's essay "Poesy" to have some understanding of the current economic crisis and the blight in the community that caused consequences so evident today. We can understand tragedy in a great work by Frederich Nietzsche noted in "The Birth of Tragedy"

Phenomenal tragic excesses in a frenzy of greed in our capital institutions we were trained to trust point to the blight in our nation affecting us all. Then, we are a nation divided between conservative and progressive values. In tragedies, the search goes to the sins of the community that must be cleansed in an act of anagnorisis, that moment of recognition and reconciliation.

Rush Limbaugh appears on the side of the stage as the "chorus" in the drama wailing and thrashing of arms in expressions of the plight of the community but also his wailing further advances the excesses of the community in its financial structures that affected almost every person in the community; thus, the wailing and thrashing and bravado that Rush is expressing as we speak.

Read about the structure of tragedies to discover that off in the distance stands the hero, the protagonist, who is meant to cleanse the community. Hemmingway symbolizes the hero as the matador in the bull ring as in the running of the bulls in Palermo in the act of the community members laying of the hands in the transfer of their sins that the matador absolves in the slaying of the bull.

The hero in America stands in the distance.

Deron Mikal

Brooksville

Don't Privatize Our Libraries

We Floridians take our public libraries for granted. Do you want a favorite author? A particular book? Information on a subject? Chances are it is on a library shelf in the county.

If not, it can probably be requested and received from partnering libraries.

Do you want to use the Internet to check your e-mail or surf the Web? Do you have a question for the reference librarian?

You can do it all in the Hernando County Public Library system.

If the county privatizes, these options may change with profit-driven decisions. Tewksbury, Mass., decided against it after discovering the country's largest outsourcer, Library Systems and Service (LSSI), initially lays off all employees, causing high unemployment costs. In Oregon, an unfair labor practice complaint was filed against LSSI.

It is not just the Florida Library Association that is against privatization, as reported Thursday. The American Library Association is, as well. If you have ever had the opportunity to visit a community library in Texas, you may find what I did at the privatized Wells Branch Library in Austin: a beautiful building and spacious interior but with many empty shelves. Think about it. If it "saves" $500,000, what do you think will be cut?

Help our libraries! Return your books on time and keep them in good condition - no dog ears, underlining, sticky finger, or broken backs, please. Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer. Your library needs you and it needs to stay public.

Cyndie Russano

Brooksville