Letter to the President

Mr. President,

I know that your life is not easy. At the same time, as you know, there are many people here and throughout the world that face daunting circumstances. You obviously cannot solve everything, but we have to do better.

I start my comments with the report that the polls indicate that you have lost support from the young people. I can well understand their sense of no confidence in our government. I, aged though I am, feel the desolation of a dead government that offers relatively little hope for change. The hopes of 2008 now seem to represent a major delusion. 

I am hopeful that your plans to address concerns about our citizens' privacy issues by altering the NSA's procedures will succeed. 

While there are legitimate national security issues, we never want to have our government become the overseer of our private conversations. 

I am concerned with your support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. While I am skeptical about the features reported in the news media, e.g., protection of drug companies and other corporate interests, my principal objection is that so little is known about the negotiations. It reminds me of the absurd budget negotiations between Senator Murray and Rep. Ryan that excluded even members of budget committee! A proposal announced without the benefit of open discussions does not seem to represent a democracy.  One can understand why young people are losing faith in our government.

Today you are in North Carolina promoting an institute designed to create jobs. While I endorse all efforts to advance the opportunities for employment, I doubt that I am unusual in viewing this effort as generally ineffective in addressing our economy. Without even considering the potential loss of many, many jobs if your efforts to secure a trade agreement with Europe and Asia were to be enacted, I think that there is structural problem whereby, through automation and robotics, our GNP continues to advance without a proportional increase in employment. I believe that we need to consider an entirely new way to support the wealth of individuals and families. When even a highly successful economy represented by Switzerland is considering a plan to provide an annual distribution of significant money, e.g., $25,000, I think that we need to start advancing a similar proposal. I have read nothing that convinces me that we will ever have full employment with sufficient income to support our families, as we have hoped to achieve.

I am glad that you had a well deserved vacation. You have set out a plan that you hope will protect the Democratic majority in the Senate. I hope that you are  successful. My major fear is the loss of faith in our government leaders will result in a relatively poor turnout in elections, especially since 2014 is an off year.  Restoring loss faith is very difficult. You are not responsible for all the problem, but I am afraid that you have become part of the problem. And if you could not do better, how could we expect someone else to succeed.

Edward Toomey