Lawmakers, I can’t believe it. I’ve lived scrupulously the past six years trying to get through grad school, living in modest one-bedroom apartments, paying my taxes with a saddened heart, knowing part of my tax dollars will pay for bullets in an Iraq war I wished my lawmakers hadn’t decided to start (but hey, these days, what’s another trillion dollars down the hole?).

And for the past six years, come to find out, the financiers on Wall Street have been having a ball gambling in speculation markets, recklessly imploding a bubble built on fraudulent mortgages that, yet again, I wish my lawmakers hadn’t allowed to happen.

Lawmakers, redeem yourselves. Stop squandering my tax dollars on unjustified wars and bottle service for Wall Street playboys in swanky NYC nightclubs (in New York a bottle of Stoli begins at $3,000, delivered by cocktail waitresses carrying sprinkler fireworks. And they want how much from my tax dollars to get out of this mess?).

If taxpayers are going to risk their money to help the banks get back on their feet, then we should get equity just like other shareholders, and we should get the reward once they’re back to profitability.

We should not be getting more of the same: substandard housing, ER health care, unaffordable education. What kind of social contract is this?

In the last six years as my income has stagnated and I’ve barely scraped by a living, CEOs have been living it up on yachts and high-rises. Income inequality has skyrocketed.

I can barely afford to get prescription drugs, and I have health insurance. The rich have gotten richer and the middle class is facing homelessness. Bankruptcy. Unemployment.

Lawmakers, get with it. Your constituents are catching on, and we feel betrayed.

Ashley Mears

Fayetteville, Ga.