For your benefit, PTC Observer, I will repeat the note I posted on the Citzen website at the time the short version shown above was printed in the newspaper. There is only so much space I consider reasonable to use up in the print edition of The Citizen. Needless to say, I consider it appalling that anyone would come up with garbage about Karl Marx and socialist communism in response to practical suggestions to get us out of a fiscal crisis at the state level. Those who want our teachers and civil servants to do all the sacrificing should simply raise their hand and say so.

Much of the money spent by our state government is for the benefit of our children, and they, I might point out, are defenseless.

Here's what I posted as a blog:

My response to Matt O’Neal’s letter [Feb. 3] on solving the immediate fiscal needs of our state government is that the government owes its citizens the duty to protect them, and the citizens in turn have the duty to fund their government adequately. As the rich have more to protect than the poor, it’s appropriate they pay more. There’s no class warfare there, just logic.

It’s easy to go from rich to poor.

Ask the people who invested their life savings with Bernie Madoff, and who lost them because their government’s Securities and Exchange Commission failed to protect them.

Ask the people who saved and invested their retirement funds in 401k and other plans only to see them shrivel to insignificant amounts because of the meltdown that resulted from lack of proper regulatory oversight of banks and other financial institutions like AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac by their government.

Ask the local people who invested in Wachovia Bank who saw their investment cut 90 percent when the housing and mortgage market cratered from lack of proper government oversight. Ditto for Synovus Financial in Columbus. For many other Georgia banks their investors’ loss was 100 percent.

Ask the people, including real estate lawyers, architects, engineers, developers, builders, craftsmen, landscapers and real estate agents who lost their source of income because the government had failed to procure and use the tools to keep the economy from cratering.

Ask the people who thought buying a home would be a wise and safe investment, and who saw their home’s value drop drastically and precipitously. The more so when their mortgage payments went up at the same time. And even more so when they lost their home altogether.

You can even ask the people who ingested contaminated peanut butter produced in Georgia who incurred physical pain and untold medical expenses, or funeral expenses, because their federal and state Departments of Agriculture failed to protect them.

Yes, it is easy to go from rich to poor. Many people are just one unexpected illness away from it. Bernie Madoff went from rich to poor pretty quickly himself, as it turns out.

Some people cannot rebound back, oftentimes on account of age or disability. People with mental impairments, disabled veterans, young children, these are all people in no position to “contribute.” To imply they are all moochers is beyond the pale. It takes a heck of a lot of nerve to denounce those who take their side as advocating communist socialism!

Seventeenth century physicians believed that bleeding their patients would improve their condition. Take my word for it, bleeding the government is no way to improve our condition.

There is no unabashed jealousy of people who have achieved and been rewarded for their efforts in imposing higher taxes on wealthier people. Their effort was sometimes just buying a lottery ticket, accepting an inheritance, or manipulating cronies they helped place on their corporate board of directors into handing them an extravagant bonus. They have the most to lose and the most to protect.

There are responsible wealthy people, like Warren Buffett, who act responsibly themselves and denounce the excesses of the marketplace. It is important that we not let the inmates take control of the asylum and that we restore sanity to our political process.

By the way, most modern intelligent people don’t bother reading Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels or the Communist Manifesto. They just know common sense, and ordinary decency, when they see it, and that’s probably why support for the victims of the Haiti earthquake has been so widespread. These people may have read Matthew 25:40 instead of Marx.

We need political figures with backbone, who resist and even denounce ideologues who promote greed at the expense of those who are defenseless and, might I say, blameless. There is such a thing as social responsibility.

Claude Y. Paquin

Matthew 25:40. The King will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.