No real choice for next president

Re “The American way,” editorial, July 4

This editorial suggests that the field is crowded with choice for our next president. Oh, sure. There are the corporate-owned candidates on the left and the corporate-owned ones on the right.

A couple of them speak the truth and have less than a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the nomination. That sure is a rich field of choices, yesiree.

Almost all are millionaires, and only one or two speak of a national health plan -- the same two that for some odd reason the corporations wouldn’t back if the alternative were a nuclear holocaust. Aren’t we lucky?

JIM STEEVES

Albuquerque, N.M.

*

The Times is wrong. By November 2008, there will be no real choice. The candidates’ need for hundreds of millions of dollars and the Supreme Court’s gutting of the McCain-Feingold Act ensure that all of our candidates will be in the pocket of Big Business, Big Insurance and Big Pharmacy and their PR experts. We will not get meaningful immigration changes -- Big Business wants cheap labor. We will not get universal healthcare -- insurance companies will lose too much money. Our drugs will continue to be some of the most expensive in the world.

We citizens need to vote on the issues and ignore the TV 10-second bumper-sticker slogans.

LYMAN BURGMEIER

Cypress