Dear Editor:

We are rapidly approaching mid-term elections.

The G.O.P. which had a six-year dictatorship, has not accepted the fact of losing their control of the country. They embarked on a policy of ignoring the needs of the country by blaming their failed policies on the now administration for the short time they have been in power.

They have developed a policy of blocking any attempt to try to get our country back on its feet and back on the road to recovery.

The Republican Party, true to its catering to the corporations which claimed that by removing rules and regulations they would put the country in a strong position throughout the world.

Taxes were hindering their investments, so after receiving tax reductions, they repaid the country by moving our industry overseas, for cheaper labor, free from benefits.

The United States was to be the dumping ground of these products, because the foreign market was not able to purchase due to their lower standard of living. The foreign investors took advantage of this loophole by absorbing our industrial base and shutting it down to a trickle. We are rapidly being reduced to a third world country due to livable wages and benefits being taken away making us a less viable country. The employers have eliminated and combined jobs in order to have greater profits. The quality of our once proud labor force was foresaken for greed and profit.

The Republican philosophy of taking care of the rich at the expense of middle and lower classes, came to the fore when they got the pensions placed in the hands of Wall Street manipulators who created unsecure policies which deflated savings for retirements.

So a lifetime of work was made useless. Wall Street added insult to injury by rewarding themselves with bonuses with the funds lost by the gimmicks they created.

It is about time for the employees to speak up and demand that funds set aside for retirement income be placed in guaranteed and insure securities and not placed in the unsecure hands of wall street self speculators.

The Republican Party whose policies created the loss of hard-earned retirement savings, thereby forcing workers to keep working past their planned retirement dates.

They will not tell you their plans for the economy and how they will eliminate more of the safety net for old age. The “correct with America” in 1994 was sold on the idea of elect us first then we will implement it, and you will see what you agreed to without foreknowledge of its content. We are always told, read before you sign.

Do not fall for the contract with America ploy again. In 1952, at the Republican convention, a delegate made the statement, “the only way to help the poor man is to make the rich man richer.” Trickle down economics never worked before and is not working now.

Corporations are making profits and holding on to them rather than hiring, but forcing those with employment to multi-task, so as to eliminate any hope of the unemployed to return to gainful employment.

If you are not in the upper two percent of income earners, you are kidding yourself if you think the Republican philosophy represents you. Wake up and smell the coffee.

The puzzling phenomenon which is not being addressed, the population increases while jobs decrease due to, job combinations and elimination by computerization.

The new philosophy of working until you die, thereby shutting out the young worker who should be beginning his career, not being able to enter the work force.

Voter beware, the G.O.P. never was or never will be for the working man or woman. Their creed, “We got ours, try to get yours.”

Alfred Tellitocci

Shadyside