Greg Vernon

To the People of Rochester:

This is an letter to the editor of the Democrat & Chronicle written as an assignment for my college English class.  Undoubtedly it will not be published because of its length so consider this to be a GregVernon.com exclusive.

I will be the first to admit life in our city and country are far from perfect, taxes are high, jobs are few and far between and even are best schools are facing declining graduation rates; all while record high food and gas prices starve us inside our freezing homes.

But as Americans we have often found great pride in our abilities to make life better or to conquer unimaginable challenges. After all, we managed to land on the moon with the computing power of today’s calculators!

But it seems, with the modern challenges of inflation and corruption all around us we have lost either the ability or the will (though I’m firmly in believe that it is the latter) to face the difficult challenges that lay before us and instead we look to quick fixes (the $850bil bailout, for example) to temporarily alleviate our problems. Even as I type this there is a candidate promising “hope” and “change” we cannot look to one individual to solve all of our problems (at this point, I’ll confess. I am neither an Obama or McCain supporter). If we are to leave any opportunity for our children each and every one of us need to make sacrifices to truly change our direction.

We need to spend time with our children and worry about their education! Too many parents think of public schools as babysitting while they work; they think it is the teacher’s job to educate their children. This terrifying mentality has had the largest affect on our children’s minds – even above less-than-stellar school funding. If you want your child to succeed get involved. Why would your child care about his or her education when you, their parent, simply don’t?

We need to save more and spend less! Our economy is utterly destroyed; no bailout or economic stimulus package can fix the mess we have caused ourselves. If we want to restore our economy to its once great levels, we must live within our means. Perhaps one should forgo the trip to Europe, or the new car, or new house and instead save the money for the inevitable rainy day. We must never spend money we don’t have; too many of us (myself included) have purchased unnecessary items on credit, only to struggle to cope with the monthly payments.

With our approval, even our government is guilty of buying on credit. Our national debt (which our children must pay) is at a record $10,000,000,000 (that’s 10 trillion dollars). As Rep. Paul of Texas put in his remarks to the voter values summit, “[our country] is on the verge of bankruptcy.” Even as they run the debt our leaders in Washington cannot be entirely blamed for the currency crisis we are on the verge of facing; it was we the people who sent them to Washington, after all. To fix this we must move off the couch and avoid the endless distraction of television and demand more of our leaders. We must learn what our leaders are doing and protest their behavior if the need arise.

To my fellow citizens: even as the text of this letter may seem contrary, I am an optimist! We can overcome the problems of the present. The solutions we need are extraordinarily simple, if only we were to put forth the effort in using them.