Make vote count on Nov. 4 for President

Events of the past few weeks, coming on the heels of a sharp decline in the housing market, a constantly rising jobless rate and increasing difficulty faced by families in accessing affordable health care, tells me that we are facing a national election as critical as any we have known.

People I talk to are worried. They worry about the possibility of foreclosures, that their savings are in jeopardy, that their children's prospects of going to college is becoming less affordable, that job prospects for young people are drying up, that they will be able to keep their jobs, and that they can't make ends meet.

There are important differences in the approaches of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama to the problems facing us today.

McCain would like to lower the tax burden on the wealthy with expectation that benefits would somehow 'trickle down' to average citizens; this in spite of the fact that the gap in income between the wealthy and the poor (and the middle class) has steadily grown in the past eight years.

He shares with President Bush the passion for privatizing as many government programs as possible and has supported deregulation of the private sector, the result of which we can see today.

Obama, on the other hand, is committed to helping workers and the middle class by redirecting priorities in government programs to protect middle class citizens and improve their lives. Obama favors tax breaks that would go to ordinary working families.

He has also made creation of jobs with reasonable pay a centerpiece of his campaign, has pledged to create a health plan that would protect families, address immediately the energy crisis, and bring government back to fiscal responsibility.

There are only a few weeks to election day. Make your vote count.

Richard Hollenbeck

Bonners Ferry