Letter to the editor, any suggestions?

[Postman]

Corporate money has corrupted our democracy. We see it with the current healthcare debate. It's a given that Republicans are the handmaidens of corporate power but the healthcare issue has brought out its corrupting influence on the Democrats as well. Our democracy is broken.

In order to reclaim our gov't it must be made illegal for corporations to contribute to political campaigns in any form.

FDR called them "economic royalists." Unaccountable corporate tyrannies who rank their profit motive above the public good.

These "economic royalists" are still with us. In the health care debate of today they are what 's called Big Pharma (pharmaceutical corporations) and the Health Insurance industry. They are the ones preventing a "public option" or Medicare-For-All from happening by lobbying (legalized bribery) Congresspeople.

It's time for Pres. Obama to put down the Abraham Lincoln books and start reading a little more Franklin D. Roosevelt.

[Captain Hilts]

1. It's short 'n' sweet, with a punchline. Send it.

I got so many letters published in the Wash Post that the senior letter editor called me and talked for 45 minutes!

Go for it.

[DailyGrind51]

2. Close with these quotations:

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Benito Mussolini

[unpossibles]

3. I like it! And I like response #2's suggestions (the quotes) nt

[ThomWV]

4. It looks more like the middle or end of a letter than a complete train of thought

Money may have corrupted democracy, but that's one subject and health care is another. So you might have done better to say that corporate money has corrupted the health care debate and leave the subject of democracy for another day. Start with which industries are involved and how much they are spending - the sums are staggering and that's an attention getter. Then it would be good to say where the money is being spent, TV, Radio, astroturf groups, enormous campaign contributions to Republican Politicians that sort of thing. That should lead easily into short sweet examples of the corruption - town hall disruptions, misleading Public Service announcements, maybe even quotes from bought Politicians, and so on. Then sum up with your rage at it all.

At least that is how I'd structure it - but of course its your letter, not mine.

[Postman]

5. I like your suggestions....

I wish I could do exactly what you suggest. However, my local newspaper limits the amount of words a LTTE can have (which I'm sure all papers do)and I think doing what you suggest would go over the limit and it would be edited down to what they want to print..

I think thats part of the problem. These issues need explanations and doing so requires a good amount of paper space to which newspapers are unwilling to allow.

That and the fact that I probably am not very good at putting these things into a coherent story...