To the editor:

Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says this about the budget crisis:

“Nassau County (in New York, where he lives) shows how easily responsible government can collapse in this country, now that one of our major parties believes in budget magic. All it takes is disgruntled voters who don’t know what’s at stake — and we have plenty of those. Banana republic, here we come.”

It’s the same in Island County.

Year after year, Washington’s oligarchs spend millions of their dollars (with the help of newspaper publishers) to convince “disgruntled voters who don’t know what’s at stake” that the “voodoo economics” that caused our budget crisis will somehow cure it.

Then, once the dust has settled, they advise us on how voluntarily spreading around a few more of our dollars will revive the programs that their cure destroyed.

It doesn’t work. I and a couple dozen other volunteers just spent a month begging in near-freezing weather on behalf of the Salvation Army and other nonprofit organizations that try to pick up the slack. The result was less than a dollar per potential donor, several of whom were disgruntled about the incessant flow of solicitations they get in the mail during the rest of the year.

Jim Bruner

Oak Harbor