Letter: Foreign ownership of the United States

Dear Editor:

With an acknowledged national debt of at least $11 trillion, a rational-thinking person might think it would be a good idea to spend less time and treasure trying to make the world safe for democracy and more time getting our own country back on its feet.

Our national economic growth rate for the last quarter was minus 6.1 percent. Meanwhile, our global trading partners – China, India, Indonesia and Brazil – enjoy positive growth rates and expect 4 to 8 percent growth by year’s end. While these countries utilize their resources and develop nuclear power, we lock up our resources and “go green” with windmill power.

In the Northwest, we essentially scuttled a vibrant lumber industry over bogus concerns for the environment and locally are committing economic suicide by turning the Kootenai forest into a grizzly bear sanctuary.

The U.S. comes in close to last place academically when compared to other developed nations of the world, yet national and state budgets are tightening on education funding. At the same time, we are building billion dollar embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With leadership in this country of ours clearly out to lunch, it might be prudent for us to learn to read and speak Chinese. Actually, the idea that our country might be owned by foreigners is not that far-fetched. Foreign ownership constitutes $3.3 trillion of our national debt and growing. Some of this foreign ownership are countries that we currently send aid to.

Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Borrow the money from a country so we can give it to them! Only in America!

Bill Payne

Libby