It’s apparent, at least for me, that we are in a dilemma. Let us face the facts: Our systems are broken and need to be repaired. We seem to have completely lost our common sense.

I heard on some news broadcast that some random elected officials were allowed to purchase tickets to the latest World Series baseball games at deeply discounted prices. Why should this be allowed?

When I was a child I was told that the public sector of jobs were underpaid and underappreciated so they would work to obtain better, private jobs. This appears to have completely reversed itself.

The way that our elected officials set the budgets of their responsible departments seem to be out-of-sync with the actual need within our communities.

New departments are created to attend to prevalent problems, yet once the problems are corrected the departments and their charges find other issues which presumably need other attention and funds. Stop the bicycle lanes already.

Now, the most dangerous of all is that our legal system appears to be completely broken and off track. The judges are in the pockets of the prosecutors, and their judgments are completely out of touch with reality.

Their answers appear to be to incarcerate criminals, yet other jurists tell us that there’s not enough room to incarcerate them in our prisons, so we release them to reenter society and then when they can’t, or won’t, find reasonable employment they return to crime in order to survive.

The Wal-Marts and Costcos of the world are bullying the smaller merchants and will not stop until they can own and control all avenues of business enterprise. Are we too blind to see this? Are we too deaf not to do anything to change these things?

Do we have to accept the changes being forced upon us? Our brains and our minds must attend to mend the wrongs in our current lives, and we should start now.
Leonard Samuel
Simi Valley