This nation is already better off than four years ago. Industry is doing better, bin Laden is dead, troops nearly out of Iraq, and winding down in Afghanistan. I can still buy an American-made GM or Chrysler. Americans made a profit from the sale of the stock that was acquired from bailing banks out. The stock market is up.

Republicans would risk privatizing Social Security and use vouchers to pay for Medicare. They suggest starting another war with Iran, costing lives and another trillion dollars. Conservatives want women with no choices and limited futures, no abortions, but then refuse to help pay for babies born out of wedlock. They would kill public education, end pensions, gut domestic programs, outlaw unions (that protect workers), end regulation on corporations, repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, give more tax breaks to the ultra rich, and spend trillions more on the military than the Pentagon asks for. They think corporations are people.

Democrats would bring jobs back to America, let more workers unionize and climb into the middle class, protect Social Security and Medicare, fund public education, continue to avoid war in foreign lands by using NATO and the U.N. to do their share (as practiced in Libya), and reduce the self-destructive dependence on foreign oil by developing alternatives here.

Some leaders promise hope, others don’t offer much for working men and especially women.

There is a very clear choice for the future.

Ron Hemingway, Dixfield