To the Editor:

Somehow I was able to watch all of President Bush's State of the Union message. Once again he called for a review of "entitlements" like Social Security. These entitlements for the common good drive supposed free market fundamentalists like Bush crazy.

I would like to get rid of some entitlements too. A huge entitlement that should go is the massive tax subsidies to the oil industry and agribusiness. When Bush took office gasoline averaged $1.46 a gallon. Now it is at least double that in most places. Yet, we give the oil industry massive tax breaks and subsides amounting to billions! Come on right wingers, where is your mythical free markets? You really get mad about helping American kids with health care or the idea of poor people getting food stamps, come on, and get angry about this socialism for oil companies.

Then we have agribusiness. Farm subsidies were started during the depression to ensure that the American farmer could keep on producing and feed

America. I have no problem for giving the smaller family farmer a tax break. What our government does do is give huge tax breaks and subsides to massive agribusiness enterprises, corporations disguised as farmers. The effect that this has all over the world is that poor people can't compete with the heavily subsidized, highly mechanized American corporate farming operation. A specific right now, is our corporate farmers are flooding Mexico with corns and beans that your tax dollars subsidized. They put the Mexican farmer out of business, and they go to the U.S. so they can work and eat. Many of the undocumented workers that come from Mexico and other third world country would much rather be back home, on their farms, and not here. Hey right wingers, do you want to help stop the unending flow of undocumented workers in to the U.S.? Demand that your government stop giving your tax dollars to agribusi- ness. It just bothers the heck out of you that we are helping widows and orphans and the disabled with Social Security, get incensed about this socialistic outrage and abuse of the free market! What ever happened to good old dog eats dog, ruthless cut throat capitalism? It seems only to apply to the working class, not the corporate class.

Also, normally most imports have a 5% or little or no tariff, but imported food usually has an 18% tariff. Who does that hit the hardest? Guess, it ain't the rich folks.

Yes, those entitlements are a terrible thing. I am a disabled veteran and watch with interest as every year the Veterans Administration has to beg Congress and the President for its budget. Otherwise it too would be an "entitlement." After we come back from military service, wounded, sick from chemical exposure, or mentally disturbed after exposure to the obscenity of war, we are not "entitled" to anything. It is agribusiness and the oil companies that certainly are entitled.

Get angry, America.

Jim Ramelis

Gould City