We can resist. We can make phone calls, write letters, protest, march, and of course vote.

But we, the everyday people of normal financial means, will always be at a disadvantage when it takes millions of dollars to run for office.

It seems to me, on this gloomy day, that the only true answer to taking back our country is to have a cap of $30,000-$50,000 that any candidate can spend when running for office, whether it is local, statewide or national.

As long as only extremely wealthy people hold office they will continue to vote in their best interest to preserve and protect their wealth.

Let’s level the playing field by setting a low financial bar that almost any candidate could meet. Let’s get the lobbyists and political action committees out of the way.

Candidates would have to get out there, talk to, meet with and engage voters in the old-fashioned way. No more manipulative and expensive TV ads.

I want all corporate- and lobby-owned politicians out! I want grassroots candidates in. I am sick at the craven self-serving tax reform bill, at the abandonment of financial and environmental protections from which 100 percent of us benefitted.

All of these decisions are driven by enormously powerful lobbies — the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the energy development and production industry, the corporate agribusiness industry.

Enough.

I fear that this country might be headed toward a violent revolution if we don’t make these changes, as life for the non-wealthy is going to get progressively worse in the decades to come, and there will be a breaking point.

Let’s change course while we still can.

Gail Friedlander

Raymond