To the Editor:

This letter is in direct response to Ginny Jahrmarkt’s May 30 letter titled, “Jones made wrong vote at last Jackson meeting.”

Jahrmarket inferred that Mark Jones, a Jackson County commissioner, “showed his true colors” by “siding with an anti-capitalistic, anti-commerce group like the Occupy Movement” and his “railings against the evils of corporations and capitalism ….” If I may, let me try to provide a more accurate overview of what you call “The Entitlement Society.”

The recipients of TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds included Bank of America, $46 billion; Wells Fargo, $25 billion; Sun Trust, $4 billion; BB&T, $3 billion; United Community Bank, $180 million; PBS (USA) $43,000.

On the other hand, our hometown banks did not receive “entitlement society” funding State Employee Credit Union, Macon, and HomeTown Bank received zero.

Now what did many of these large banks do with the entitlement funds? They continued taking depository funding to invest in derivatives, risky overseas investments (how patriotic), and the purchase of other banks, making themselves even bigger today than in 2008 when they received the TARP funds precisely because they were classified as “too big to fail.”

By using entitlement society funding is how these banks take a “pro business stance” to help themselves and cause “negative economic growth rate and an unemployment rate in double digits” in some North Carolina counties.  

A handful of the top largest banks hold around 60 percent of the USA depository assets, but give only 18 percent of main street loans (how patriotic). Our hometown banks, on the other hand, hold 11 percent of the USA depository assets yet 56 percent of main street business loans come from these small hometown banks.

As for Jackson County residents trying to get back to work in this meager job market arena, consider how the big banks affected our nation’s employment growth rate. In 2011 JP Morgan Chase, Citibank and Bank of America moved $5 billion worth of IT and back office jobs to India, laying off thousands here in the USA.  

Just one more way these trans-national corporations with no national or patriotic allegiance take a “pro-business stance” to enrich themselves while depleting Jackson County resources.  

The entitlement society is big on privatization of profit and socialization of losses.

Time and space do not allow, but it would be so easy to go on and on and on with concrete, solid, and well-documented examples of the trans-national corporate controlled entitlement society.  

This is not a new phenomenon. In colonial days the Americas were subjected to the same as the English Crown empowered private corporations to plunder resources. Fortunately, the American colonists did not take this sitting down and instead held a Tea Party in the Boston Harbor that changed the world.

Mark Jones, like the early patriots and unlike the English loyalists of the day, believes in the spirit of our nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, that states all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Fortunately, in this election year, Mark Jones is standing with and for the people of Jackson County against the tyranny of treasonous trans-national corporations that plunder our local economies. Mark Jones, can hold his head high as a true and loyal patriot who is looking out for the prosperity and economic development of Western North Carolina while protecting our most valuable assets — Jackson County’s economy and its residents.

Thank you, Mark Jones, for continuing to support the “Move To Amend Resolution” set before the Jackson County Commissioners that supports the concept that corporations are not persons and money is not speech.

Geraldine V. Collins

Sylva, Occupy Western North Carolina