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Capitalists defend their "right" to hire and fire as an unquestioned "entitlement". Yet it surely should be challenged on grounds of its undemocratic nature and its perverse social results. Employing people in socially useful work is more humane, more productive and less costly. Yet a private profit-driven capitalist system yields the endless unemployment, spiking repeatedly. Except, of course, capitalists want it because it keeps them at top of capitalist society.

"Our state's policies and practices are being weighed on the scales of justice," the letter states. "They, and all of us who stand on the sidelines and watch them go into effect without raising our voices, are judged on the criteria established in our faith traditions and the principles in our documents which first constituted our nation and state. No matter which measure of human decency is used, our moral profile is a scandal.

"There has to be a grass roots campaign to win it."

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All of this could be avoided with legislative action but there seems be little likelihood that the current Tea Party strangled Congress will do anything that might relieved the economic pressure on the nation’s working people.