LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — Initial inclination was best

You should have followed your first inclination and avoided prejudging the Weiner School District issue altogether instead of spewing misinformation in your editorial, “Agro-whatism?” You stated that school districts “have to have at least 350 students or it doesn’t pay to keep pouring money into them. They’re inefficient.”

Fact: Weiner receives $1,589.88 in per-student state aid less than Harrisburg, the receiving district, due to our self-imposed millage increase. Weiner offers more than the 38 required courses and is ranked 36th of 235 districts in Arkansas. Harrisburg is listed 113th. Weiner had one superintendent and he had one secretary who also lost her job. What a savings in the scheme of things!

All your sarcasm concerning the “agroterrorism” threat should be directed to the Commission of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Prevention and Preparedness Act and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We the Friends of Weiner School District simply stated their findings.

I did like a subsequent editorial analogy: “Once upon a sad time . . . states systematically neglected . . . the rights of a whole class of their citizens. When they did, they waved the banner of States Rights to cover the mistreatment of their own citizens. The federal government was bound by law and conscience to . . . protect the privileges and immunities of all its citizens, to use the language of the Fourtheenth Amendment.”

GRETA GREENO Fisher

Not much of a choice

What choice between community services and the human development centers?

The state of Arkansas repeatedly mentions families with developmentally disabled individuals making a choice between community services and institutions. However, officials fail to mention the long waits for the community services due to inadequate state funding.

According to Inclusions Not Institutions, an advocacy group run by the Arkansas Support Network in Springdale, Ark., right now individuals with disabilities who are trying to leave institutions are placed on a 150-person wait list for community services. These individuals then have at least a nine-month wait to receive such help.

I’m told that the wait list to enter the human development centers is about 40 people, but individuals with developmental disabilities who make a choice to avoid institutions go on a different wait list with 1,699 people, with an additional 2,790 applications in process and have a wait of about 8.5 years before receiving community services.

What kind of choice is that, between government institutionalization for a developmentally disabled individual who needs living skills and nothing?

MARJORIE GREENBERG Little Rock

Punish abuse strictly

I was driving my mother to Little Rock. We were traveling on Interstate 430 and had just crossed the Arkansas River. To my amazement, there was a very small black kitten in the middle of the center lane.

It lifted its little head up; it knew it was in trouble. I hit my brakes, nearly causing an accident. I slowly made it to the right side of the freeway and sprinted over 100 feet to where the kitten was. It had not been further harmed.

I held up my hands trying to get traffic to stop. No one would stop. Vehicle after vehicle raced by over the kitten. I thought I would be able to rescue it. Then the unthinkable happened. I had my eye on the kitten and suddenly saw a passenger truck hit it. The poor baby was severely injured, blood coming out of its mouth. Its little body writhed in pain, and every time a vehicle would pass over it, the kitten would fly into the air and land and writhe some more.

I knew it couldn’t live much longer and didn’t try to fight the traffic any more. I felt utterly helpless. As I sat in my car trying to get my bearings, all I could think of was: Who would throw a defenseless kitten out their window on a busy freeway? The cruelty of people never ceases to amaze me. I am a firm believer that people who harm animals will also harm people. In this state, it seems epidemic. Animal abusers should be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

PAMELA RUSH Jacksonville

Not so fair, balanced

Fair and balanced? Recently FOX News said it was 95 degrees in Arkansas and 110 degrees in Arizona. They showed many immigrants coming across the border in heavy-hooded jackets in sleetlike weather. No date was shown. It could have been filmed during the Republican administration that didn’t want to protect the border.

Why didn’t they show the date of the film? I’m so upset with the “fair and balanced” network that gives us opinion as truth and nothing about what is real. Why do they feel that we were in a war with two countries for 10 years and never had to pay for it? At the same time, the richest in the nation got a tax relief.

When our nation is at war, I feel that we all should have to sacrifice, not just the families with members fighting for us. What say you?

CARYL FECK Bella Vista

Spreading the word

It was interesting to read your stories about the misuse of state-owned vehicles by high-ranking state officials. I’m in hopes that the message will trickle down to the working masses and they will adhere to the regulations.

Within the past two months during a visit to Tunica, Miss., I observed an Arkansas state-owned vehicle in the parking lot of Hollywood Casino. I sure wish now I had taken down the license plate number for future reference.

It seems everyone wants something free.

BETTY A. RISNER Cabot

There he goes again

Here we go again, another tired column by Dana Kelley chastising black folks about being moral and responsible.

Why is it that every time there is a complaint about obvious racism by any organization, the subject of unwed mothers is interjected into the conversation? (Seventy percent is always the number.) If history serves, blacks in America have always suffered, since rampant illegitimacy conceived on the slave-breeding farms was the backbone of the Southern economy. The minute slavery was abolished there was this hue and cry about immorality.

Unwed motherhood is more of an economic issue than a moral one. We black people should strive to mend our families because of the poverty created from broken families, for as long as you are struggling for food and other basics for survival, you can never develop yourselves as a people.

Given their history, white American men are the last people on this Earth to pontificate about morality and responsibility. To Dana Kelley, the inconvenience of being reminded of still-existing racism was immoral.

JOYCE JARRETT Little Rock

Spill’s answer simple

I have a way to contain the oil spill. This is not a simple problem, but there is a simple solution to most things if you use a little common sense.

This solution does not care about the amount of pressure the well has. I have been sending this to several organizations and even the Alternative Technology Resource Team, and they did not respond.

[The way] to control the flow of oil is not to stop it because the force of the flow is too great. Now you place a tanker ship or ships above the spill and extend a tube or pipe of the appropriate size down into the flow of the pipe and have a flange built on the end of the pipe. The flange will spread out like a funnel upside-down into the pipe that is erupting oil and it will direct oil into the pipe. You can store the oil into the tanker ships until you can find a way to stop it.

With things that are devastating, people think that it has to have a real expensive and complicated way to solve it, but with the matter here you have to think simple.

I hope that they will use this method because it will work. If you like this idea, I hope you get to the people who can do something about it. I don’t know that this had anything to do with this, but I am an artist and I have a vision about things that have to be solved. Most of the time it works.

HENRY CALLAHAN Little Rock

Get some new help

My family has done income tax preparation for more than 50 years. My big question is, who is doing the taxes for Dustin McDaniel, Martha Shoffner et al.?

It cannot be a qualified person or none of this vehicle business would have ever happened. All of those people need to fire their accountants and hire someone else.

SHERRY BRUNO North Little Rock

Proposal no surprise

Of course the Muslims want to build their new mosque at Ground Zero. Why be surprised?

Every Sept. 11 they can have a big celebration. This can be their Fourth of July. They can start their festivities with, well, see their forms of punishment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg can welcome them with a keynote speech followed by a pep talk from George Soros and the president of Mexico, which willprompt our senators and representatives to a standing ovation, then the wrap up by our own Barack Hussein Obama with his extended hand to Islam.

Now moving right along to celebrate the murders of some 3,000 people. They hate us. Is our country sick or what?

F.W. OLLAYOS Horseshoe Bend

Cut oil consumption

The editorial titled “Malaise all over again” was a very deceptive document.

To perpetuate the idea that the Gulf oil spill happened because environmental laws prohibit drilling in environmentally sensitive areas is another attempt to cover up the real cause of the spill, which is gross negligence by BP.

Referring to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska as “desolate” is an insult to Americans who have enough Christian faith to appreciate the special places that God gifted us with.

The oil spill reinforces perhaps the biggest problem this country faces, which is our greed for cheap gas. A leading CIA official once said if you want to know who is funding the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks and who are killing our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, just look in the mirror the next time you fill up your car.

The solution to our oil problems is not more sources of oil but reducing our consumption. The most efficient way of doing this is to reduce the speed limit back to 55 mph. This will save more oil over the next five years than we will find in any possible drilling sites. It also would save the average person 24 cents per gallon of gas. We are a patriotic, Christian nation that cares about the lives of our military personnel and the future of our children. Reducing our consumption of oil is one of the most important actions we can take.

DANNY FARLEY Stuttgart

Feedback Dump ‘numskulls’

I guess I’ll never learn. The mindless arrogance of some of our elected officials is mind-boggling.

Just as Lt. Gov. Bill Halter gets something right, others come along with false accusations and mule-headed declarations of their own. I wish that all politicians had to abide by the same rules and laws that the voters do.

The delusion of being bulletproof has gone way too far. Let’s vote these numskulls out of office from Washington to Little Rock and elect folks who care about this country and this state.

GENE ALLEN Little Rock

Exposé applauded

Kudos to our newspaper for exposing the flagrant violations of tax law in the highest levels of our state government, especially Meredith Oakley’s wonderfully sarcastic column about “Princess Martha” Shoffner. (Go get ’em!)

I may not always agree with some of the more conservative voices in your paper, but I admire your willingness to stand up to the high and mighty when they get too big for their britches.

MILLARD R. ROSWELL Stuttgart

Mouth over mind

It appears that some of our duly elected state officials have smart minds and dumb mouths.

ROBERT P. TAYLOR Little Rock