LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — Critical thinking is needed

Election rhetoric again shows that citizen opinion reflects short memories. Worse is a failure to analyze cause and effect and a lack of critical thinking. Why did the Obama administration have to take drastic measures to prevent a depression? Rather than use intellectual analysis, citizens depend on talk shows and FOX News that have turned responsible reporting to sensationalism through the use of misinformation, propaganda and fear.

In two years, Barack Obama is expected to fix the effect of years of Republican policies. He has to deal with the effects of paying for an unnecessary Iraq war that has already cost $750 billion, resources that could have been spent at home or for a concentration on Afghanistan.

Lax enforcement on financial institutions led to financial disaster and corruption. Weak oversight of oil companies created environmental disasters. Based on the myth that taxing the rich will prevent creation of jobs, tax policies favored the wealthy and corporations at the expense of the middle class. Yet, over these years plants were closed and jobs were sent overseas.

Without voters exercising critical thinking to determine who is really fighting to protect their interests, they will vote to return to the policies that created the crises in the first place. They will vote for Republicans who are against health care reform, reform of financial markets, corporate oversight and taxing the wealthy.

JAMES GATELY Rogers

Lincoln didn’t listen

Sad, desperate and perhaps pathetic. Sen. Blanche Lincoln has resorted to using the disgraced and impeached former president, Bill Clinton, in her campaign.

Quite likely the most ethically and morally challenged individual on planet Earth, Bill again gets that special glint in his eye and wags his finger at us. He once again is triangulating. He wants the voting citizens of Arkansas to believe that Blanche’s opponent wants us all to be mad at each other.

If Blanche had only represented the people in Arkansas these past two years and had really listened to them, she would not be in trouble this time around. Remember when in August 2009 she was asked by a local reporter about all of the Arkansans who came out to the Vic Snyder/Mike Ross town hall to ask their elected representatives questions about the new health care plan? It was reported that she replied that she thought [the disruption] was un-American.

Recall how proud she was when she exclaimed that she was the 60th vote to put the health care plan over the top? Today she is waffling on the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.

One day she says this and the next day she says that. She has not figured out that the citizens in Arkansas are smart enough to know when she is trying to have it both ways. Lincoln does not represent Arkansas’ conservative values. Vote her out.

LOUIS R. BURNETT Little Rock

Blanche has a heart

They say Blanche Lincoln is toast, and she may be. It’s a big game up there in D.C. Moveon.org moved on her because she did have some common sense. The senator actually cares about health care, jobs, education, agriculture, rural America, race relations, so if she’s toast, she’s quality toast with a heart.

I’m ready for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to be personages of the past, and my sister, who lives up North and is herself a congenital Democrat, finds the president’s leadership wanting. Take health care. The bill should have been bipartisan because Democrats, Republicans and independents all get sick. America is in and is headed for more difficult times. Debt equals trouble.

Bipartisanship and heart will be necessary, and the U.S. and our senators could take example from some Arkansans, e.g., Don Tyson, who purportedly once said that someday chickens will be bigger than eggs; he’s done a better job at giving average and poor people jobs and insurance than the government.

In history, we’re never far enough way from where we once were. Here’s a nod to Lincoln: This year a plaque as a memorial to the slaves who built the Capitol in Washington was dedicated. There were from both parties congressional leaders, Congressman John Lewis, the last true civil rights leader from the Martin Luther King Jr. days, and our lady senator, with affection for the act of remembrance and reconciliation.

CHARLES VERMONT Prescott Award finally comes

Allow me to explain my dealing with Sen. Blanche Lincoln in regard to a World War II Tuskegee airman.

Second Lt. Alexander Jefferson was flying a P-51 fighter over southern France. His aircraft was hit while in a scrapping run on German installations. He was forced to stay in his aircraft to obtain a higher altitude to bail out. His cockpit was on fire, burning his legs and hands. At 500 feet, he bailed out, landing in a tree, and was captured by the German unit that shot him down. He was treated for his wounds and later confined to the German prisoner of war camp.

In 1995, I met Jefferson at the 50th Stalag Luft III reunion in Ohio and asked if he had ever received his Purple Heart. He informed me that he hadn’t. I located the evidence that he had been wounded and sent a letter and the evidence to Lincoln’s office in D.C. for help. Six weeks passed without any response.

I wrote a heated letter to Lincoln’s office and received a phone call from one of the staff members who informed me that the senator’s office had been in the process of remodeling. I made contact with three retired generals who were confined with Jefferson in Stalag Luft III. I was advised to mail a letter with the evidence to the Air Force Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base.

Jefferson was awarded his Purple Heart in November 2001 at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base 57 years after being wounded.

ARNOLD A. WRIGHT Benton

Exercise right to vote

If you are a registered voter, I would encourage you to exercise that right at the polls. I’ve heard many people say during the past year that this election is one of the most important in history. I would submit to you that every election is important. Your vote does count. I can remember clearly casting my very first vote in a presidential election over 30 years ago. I considered it an honor and privilege then and do even more so today.

V: Verify information on your candidates via a reliable source. There are many reliable tools available at your local courthouse, Freedom of Information Act records and government websites.

O: Organize your thoughts and beliefs with what you want to see at local, state and national levels of government.

T: Think about your choice for a position. Does his or her platform line up with who I am? Does he best represent my stand on the issues?

E: Go to the polls, cast your ballot and elect the individual.

I’m not a registered Republican, Democrat or even a tea-party member. I vote for the person, not the party. This letter has not been written to ask you to support a certain candidate, but to simply vote.

CINDY H. KLATT Waldron

On road to perdition

Many Democrats are running away from their party leaders and the administration’s agenda. I fear for basically good elected officials that they have allowed themselves to drink too strongly of the intoxicant of power. They have deluded themselves into thinking that the loss of principle will be made up for in their increased power and prestige, their ability to bring home the bacon for Arkansans. The shame is that these politicians have given away their principles for an illusion.

First, where does the money come from to pay for the “bacon” they brought home? From Arkansas taxpayers, where else? Surely they don’t expect applause for buying us bacon with our own money.

Special interests get most of the bacon and the little bit that is left for us the taxpayers costs us way more than if we just went out and bought it ourselves. Here’s a novel idea: If it’s our money anyway, why not just cut federal taxes and keep the money in Arkansas? We surely know how to best spend our own money. Cut out the middle man.

I know that the Democrats’ intentions are good, but does that really make up for the muddle they have made out of the economy? High taxes, high unemployment and an economy teetering on the brink of cataclysmic failure are the legacy of these good intentions. It calls to mind the oft-repeated admonition that the road to perdition is paved with good intentions. This is the end result of illusionary principles.

JOCK MacGREGOR Hot Springs

Cover the other side

According to Mike Masterson, the “roughly 25 percent of Americans who live in a radically left-wing reality” don’t understand those with the “tea-party mindset” who believe in “radical” ideas like self-reliance, hard work, equal rights, charity for the less fortunate and the right of all Americans to live and let live in self-reliant freedom (like his wife).

I am a hard-working, self-reliant, progressive female veteran. I advocate for equal rights and support charitable organizations. I also believe in strong unions and the right of everyone to decent health care without bankruptcy. Charitable organizations cannot meet the needs of everyone. I believe in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schools, public libraries, public roads, police and fire protection, care for veterans, all sustained by the government.

Masterson states that the tea party wants elected officials to “get busy shrinking the ballooning public employment numbers.” I am a retired Veterans Affairs health care professional. Are federal health care workers and or the VA unnecessary? I am retired from the Arkansas National Guard and served on active duty with the Navy during the Vietnam “conflict.” I don’t know of any female tea-party candidate who is a veteran. Apparently, their “patriotism” doesn’t quite stretch that far.

I would like to see progressive, “leftwing” liberal views equally represented in this newspaper.

LYNNE SEYMOUR Goshen

Funds must be repaid

During the outcome of the day, there is any number of Social Security advertisements on TV with attorneys using this time to advertise for their services. Social Security is a federal entity that has no bounds and can make up rules as it sees fit. We fit into that category.

I have been approved for disability and so has my wife, and now we find out that when she gets her disability, she will have to pay back my Supplemental Security Income because we make so much.

This is money that we have paid in through work over our life for just this cause and now we will be penalized. I think there are others in the same situation and I think that America needs to know about it.

GREGORY McPHERSON Hiwasse

Feedback Question for Gene

I am a little confused about the tax cuts set to expire on Dec. 31. I know they were implemented by President George W. Bush 10 years ago during a Republican administration.

The Democrats have always said that the tax cuts were for the wealthy friends of the Republicans. Of course, the Republicans denied this, saying all citizens received them.

Now the Democrats are saying they might be willing to continue the tax cuts beyond Dec. 31 for middle- and low-income families. How is it possible to continue tax cuts to these folks when the Democrats have claimed all along that they didn’t get them? Just wondering.

Perhaps Gene Lyons would like to answer this question in one of his columns. I am sure he would give an interesting, if convoluted, explanation.

BARBARA WALLS Bald Knob

Debate respectful

Let me congratulate AETN and the three major gubernatorial candidates for that useful and constructive recent debate. No shouting or screaming and the candidates seemed to respect each other and the political beliefs that each held. It was a good learning experience for everybody.

Steve Barnes as the moderator and the media panelists also contributed to the atmosphere that made this such an unusual political event in this day and time. Arkansas should be proud.

CAL LEDBETTER JR. Little Rock