LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — Got what we paid for

Unlike school board elections, your recent editorial on the subject was timely and democratic.

Cumulative statewide school election results are unavailable, so let’s look at Arkansas’ most populous county, Pulaski. In the 2008 general election, which included a presidential race, 68 percent of registered voters went to the polls. In the 2010 general election, with state constitutional officers and U.S. Senate races, 48 percent of registered voters turned out. In the 2012 primary election, it was 17.2 percent. In the most recent school elections, 0.66 percent of registered voters cast ballots, less than two-thirds of one percent.

Public school districts are the largest local government entities in Arkansas, generally dwarfing municipal and county budgets. Combined local, state and federal spending on K-12 public education exceeds $5.2 billion annually, just a few hundred million dollars shy of general revenue for the entire state. In Little Rock, 1,098 votes recently decided in a special election how the district will spend $350 million annually and continue to challenge the state in federal court.

Legislators around the state and their respective superintendents who prefer these insider elections just the way they are should stop complaining about Little Rock’s dysfunction and drain on the state’s coffers. This is what happens when parents, employers and property-tax-paying citizens are, by design, disenfranchised from the governance of their public schools. We’re all getting what we’re all paying for.

GARY NEWTON

Little Rock

Not concern for them

The same folks who dogged Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign about his church affiliation and his controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and then later insinuated that the president might be a Muslim are some of the same folks who would vote a Mormon into the White House.

I guess they’ll vote for Mitt Romney because the church he belongs to has Jesus Christ in its name, or because someone told them Mormons were Christians. It doesn’t matter that the Mormon Church rejects the very core belief of both Catholicism and Protestantism, the Holy Trinity. It makes no difference that when comparing theologies Mormonism is more akin to Judaism and Islam than Christianity.

It is of no concern to Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals that Mormons believe (among other things) that God is flesh and blood and resides on the planet/star Kolob; that God lay with Mary and their union produced Jesus; or that when Jesus arose from the dead he went to America to preach to the Indians (the so-called lost tribe of Israel). And it doesn’t bother them that Joseph Smith wrote “The personage [Jesus] who addressed me said that all their creeds [religions] were an abomination in his sight.”

First a black man, now a Mormon. What will be next, a UFO believer? Oh, I forgot about Jimmy Carter.

FLEMING STOCKTON

Little Rock

Could help Red Cross

With the perfect storm and all the devastation Hurricane Sandy brought, the Red Cross needs funds. Recently, Donald Trump, a man of respect and honor, offered Barack Obama $5 million for charity if he would release his college and passport records.

I realize this will not come close to paying for all the Sandy destruction, but it would certainly help. Obama must have a lot to hide or he would produce his records and donate the $5 million to the Red Cross.

LYLE THOMPSON

North Little Rock

Two laughing matters

I read two humorous columns in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette recently. I am fairly sure the authors did not mean for them to be humorous, but they were very funny just the same.

The first that gave me a good laugh was by Harmon Seawel. I actually did agree with him for the first two-thirds of his column on the linkage of local politicians with national politicians in the same party. What I found funny was the claim of racism because of a picture being circulated of the governor touching fists with the president. Seawel argues that the same effect couldn’t have been achieved by the governor touching fists with John F. Kennedy, for example. Perhaps not, but it could with the governor shaking hands with, say, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. Like President Barack Obama, they represent icons of liberal ineffectiveness. To make the argument that such imagery is racism, not that the officials are perceived as incapable of handling the present situations, is a true sign of desperation.

The second column was by John Brummett, who lambasted Gov. Mitt Romney, and then spent the last paragraphs waxing poetic about the virtues of Obama. I was expecting Brummett to quote Shakespeare, remarking how noble the president was in reason, or how infinite his faculties were. One wonders if Brummett will delve further into Shakespeare if the president loses: “Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come not to praise President Obama, but to bury his re-election bid.”

STEPHEN W. LEA

Des Arc

Go forward, not back

Re the writer who stated who he would not vote for: The candidate I will vote for doesn’t change his views depending on his audience; believes birth-control decisions are private and between a woman, her family and her doctor, not the government; believes that a woman is entitled to equal pay; believes in expanding civil rights regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation; believes in overwhelming scientific evidence of global warming and evolution; believes that religion is a personal and private decision and not something to be pushed or promoted by the government; isn’t afraid or ashamed to reveal his tax returns; a candidate who will represent and work for all our citizens and doesn’t dismiss 47 percent as being “moochers”; believes all Americans are entitled to health care that is not dependent on the whims of insurance companies; who believes in bipartisanship and compromise; who didn’t purchase a NRA “lifetime” membership in 2006 while contemplating a run for office, or taking at least $400 million in federal money for the Salt Lake City Olympics and then condemning the same for saving the auto industry.

In other words, for these reasons and many others, I will not be voting for the candidate determined to drag us backwards with the same policies and advisers that started two wars, nearly caused another depression and harmed our reputation throughout the world.

TERRI BROCK ELLIOTT

Little Rock

Your mess, clean it up

Deer season is alive and well in Dallas and Calhoun counties in South Arkansas. We do have an abundance of deer that need thinning.

Unfortunately, this also means that we have an abundance of trash and deer carcasses illegally dumped on our roads. We clean up after you every year.

Have a safe hunt and please be mindful of your trash. Dispose of it properly.

BECKY C. HEATHERLY

Fordyce