LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — Paper must adapt or fail

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette must evolve. The paper is failing on the two most important fronts: news information and wise opinion.

Virtually every opinion columnist is writing with partisan blinders. Can we at least have one conscious columnist with clear enough vision to see that both parties are corrupted and owned by corporate election financiers, especially Wall Street? Can we have one columnist who not only understands this, but consistently discusses solutions for draining the stagnant slime from the putrefied cesspool that is Washington, D.C.? Perhaps more importantly, the newspaper is failing to document the revolution for deep democracy ongoing nationwide, even in the backwoods of Arkansas. Apparently, the revolution will not be televised, or printed, in our state.

Recently North Little Rock joined Fayetteville and Eureka Springs in passing resolutions to support the Move to Amend movement, but there was not a whisper in this paper. About 300 cities and seven states have now passed these resolutions for a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Quite simply, the amendment would abolish the Supreme Court doctrines of corporate personhood and that money equals speech. This would not only undo Citizens United, which said corporate “persons” can spend unlimited sums in our campaigns, but might eliminate the army of paid corporate lobbyists in D.C. and much, much more. Democracy is still possible, especially if the Democrat-Gazette learns to smell.

ABEL TOMLINSON

Fayetteville

Who’s at fault in mess

Coralie Koonce declared that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are radical right-wingers because a true conservative would want to preserve the status quo. Here’s the status quo: Over 20 million still unemployed; August’s pitiful jobs report saw 96,000 jobs created, but 368,000 gave up looking; Barack Obama’s trillion-dollar-plus yearly deficits and a national debt of $16 trillion, more than the total goods and services produced in a year in the U.S.

Democrats still lamely blame George W. Bush’s policies for the mess we’re in. However, in Obama’s own words in Charlotte, N.C., this mess “built up over decades.” An opinion held by economists is that the 2008 recession was caused by the collapse of the housing and financial markets—and some believe the problem did start decades ago with the 1977 Community Revitalization Act.

The measure pressured mortgage lenders to grant home loans to poorer people, aided by the gradual loosening of banking regulations and final repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Since 1933, this act had guarded against financial disasters by keeping regular banks and investment (risktaking) banks separated.

By 2008, the bloated housing market was in free fall, thousands were defaulting on their mortgages, the financial world was in deep trouble with its load of worthless subprime loans, and a recession was upon us.

BARBARA FOREMAN

Siloam Springs

A signal achievement

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette pulled off the right-wing quad, I believe tying your record. Four of four editorials or columns on a recent editorial page appeared to me to be Obamabashing, anti-Democratic rants. You guys may even be right of Fox News. I yearn for fair and balanced.

RICK BURNS

Bella Vista

Hope for real change

Linda Farrell’s letter just confirmed to me why I’ll be voting 100 percent Republican this November. Unlike liberals who wish to punish anyone who does not agree with them, I wish she could come to know the truth about the subjects she spoke about in her letter. There is a God. He will reveal himself if you humble yourself and ask for forgiveness. Unborn babies are human beings. They have the same right to exist as you do. There are on average 3,288 abortions each day in America. Where is the strength of our country headed?

After more than 100 years of searching, these so-called brilliant scientists Farrell spoke of have not produced a single shred of evidence that I’ve seen to prove that a species can evolve into another form. These people are practicing a religion themselves and trying to force their beliefs on everyone else.

Under the Obama administration, the price of a gallon of gas has doubled, unemployment has risen to 8.1 percent (if you don’t count the 20 million-plus who have stopped looking for work), 47 million Americans are now on food stamps, the national debt has risen to $16 trillion, half of all Americans don’t pay any federal income tax and 67.3 million Americans draw some form of governmental assistance.

Yes, Linda, I’m hoping, hoping for a change in the right direction this November.

LYNN BENEDICT

Glenwood

Wheels on bus fall off

The coming presidential election this November will reportedly be a very close one. It shouldn’t be.

The people of America are being asked to choose between two vastly different methods to improve the economy, jobs, the environment, health care and our welfare system.

The Democrats say the government certainly has a place in addressing these issues because it is the only entity that can or has the will to do so. The Republicans feel that these issues should be dealt with by the private sector as much as possible to limit government interference in the lives of our people.

And here is where the wheels come off the Republican approach: denying a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. It is a basic legal right to control what is going on in one’s body. What government dictate could be more intrusive than that? And if that right can be denied, what right that we all enjoy can be considered secured?

So when all of you freedom-loving Americans go to vote Republican this November to improve the economy, add jobs, ignore the environment and wreck our health and welfare systems, you will also be stripping more than half the population of a basic legal right your wives, daughters and granddaughters currently have.

BILL FARRELL

Bella Vista

Practicing intelligence

The person who wrote the editorial on Gore Vidal appeared to make quite a concerted effort to match and exceed his perception of Vidal’s vileness with his own.

Tsk, tsk. Methinks he doth protest too much.

We seem quick to condemn in others the very faults to which, in ourselves, we turn a blind eye. This seems a match made in heaven.

Thank God for the Vidals and other independent thinkers of the world, including the editorialist. All God’s children got a place in the choir, as the saying goes.

All viewpoints and opinions contain a kernel of truth, including some in this space by writers who seem to have their adult diapers cinched too tightly. It is the kernel of truth we should seek.

The root meaning of the word intelligence is to “choose between,” which suggests we not blindly cede our power to religious dogma, commercials, editorials, politispeak or corporate propaganda. To practice intelligence, no potential source of truth should be ignored.

Peering ever deeper, as advised by St. Francis of Assisi, “What we are looking for is what is looking.”

Seek, see?

DAN VEGA

Fayetteville

Let’s do right by vets

I have tried to keep my dog out of this fight, but a recent letter broke that chain. In Vietnam, I served in-country, as we called it in 1970. We did our jobs, came home, no parades, no handshakes, no thankyous, job welldone, anything. We accepted that, moved on and forgot about it. Some years later, someone proposed a special license plate for Vietnam veterans, with a sticker at the bottom that reads “Vietnam veteran.” I have one on my truck now; it will not come off until the Department of Finance and Administration rips it off for me. When I purchased the plate, I had to show my DD-214 and the clerk verified that I had service in Vietnam.

The new fancy plates read “Vietnam War veteran,” and anyone who was honorably discharged during that period can claim that plate.

There was a letter suggesting that only veterans who had been awarded the Vietnam Service Medal be issued this plate. I totally agree. Let’s do right and get this special plate back on the vehicles that it was intended for—those owned by Vietnam veterans.

The state offers 21 special military plates; see what you qualify for before requesting a special plate. For those who were not “in country” for the Vietnam War, may I suggest you request a plate designed for those who served from Sept. 2, 1945, through Dec. 26, 1991. It is the “Cold War veteran” plate, and I think it will cover most of you that, to quote a letter-writer, “were necessary to take care of his posterior while he was on the line.”

DAVID KENDALL

Beebe

A game of monopoly

I would appreciate someone explaining how we can have laws or even constitutional amendments that will allow one company or even one individual to have a monopoly on something. That is what I seem to be seeing in the current proposal for casino gambling. In all fairness, this is not the only time someone has proposed such a thing. How does that sort of thing get to the stage where it is even on the ballot?

How would this differ from a law saying that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is the only company in the state that is allowed to sell newspapers?

JOE WHALEN North Little Rock

They are all veterans

Some think that only those who set foot in Vietnam should get a Vietnam veteran license tag. The tag says “Vietnam War veteran.” This does not imply being in-country in Vietnam. Would you tell someone who was a flight instructor in the states during World War II that he is not a WWII veteran? Isn’t anyone who served in the military during that war considered a WWII veteran?

That seems reasonable, and the same terminology should apply to other conflicts.

DENNIS SCHAEFER Dover

Feedback

Certainly no Hitler

I can imagine devoting a very large chunk of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s editorial page to a hate-filled, dance-on-your-grave sort of obituary for a Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, or similar mass murderer, but Gore Vidal?

Has Paul Greenberg gone completely bonkers in his dotage? Apparently all Vidal did to earn this elaborate trashing was to say and write some things that Greenberg doesn’t approve of.

I’m no fan of Vidal’s, but it seems to me that heaping one-sided condemnation on a dead man, who by definition can’t respond, verges on the very kind of censorship that Greenberg so eloquently railed against previously.

ALEX MIRONOFF

Fayetteville

Employment plan

Re: William G. Franklin of Jonesboro and his letter concerning which county has claim to his hometown of Magnolia: The issue is part of Mitt Romney’s promise to create 12 million jobs in four years.

If he wins the election, then Magnolia will be moved, brick by brick and stick by stick, from Columbia County to Drew County.

That’s bound to keep a few of us employed.

RODNEY K. INGERSON

Springdale