LETTERS

Absurd comparisons

John Podesta, President Obama’s senior level adviser, compares House Republican leadership to the Jonestown Cult. More recently in the Democrat-Gazette, a letter to the editor compared the Tea Party to the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Then we have some in Eureka Springs comparing the display of American flags to a Nazi celebration.

No this is not a Saturday Night Live skit.

The Jonestown Cult’s spiritual leader, Jim Jones, was a communist proponent who urged or coerced more than 900 people to commit suicide in 1978; 276 of them were children. The House Republican leadership was elected by the citizens to represent their constituents, which they did by opposing Obamacare. Polls show a majority of citizens against Obamacare when it was passed by only one party in Congress and now,after nearly 5 million have lost their health care due to it.

The Tea Party is a political organization with legitimate, legal, and political goals working within the system. Its members have neither advocated nor performed any violent acts. Generally, they oppose raising taxes (Obamacare is a tax), reducing the U.S. debt (over $17 trillion) and the deficit. The Baader-Meinhof Gang were Marxist terrorists in Germany from 1970-98 who sought to overthrow the German government and were responsible for 296 bomb attacks, arson, bank robberies, kidnappings, and over 30 murders, including U.S. soldiers.

An American flag is a symbol of freedom, while Nazis were a party in Germany who helped Hitler’s dictatorship and reign of totalitarian terror.

The comparisons are incongruent, absurd, and malicious.

WILBURN ROWELL White Hall

Not voting convictions

Why did Sen. Mark Pryor not support the marriage amendment in 2004 and 2006? It seems he used DOMA and Arkansas law as political cover. We understand this until he now advertises the Bible as his guide. Really?

I believe Jesus taught that marriage is between one man and one woman from creation, nullifying divorce except for fornication, polygamy and homosexual marriage. Pryor apparently didn’t believe Jesus’ teaching in ’04 and ’06, why advertise such now? I believe because the hypocrite needs the votes of Christians to be re-elected.

I think every person who believes Jesus’ teaching should vote Pryor out, for as a Pharisee he talks, but he doesn’t have the integrity to vote his convictions.

ELTON STEPHEN IRBY Hot Springs Village Should have foreseen

As our public servants seem reluctant to divulge information about the troubled rollout of affordable health insurance, I’ve begun to read the Affordable Care Act. Nearly 1,000 pages long, it is laced with deadlines for when the program is to be put into operation.

Much of this should have been publicized long ago.

Among other things, the ACA states that the Department of Health and Human Services shall hire “qualified entities” to start compiling information about coverage options for the Internet website “not later than 60 days after the date of enactment.” A “mechanism, including an Internet website” was to be established no later than “July 1, 2010.”

I find claims that glitches were unexpected hard to believe.

The ACA states it “will add millions of new consumers to the health insurance market, increasing the supply of, and demand for, health care services.” This doesn’t sound like “socialism.”

Notwithstanding President Barack Obama’s reassuring words, the White House has been ingenuous these past two months. But it is not alone to blame. Members of Congress have been party to debates over the ACA for years.

The people Congress serves include millions of uninsured. But I have heard only 49,000 people were enrolled at the start of last month. That sounds like a national emergency.

What’s more, I believe the ACA has already been violated.

ANTHONY B. NEWKIRK North Little Rock

Caution on optimism

Re the “Here’s the good news” editorial: Hate to spoil our editor’s good news on the absence of an “energy crisis,” but here are a few sobering facts that contradict such optimism.

In July 2008, oil reached $147 per barrel up from less than $6 before the 1973 OPEC embargo, and about $20 just 12 years ago. I believe this swift, large increase, contrary to popular belief, created our current economic crisis.

Our recent drop in consumption of two million barrels a day is due to the economic downturn coupled with high free-market gas-pump prices and government “quack cures” for energy savings from appliances to light bulbs and automobile mileage.

While it is true that we produced about the same amount of oil as Saudi Arabia in October, we still imported about 40 percent of our consumption needs in a time of little to no economic growth and maximum domestic production through oil shale fracking. As the cost of extracting oil rises beyond $100 per barrel, and we develop “alternative” renewable energies, we may one day be able to live within our own addiction and delay the effects of man-made global warming, but this seems pretty doubtful by all accounts.

As an aside it should be noted that the U.S. paid over $16 trillion to import oil since 1972, about equivalent to our national debt. Also, it was Republicans, i.e., Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, who imposed oil price controls in the ’70s.

Crisis, what crisis? Give me a break.

PETER TRABANT Hot Springs VillageSome bad medicine?

The hypocrisy of some elected officials never ceases to amaze me. Some tend to do things or take steps that make the populace, or should I say the peasants, speechless.

The most recent situation that comes to mind involves the Honorable Jill Dabbs, Mayor of Bryant. According to recent news report, Mayor Dabbs advised city employees that she was recommending a freeze on merit increases and step-and-grade advancements for at least six months, and that everyone should take a deep breath and tighten their belts. Evidently, her medicine was not good enough for her as almost in her next breath she asked for an increase in her compensation.

I think if there was ever any application for the term “dirty rotten scoundrel,” this would be it.

CAUSLEY EDWARDS Little Rock