LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — It would be a great honor

Raise my taxes, please, if that’s what it takes to provide adequate health insurance for the working poor in Arkansas. We have always required a large pool of low-cost labor, which for most of our history was considered disposable. That fact is a black mark against us as a people in the eyes of God and the reckoning of history.

We began to correct this injustice with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for many and free emergency-room care for the rest, which is a poor substitute for regular checkups and routine treatment. There is no question that stop-gap health care is inadequate, and it probably costs taxpayers a bunch.

All Arkansans are important and valuable, and the working poor are essential to our economy. This is not just a nice-to-have deal for those who presently lack coverage. They desperately need it.

Gov. Mike Beebe has an outstanding record of analyzing issues in terms of cost and value and recommending the best course. He recommends we take advantage of this valuable opportunity. In my opinion, those who are ostentatiously “running the numbers” through ideology-approved calculators are only looking at the cost, and not the tremendous value. They are holding us back from taking this necessary step toward the greatness of which we are capable as a people.

Those concerned that my taxes might have to be raised to help pay for it need not be. I won’t mind at all. I would be honored.

HOWELL MEDDERS

Fayetteville

Our nation is in need

Our country is dying; it’s going the way of the dinosaur. We don’t notice it because we’re too busy going about our daily lives, but it’s true nonetheless. It’s dying as we’ve pulled away from our God-fearing roots and have moved toward a materialistic and secular society, one in which we care more for ourselves and what we have rather than concerning ourselves with the welfare of others.

In the Bible, Jesus said that we’re to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with our entire mind and also to love our neighbor as ourselves. I believe it’s not a coincidence that when we were following these two all-important directions our country prospered.

Now, however, various special-interest groups are forcing us to turn our backs on God, so he’s turning his back on us. The more we take him out of our schools, our homes and our government, the more we suffer.

Every one of us knows that in the past we were a favored nation. Now though, we’re a country that’s struggling just to survive. If people would wake up and realize this, then they’d understand that we need God back in our lives.

Our country needs God’s blessing; with it we’d once again be the most admired country in the world. Without it, though, we’re simply lost.

BRAD BLEVINS

Rogers

She’s an apt candidate

The Democrats seem to believe they have another winner with Hillary Clinton in 2016. I don’t think so. I think that when her role in the Benghazi tragedy becomes widely known, even the far-left zombies will be in favor of dumping this misfit.

It appears she makes up stuff all the time. She claimed that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first guy to reach Mount Everest’s summit, although she was born several years before he climbed the mountain. She claimed that she had to run for cover while under fire after landing in some foreign country; video of that landing showed her laughing and shaking hands with the people who were there to welcome her.

And who can forget her “vast right-wing conspiracy” explanation for Bill’s affair with Monica?

I believe that Mrs. Clinton is dishonest, arrogant, and not too bright, so she has all the qualifications the Democrats are looking for.

GARY W. LEMON

Cabot

Pandora’s box is open

Imagine the unimaginable, being a child at Sandy Hook as the gunman entered. That is what madness in action creates, a circumstance beyond comprehension: the terror of the children as the ones in front are torn apart with military rounds, Mommy and Daddy are not there, and teacher is on the floor in blood.

There is a response coming from Washington, D.C., to this atrocity and others, focusing on gun control with a nod to mental illness. It will probably not address the First Amendment. It is not considered free speech to cry fire in a crowded theater, but it is considered free speech to expose children to thousands of images of violence.

With 200 million to 300 million guns in private hands, gun control alone is bound to fail logistically. It will be hard to return to innocence now that the entertainment industry has opened Pandora’s box of violent imagery. True parental guidance is the first line of defense.

The right to privacy, particularly in health issues, is heavily guarded by the government. When it comes to the convergence of insanity, guns and violence, privacy rights may need to be abridged and due process under law modified in the short term. All need the ability to broaden concepts of probable cause for search and seizure in order to be preventative.

Undoubtedly there would be overreaching and legal cans of worms, but then imagine the children in the back of the room as the gunman came toward them.

CHARLES VERMONT

Prescott

Scar that will not heal

The shooting at Sandy Hook was a madman going to the school with the intention to kill. Our public schools need security cameras, police officers stationed at each school, God, the Bible and the Pledge of Allegiance.

We need to start the healing process. However, the massacre at Sandy Hook left a huge emotional scar that will not heal. We have TV commercials about bullying. What, not terrorism?

DONALD L. PUTMAN

El Dorado

For the love of money

Does anyone else see the irony in our elected officials investigating Wal-Mart and others for reported foreign bribery, yet they constantly solicit PAC money and take lobbyist favors?

Like the athlete who does nothing the whole game until overtime, then continues to preen and chest thump, they stand there and pat themselves on the back for last-minute fiscal-cliff delays and for taking money from Peter to pay Paul. That should have been taken care of before they ran for re-election.

ANTHONY A. SCHROEFFEL

Little Rock

What’s the big rush?

Recently I was crossing the Arkansas River on Interstate 30. I was in the middle lane. I was going between 5 and 10 mph above the posted speed limit of 60 mph, and I was being passed on both the right and left and being tailgated.

Then a police officer went zooming by on the left without his siren or lights on and proceeded to weave in and out of the traffic ahead of me.

I have lived here since October. I am disgusted by the blatant disregard for the posted speed limits and the amount of tailgating that goes on.

Slow down, people! It’s not NASCAR out there; it’s our lives at stake.

JAMES NORMAN

Little Rock

Men need to step up

Having been a single parent myself, I feel compelled to respond to Bradley Gitz’s recent column about the state of marriage. There were three premises he seemed to imply that don’t apply to many of us.

One: Single parents don’t want to get married. Two: Single parents cannot raise children well. Three: Men want to support their offspring.

False to all three.

Deadbeat dads are a big problem for many women, either divorced or never-married. Just try to find a man who wants to support children he did not plan on having.

Try to find a man who is actually a good marriage partner.

Responsibility, employability, and being addiction-free and caring are important attributes in a partner. But all the other men are also sexually active, and some women choose the wrong partner for any number of reasons. But there are already children, or a child on the way.

What about widows? Not all single women are cheap and easy. But many still raise their children, with or without help from the man.

One woman I know raised her five children after their father died, and every one of them turned out well.

My grandmother’s husband left her alone with three children. Every one of them succeeded in life.

What is the alternative? It is not women who need to rethink marriage, but men. If they would willingly support their children and their wife, marriage would be a choice for many more women.

JOYCE MURRAY

Springdale

Creating more victims

Stop with all the hysteria over guns in society. The fear-mongering from the left needs to continue being countered by logical thought and discussion. Solutions are out there and available right now.

If you think banning guns or having gun-free zones is the answer, ask the people at the theater in Colorado or the victims of Sandy Hook how well that worked. I’ll bet every oneof them would’ve welcomed a trained armed guard there to protect them.

There are thousands of ex-military personnel who are highly trained who need work, and I’d bet most would consider it an honor to be asked to guard our children. If you don’t agree, sit your children down and explain to them why an armed guard protecting your money at the bank is okay, but one protecting them at school isn’t.

Crime is committed by people who don’t care about the law. Restricting guns for law-abiding citizens just creates more potential victims.

It’s not your right to tell me what I can or cannot use to defend my family. You may choose to be a victim, but it’s not your right to make that decision for me.

Crime rates are higher in countries around the world that have banned guns. Is that what you want here?

Otto Zinke’s letter is so ridiculous. It proves to me that anti-gun liberals are incapable of thinking rationally. Stop listening to Piers Morgan. His idiocy is rubbing off.

GARY MUTH

Benton

Feedback

It’s wholly absurd

A reader recently proposed that the poor will all suffer from liquor sales in Benton County. Kind of an absurd notion. People of means-or no means-will drink even if one must cross a county line.

It seems this writer has an anti-alcohol agenda based on a religious bias. I suggest that this person read about the first miracle Jesus performed: creating wine out of water. The scriptures only condemn overindulgence, not consumption. Furthermore, Sunday observance and Christmas observance are nowhere in the pages of the same book.

If one must base their projections on a belief system of their own making, it is false. Many simply believe what the preachers say and never try to prove what they believe in.

JOHN E. DICKERSON

Lincoln

What stops them?

I believe the only thing stopping people from breaking our doors down is the fear that someone could be behind that door with a loaded gun and will shoot them.

You take that fear away, and what is going to stop them? Nothing.

I don’t own a gun, but I’m seriously considering purchasing one. I refuse to live in fear.

LISA M. KIRK

Texarkana