Interstate sign creates hazard
I missed it by two months. If memory serves, I wrote in December regarding the danger of having the sign saying “To I-49” in the median at the entrance to the new flyover on North College. At that time three signs had been run over since the flyover’s opening just four months in the past. I said to myself the newest replacement sign would be knocked down by mid-January. My prediction was two months off. It didn’t happen until mid-March. At this point, there have been four signs run over in the same spot in just half a year. Again, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. How many signs must be destroyed and how many vehicles must be damaged before the Highway Department figures out the sign must be placed overhead and not within just a few feet from the traffic flow? As far as I know, no one has been injured in these four preventable accidents. However, how long can we expect that streak of luck to last? Will the next sign be run over by mid-June?
JAMES HILL
Fayetteville
Obama’s bad deal with China
To the folks slamming Tom Cotton for his concern about an Obama/Iran nuclear agreement, consider Obama’s “major milestone” climate agreement with China. After months of secret negotiations Obama agreed to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 26 to 28 percent while China agreed to “make best efforts” to have its carbon dioxide emissions peak around 2030.
With Arkansas already facing a mandated 44.5 percent reduction in CO2 emissions, closure of power plants and rising electricity costs under Obama’s current overreaching EPA regulations, his China agreement requires the U.S. to make even more drastic CO2 cuts while China, the largest CO2 emitter in the world, continues to build coal fired power plants at the rate of one every eight to 10 days for the next 16 years before even thinking about reducing CO2 emissions with no guarantee it will happen even then. Is this the kind of one-sided, community organizer agreement you want with Iran? Are you willing to roll the dice on Obama’s amateur negotiating skills when a nuclear war could be the result?
By the way, if you’re interested in reducing CO2 emissions, you can do it right here in your own home town; If you pick up something in Walmart that says Made in China, put it down! You may have to do without some things for awhile, but eventually retailers will get the idea and stock products made in this country, and those polluting factories and CO2 spewing plants in China will have to close.
PHIL WARNER
Garfield
Taxes spent unwisely
I have been a taxpayer for the last 55 years, yet what do our taxes pay for? It seems that today the government does not want to fund anything but war. Taxes use to pay for schools, higher education, city services, infrastructure, social programs designed to improve the lives of millions of low income people so they could feed their children.
Now our state legislature wants to cut jobs, unemployment and the SNAP program, when food banks have never seen so many people in need. Yet no one talks about cutting back on military and war efforts. There seems to be no cap on that. Arkansas wants to cut food stamps yet again and make people go back to work. What work?
Why can’t our elected representatives wake up and see that there are few full time jobs, fewer still that provide benefits to employees, and a national health plan that is raiding Medicare to pay for Medicaid?
If seniors are expected to pay for everyone else’s medical care, why not at least start at the top? Those with high incomes can contribute more than the elderly on Social Security alone. Let’s be really fair for a change and charge those whom it would not hurt so deeply, before making across-the-board cuts on Social Security and Medicare regardless of personal circumstances.
JOYCE MURRAY
Springdale