Will create more jobs
As you go to the polls over the next few days, I urge you to vote for Issue 3. Issue 3 will help us create jobs in communities across our state. It will allow cities and counties to fully participate in economic development efforts to attract employers for their community. It only makes sense to empower local communities with the tools they need to create local jobs for their citizens.
Issue 3 also enhances the state's ability to compete for major economic development projects--the kind of project that creates hundreds of good-paying jobs in a community. In 2013, under Amendment 82, the state approved bonds for Big River Steel to locate over 500 new jobs in Northeast Arkansas. With current Amendment 82 restrictions, the state may not have the capacity to recruit any more significant super-project employers to Arkansas.
If we don't pass Issue 3, we're essentially telling companies around the country that Arkansas is closed for business. We'll be sending them to Tennessee, Mississippi, or Texas where employers will create jobs for people in those states. We're competing with states all across the country to bring home the best-quality, highest-paying jobs for our people.
Issue 3 will help our communities create more and better jobs for Arkansas. Please vote for Issue 3.
HUGH McDONALD
Little Rock
Arkansas Democrats
I guess that we're just deplorable ...
Roger Webb pleads with Arkansans to rethink their Republican leanings as it relates to support for Donald Trump, who he describes as "truly deplorable." I suppose if I thought that the last seven and a half years had provided the promised "hope and change," I might consider his suggestion. They have not.
Arkansas used to be a true-blue Democrat stronghold. I remember voting in the May primary election in 1980. The line from the church extended clear out to the street for people waiting to vote. When one of the volunteers yelled out "anybody here for the Republican primary?" I stepped forward to wait with three other people to vote for Ronald Reagan.
I believe Arkansans did not abandon the Democratic Party--the increasingly progressive leadership at the national level left them. Arkansans are reasonable people, but are generally conservative in their views.
Our choices for the presidency this year are not the best. But I would rather vote for someone that I might have to worry about what he might say than someone that I couldn't believe when she said it.
GORDON GONDEK
Little Rock
Stop the nightmares
Please make it stop--my recurring disturbing nightmare. First let me say that the penchant of fuzzy-minded, elitist liberals to compare Mr. Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler is a patently false, spurious insult to Mr. ... Schicklgruber.
I think to find a modern leader of such ruthless Machiavellian evil as Hitler, we need to look to Vlad "The Impaler" Putin. Mr. Trump is more likely comparable to the strutting, womanizing braggart Benito "Il Duce" Mussolini, Hitler's sidekick. Thus, Trump is Robin to Putin's Batman, Pancho to his Cisco, Gabby Hayes to his Roy Rogers, etc.
This gets me to my nightmare. Mr. Putin is a bare-chested Don Quixote astride his emaciated charger Rocinate, lance lowered, charging full-tilt at the windmill of NATO. Along with him is bare-bellied Trump as Sancho Panza, giggly, cantering beside his master atop his faithful donkey.
Not a pretty picture. Please, please make it stop.
My apologies to Mr. Trump for comparing him to Hispanics of whom he has such a low opinion, but he was Sancho Panza in my nightmare.
ROBERT LEWIS
Fayetteville
Ode to Mountain Man
I hiked many miles with Bob Ritchie. The Marine Corps paid me good money to sleep on the ground, and I wasn't interested in doing that anymore, so we were day hikers. And I do mean "day." We squeezed in a lot of The Natural State before sundown. Eventually Bob took up trekking poles. I couldn't use them, although they gave him a rapid pace. But the pace slowed as difficulty with balance crept up on him.
On one of our last hikes, balance escaped him and he hit hard. He was scraped up pretty good, but the Mountain Man of the Ozarks bandaged up and kept on going and finished the day. Finally, he had to quit.
I began suggesting that we ride four-wheelers. That is the backup plan for me. ATVs are the scourge of the wilderness, but the wilderness still calls, and you have to get out there somehow. Two weeks before he died, we had lunch, and planned a ride on the ATV trails at Mount Magazine during the first week of November around his birthday when fall color would peak. He was yearning for the outdoors until he could yearn no more. That was the last time I saw him. Fall was late this year.
Happy birthday, Mountain Man.
JOHN P. GILL
Little Rock
Editor's note: Robert E. Ritchie II was president of the Ozark Society, and treasurer for over 25 years. He died last week before his Nov. 4 birthday.
Has what office takes
I am an enthusiastic voter for Hillary. Her life's work has been about supporting children and families. She understood early childhood was a critically important time of life before the brain research of the past two decades. She acted on that knowledge way back in the 1980s--helping launch Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, bringing preschool home visiting to low-income families, supporting Arkansas Children's Hospital, and advocating to ensure children with special needs were welcome in schools. Her vision for the future supports families. Increase programs for prevention and treatment of substance use disorders to help families rather than incarcerate parents.
Along with 97 percent of scientists, she believes we must act now regarding climate change. She has a plan for increasing clean-energy jobs and the guts to take on the fossil-fuel industry. She has a plan for comprehensive immigration reform and keeping families together. She has a plan to close loopholes in our tax code so working families no longer will pay a higher effective rate than millionaires.
During her time in the Senate and as secretary of state, Hillary worked with members on both sides of the aisle and leaders worldwide, proving that she can cooperate and negotiate (fundamental life skills ) while remaining true to her ideals. I believe Hillary has the knowledge, wisdom, compassion and energy to be a great president. Let's fool the pundits and pollsters--make Arkansas blue. Help elect the first woman president in history. Make your future grandchildren proud!
TERI PATRICK
Little Rock
Editorial on 11/04/2016