LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — What is fight really about?

We have waited over 50 years for improvement to a national health care system that barely meets the needs of an insufficient number of American citizens. Past efforts to change the system met with insurmountableopposition for various reasons and simply fell by the wayside.

Now that a serious attempt to change the system is again under way, those who could make it happen can't seem to look beyond political party or race to get it done. We can't afford to wait any longer. Thousands of Americans are losing their health care coverage every day. And millions of Americans find health care insurance unaffordable (my case), or coverage insufficient, or coverage unavailable.

If we think about it, nearly every one of us possibly knows someone who is affected by the lack of quality, affordable health insurance coverage.

What is the fight against changing the system really about? For those whose primary opposition to proposed legislation is the cost of reform, it might be enlightening to consider the cost of doing nothing. Others, who base their opposition on reports of "death panels," mandated service providers and other misrepresentations, should seriously consider the source. Any source other than yourself (reading proposed legislation for yourself) or a participant in drafting the legislation is questionable.

PATRICIA A. WILLIAMS Little Rock

No support for 'care'

James Madison writes in The Federalist No. 57 about his concern that the Congress will "be taken from that class of citizens which will have least sympathy with the masses of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few."

Madison underestimated Congress. Members have consistently fleeced the citizenry to benefit their political friends and lobbyists and burdened the producers with programs that appease the unproductive. This has to stop. Why does our president continually threaten those few remaining institutions that contribute? Why does he want to take them over? Is it so they can become a drain on our resources just like Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service?

I will not support any candidate who votes for any semblance of the health "care" bill now in Congress. Will congressmen and senators introduce an amendment placing themselves and their families under any health care bill they might pass? Will they also include Congress in Medicare and Social Security, stop all COLAs and revise the retirement packages for federal employees?

I will not support any candidate who votes to provide free health care and amnesty in any form to illegal immigrants; take over any more businesses in the private sector; approve any spending without definitive proof of sufficient funding; pass any additional taxes.

HAROLD AKRIDGE Bella Vista

Letter not irrational

Instead of raising the level of civic discourse by correcting letter writer Robert Bayne's flawed criticism of, presumambly, the cultural revolution, this newspaper stooped to phony moral posturing to misrepresent his criticism as an irrational prejudice.

America is the product of a culture that arose among the mostly English settlers in the New World who developed a country based on idea rather than ethnicity. As Francis D. Adams and Barry Sanders point out in "Alienable Rights," even in the earliest Colonial times blacks never assimilated American culture. This explains their appeal to the Marxist-Progressive ideal as a revolutionary class to destroy American culture that is the foundation of our constitutional self-government.

Until recently, the persecution of Jews was due to their rejection of moral relativism. In a sharp break with their ancient tradition, American Jews reject the principles of the American Founders for social justice, i.e., socialism, and embrace moral relativism.

Recent presidential elections have shown me that blacks (88 percent) and Jews (75 percent) are America's most genocide-tolerant ethnic groups, as well as the most communist-tolerant, and thus the least committed to democratic principles. People who want to replace constitutional governance with socialism should not be immune from legitimate criticism.

WILLIAM WOODFORD Little Rock

Shelter is improving

I appreciate Karen Davis' candor in relaying experiences at the Humane Society of Pulaski County. We are actively working to improve our shelter so we can meet the increasing demands placed upon us.

Davis mentions overcrowding; this is, indeed, a constant problem.While we never turn away sick or injured animals, we do have a maximum number we can effectively care for on a daily basis. When adoptions are down and every kennel is filled, we have no choice but to turn away animals for which we cannot adequately care.

The economy has affected our shelter tremendously. Donations, our sole means of support, are down and our intake needs are up drastically because of job losses and home foreclosures. The passing of the felony animal cruelty bill also has affected us. I am one of only three certified cruelty investigators in the state and am continually called upon by law enforcement personnel to assist with rescue and seizure of animals around the state.

While we work to improve our shelter, we call on the public to help. Spaying and neutering help keep the homeless animal rate under control. Adopting instead of purchasing always makes a huge difference as for every animal adopted that is one more we can take in (such as the one mentioned in Davis' letter).

Working together, the HSPC can continue to make a difference in the lives of animals in our community.

KAY SIMPSON Little Rock

A good place to start

If we're going to go ballistic over health care reform, let's put a real reform on the table. The problem now is that the patient is not the customer; Uncle Sam and the insurance companies are. We could change that.

Why not take a little stimulus money and set up a $2 million health expense account for every citizen over 21? That would cost about $600 million, far less than we're spending now. Inthis day and age, the spending restrictions shouldn't be hard to enforce. Access codes and tracking systems are two possibilities.

Now the patient is the customer. The patient and doctor can decide together what test they want to pay for. Patients can spend their money on everything from hangnails to heart transplants. They can even buy insurance, only now the insurance companies will need the patients more than they need them.

As long as we keep the structure we have, we'll have the same problems. There are always bugs to be worked out with any major change, but we have to start somewhere.

CARI KING Pocahontas

Town hall behavior

Who are these folks screaming and yelling at our U.S. representatives and senators that they "want our America back"? Did we grow up and go to school with these ill-mannered louts? I do not recognize them.

Is this the kind of behavior that their grandparents would admire with a gentle pat on the head? If so, maybe putting Granny in front of one of Sarah Palin's imagined death panels might not be such a bad idea.

Another question comes to mind. Why would anyone want to preserve a system where private companies such as insurance companies and HMOs and their clerks determine what your needs are? Why would you write a blank check to the same folks who bill you several dollars for a single cotton ball?

If you get sick and go to a hospital, you have no idea what anything costs and more than likely you are going to get a letter from a collection agency a few months later stating that you still owe a great amount of money for a bill you thought had already been paid. Double billing is not uncommon; many hospitals have made a killing that way. Maybe that was a poor choice of words, but I think it is a point well made.

Give us our public option. You don't have to go along with it if you don't want, but stop limiting my choices. This is still America.

STEVE WALLACE Little Rock

Ross stuck in '1984'

If Mike Ross votes for any health care reform bill containing the public option, he will be serving his last term as an Arkansas congressman. The public option will put private insurance companies out of business and thousands more Americans will be without work. Is this the Democrats' intent?

Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are out of money, and yet Democrats contemplate forcing all Americans into government-run health care; all Americans except federal employees and union members, including Ross and his family.The new aristocracy of federal and union workers will be exempt from the public option and will keep their private, taxpayer-paid health plans. Just who made congressmen and senators princes and princesses above the common citizen who pays the government's bills and for their private health insurance?

Ross is a fraud. He claims to be a fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrat, but he votes with the San Francisco socialist Nancy Pelosi 90 percent of the time. His record is clear and he can't hide from it. He does not represent traditional, conservative Arkansas values and he will be defeated if he continues voting with the Democratic leadership.

Is his memory so short? Does he not remember 1994? Or is he really stuck in George Orwell's "1984"?

DOUG HURT Sheridan

Resignations needed

It's my belief that all members of the U.S. Senate should be removed from office [for] allowing Obama to appoint czars to run the country.

The czars have been given powers not included in the Constitution that have effectively rendered the Senate moot. The country is being run by the White House alone, which has effectively eliminated the balance of powers as one of the most important parts of the Constitution.

The senators refuse to practice their sworn duties and so should resign immediately.

JERRY CASE Bald Knob

Feedback Another version

A shorter version of a Mike Masterson column: "There's so much partisan crap out there. No one is searching out the truth, but just listening to those voices that confirm their own opinions.

However I, an opinion columnist, have found truth in another opinion columnist's viewpoint, which just happens to be similar to my own. Truth to power."

Gee, he also manages to note a man's race as credentials for an opinion as if there are no black conservatives of note. (Cough, Michael Steele, cough.) WILLIAM GMAZ Rogers No more changes

KARK-TV, Channel 4, has made a big mistake by letting morning weather reporter Harry Bounds go. What a refreshing, delightful gentleman. What is the station's problem? Why all the changes?

They find good people we relate to like Bounds with his delightful appearance and cheerful personality. They should be ashamed. If Bounds left to get a new job, fine. Little Rock's loss.

He will be missed.

NANCY LAIDLAW Hot Springs