LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — Now isn’t that special!

Hypocrisy can be defined as “feigned high principles.” A perfect example of hypocrisy would to have a multimillionaire endorse higher taxes for others, and then take steps for his company to avoid those taxes.

This is exactly the situation with Jim Sinegal, co-founder and former CEO of Costco, who endorsed President Barack Obama at the Democratic convention. Since the re-election of the president, Costco announced it will borrow $3.5 billion to finance the special dividend payout. Sinegal and the rest of the Costco board voted for the dividend to be paid in December, which would avoid Obama’s looming tax increase, and they’re taking on debt to do so.

Many would call this smart business. I call it hypocrisy.

PHIL PHILLIPS

Fayetteville

Blame in wrong place

Someone, please, tell me why Barack Obama gets blamed for everything, when, according to the Constitution, Congress passes laws and allocates money for the government to spend.

Also, the hospital that charges a facility fee probably was doing this before Obamacare was put into law. Give this Affordable Care Act a chance to work before you criticize it.

The right-wingers have no answer to high medical costs.

STEVE WHEELER

North Little Rock

They are all precious

I have to wonder how many times that President Barack Obama has stood in front of the nation and shed tears for the tiny unborn babies who have been viciously murdered. Little boys and girls who will never celebrate a birthday, never attend a graduation, never marry or have children of their own.

They were not murdered by guns, but at the hands of doctors, the same hands that were trained to save little children.

Have you seen President Obama shed tears for all the children that have been murdered by the guns that his administration provided to Mexican drug cartels? Isn’t every child’s life precious? Do we only shed tears for just a chosen few?

In God’s eyes they are all precious.

LARRY MARTIN

Dennard

About that prophecy

I became very interested and amazed when I recently read that a key tablet to unlock secrets about the Mayan calendar was found at the Toltec Mounds in Scott. Then I noticed the picture of Otus the Head Cat and realized, “Darn, fooled again!”

Keep up the good humor.

MELBA SHARP

Little Rock

Mere drop in bucket

The government giveth and the government taketh away.

I just received my cost-of-living raise. Guess what? After they took out my Medicare increase and I paid my Medi-Pak increase, I ended up with a 90-cent raise.

John Boehner, with that, I don’t think you need to worry about Social Security raises pushing us over the fiscal cliff.

ANN WILLIAMS

Gillham

It’s not lethal by itself

Re Porfirio Gutierrez’s letter: Let’s then take away all hand tools, kitchen utensils, cars, and any other conceivable weapon, and the human becomes the weapon.

No weapon ever killed anyone without human intervention. I have had a gun for 60 years-never once did it go out and kill anything by itself.

SYDNEY GILLIAM

Fairfield Bay

Discussion time over

I read that lawmakers in D.C. said they needed to hurry up and resolve the fiscal-cliff issue so they could get around to cutting Medicaid and Medicare benefits (snort). In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, Sen. Joe Lieberman was quoted as saying that a national commission should be established to examine mass shootings in the U.S. (Guffaw. The media is already doing that. Why pay a commission to do it again?) Sen. Dick Durbin chimed in, saying it is time for “a national conversation” about gun laws. (Pass the smelling salts, please.) How long would that take?

It isn’t time to discuss anything. It’s time to do something, starting with dumping a bunch of money into Medicaid’s mental health funding; cut resources someplace else. Twenty innocent children and six educators demand that we, as a nation, finally sit up and pay attention to the needs of the mentally ill. Medicaid needs money for effective parenting counseling, which could, and maybe should, be mandatory. Money for early childhood mental health evaluation and treatment, which lower- and middle-income parents can’t afford, and which could identify danger signals in a child’s behavior. Money for child care so parents can participate in their child’s treatment. Money for research to find out what is wrong with so many people’s faculty for impulse control, why it went away, and how to recover it.

Connect the dots, guys. If nobody wants a gun, the mass shootings will stop.

ISABELLE SUE BARBOUR

Little Rock

Don’t let it be in vain

What is it going to take for this country to wake up and do something real and significant about gun control? If you believe in a God who speaks to you, what do you think he’s saying about them killing our babies?

When our Constitution was written, the kinds of guns which are now on the streets of our country and available to nearly everyone weren’t even in existence.

Do you really believe those brilliant men would condone everyone having weapons of mass destruction? And make no mistake, what those guns did in Connecticut was mass destruction, causing incalculable damage.

They’re killing our babies, America. Make our government do something powerful so that those 20 babies and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary might not have died in vain.

LESLIE LIPKE

Little Rock

It is cold in that river

I believe the real reason the GOP does not want to raise taxes on the wealthy is because they don’t want to raise taxes on themselves.

We work and pay into Social Security and then Congress takes the funds. Why not cut the pay for this do-nothing Congress?

With all the money they have and the perks they give themselves, the members of Congress don’t have to worry about needing Medicare.

Let’s have a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party, but we throw Congress in the river instead.

JAY SHAFFER

Malvern