Who checks this stuff
A certain furniture store runs ads on TV proclaiming everything is half off; the next week it runs one that says prices are 40 percent to 70 percent off. Just wondering if we have an agency that actually checks these claims.
HARVEY SIDES
Newport
Wasted on failures
How many more prisons will we build before we wake up? Intoxication is intoxication. Alcohol, marijuana, prescription drugs, cocaine--there is no difference. People choose to alter their consciousness. Get over it.
Forty years of a war on drugs hasn't reduced the use or abuse of anything. It's time to look past the moralizing and accept reality. Getting high is not a criminal act. What we fear, the force behind prohibition, is the fear that an intoxicated person will harm others.
We tried alcohol prohibition and it failed. Drunk people may get behind the wheel or engage in violence. We learned the social chaos resulting from prohibition was far worse than the comparatively few incidents created by drunks. The same is true for drugs.
If the objective is to help people with addiction, why not spend the money on free treatment centers in every community? It would be cheaper and more effective than prison. If the objective is to protect the public, why not spend more on early childhood intervention, on education, on job training? Why not step up enforcement to catch those driving while intoxicated or who commit theft, assault, and other real crimes?
Is drinking a glass of wine a real crime? If not, then neither is smoking a joint. Yet possession of as little as a joint sends parolees back to prison. We cannot rid our culture of marijuana. It's here. Wake up, face reality, and stop wasting Arkansas tax dollars on failed policy.
DENELE CAMPBELL
West Fork
It's counterintuitive
I find it troubling that many people of Arkansas and this great country are less interested in providing an education for the poor and lower-income children than in building prisons. They don't want to provide adequate funding for projects which provide good health and learning for these children. However, they have no problem paying for prisons to feed and clothe them for years when they become adults with no life skills.
GAY MOORE
Conway
No need for negative
In the report of Terry Hastings' retirement after 39 years of exemplary service, did we need to include the part about some less-than-positive actions by members of his family that he had no control over? Why not celebrate the retirement of a man who gave 39 years of his life helping make Little Rock a better place to live?
Let's celebrate the positives and leave the negatives for another time and another newspaper.
RUTH HAMILTON
Little Rock
There's reason for it
A recent John Brummett column was headlined (tongue-in-cheek, I suspect) "Why teach critical thinking?" I would like to answer that question.
By teaching critical thinking, we will, I hope, eventually produce an electorate that elects legislators who vote with their brains, and not based on their fears or prejudices.
RENEE HUNTER
Conway
Easy demonizations
After reading Mr. Philip Martin's "An open letter to the legislature," I was struck with two ironic observations. One, after calling for the Legislature to display some humility, it seems Martin himself displays an incredible lack of the virtue. And two, after warning of the dangers of certainty, Martin himself makes some awfully certain pronouncements, including even knowledge of what history will say "70 years hence."
Martin is right to assert that we are all "deeply flawed and corruptible" humans who have "no authentic purchase on the truth." Yet he seems blind to how that statement might apply to himself.
Might I suggest, finally, that Mr. Martin is guilty of the same sin with which he indicts the Legislature? It appears he isn't "comfortable with an Arkansas, or an America, that isn't completely congruent" with his own views.
Diversity cuts both ways, Mr. Martin, and true tolerance entails a willingness to listen to all points of view, rather than demonize with lazy, sloppy arguments.
JEFF BREEDING
Little Rock
Senator's perspective
It seems Sen. Tom Cotton's recent remarks regarding the terrorists detained at the Guantanamo facility have disturbed some.
I think it is reasonable to consider the senator's perspective on what these men and others like them have wrought.
Mr. Cotton was not a member of the Congress that approved the Iraq war resolution. Others such as Joe Biden, Harry Reid, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton were in on that vote.
Rather, Tom Cotton volunteered for combat duty in that war, commanding men. In that incredibly difficult role I'm sure he lost some who had become like brothers to him.
Soldiers don't cause the war; they fight it and live with the memories.
MICHAEL SANDERS
Little Rock
Wait a minute, Wally
Wally Hall's column, "Reign turns to pain for SEC, SEc, Sec, sec," contains the following sentence: "Like most who write about the SEC, it should be noted that it will not be written here that it is the best football conference in America until it re-establishes itself as the best."
Will someone who understands Wallyese identify the antecedents of each of the four iterations of the pronoun "it" that befoul this sentence? Does Hall have a copy editor?
CLINT MILLER
Little Rock
Editorial on 03/01/2015