Of course they're mad
More than one in 10 American workers are either unemployed or underemployed and we're supposed to believe there is something wrong with tens of millions of workers? That somehow we are all on the take and just want to sit around and draw unemployment compensation because we are just too lazy? And that there's something wrong with the millions of homeowners who went into foreclosure, many because they were defrauded by banks? And that all the companies that went bankrupt was somehow due to health-care costs? And that half of America is full of losers?
Is that what we're supposed to believe?
We're in recovery yet you don't have a job and you can't afford to put your kids through college or save for retirement? What's wrong with you, the economy is doing fine ... on Wall Street, anyway. Apparently we're just not working hard enough, according to at least one presidential candidate. Apparently if you're struggling, you are not working hard enough and/or you lack motivation or personal responsibility, an oft-used phrase.
This is how the blame is shifted from where it belongs and onto the victims of corporate and banking fraud. People in this country are working harder than ever while sliding into poverty. And we wonder why so many people are angry.
JUDITH ZITKO
Hot Springs Village
To save the children
In 1938 and 1939, a rescue effort called Kindertransport (Children's Transport) brought between 9,000 and 10,000 unaccompanied children under the age of 17 from Germany and German-controlled areas. Parents were not allowed to travel with them. Private sources guaranteed the cost of caring for these children and return should their parents survive.
Surely private persons or organizations are willing to step up and take on this responsibility for 10,000 children. Setting the maximum age at 12 should eliminate concerns about admitting terrorists. I believe doing this is consistent with who we are. It should be easy to accomplish this in a period of several months.
There are legitimate concerns regarding the Obama proposal. I think this proposal should resolve those concerns.
BILL BELOVICZ
Dover
Where the privilege is
Rich children claim they are discriminated against and deprived. It seems lies are treated as the truth and white people are claimed to have white privilege by highly successful people who apparently believe in segregation.
I believe they have reached a point of insults to the ones who actually struggled from slavery, to Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King. A college education or programmed?
White privilege--how can a black person know how it is to be white? It's about money privilege, and if one doesn't have it, he struggles to overcome by work and talent. Race isn't a factor.
FLOYD HOPSON
Hazen
Ecumenical solution
It is a solution that will be unacceptable to a lot of hard-line Christians, if you'll pardon the phrase, but I believe there is a way of presenting a nativity scene at Christmastide that is so ecumenical that it might even pass federal scrutiny.
The divine child born at the Winter Solstice is a demonstrably universal image. Traditional elements of a nativity are the divine child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a winnowing fan or other woven basket; a virgin mother mantled in blue and attended by a bearded man; an ox and an ass; a shepherd holding a lamb; the star in the East; and three Magi with a camel. There should be a palm tree close at hand.
As long as you don't attach names to the figures, this scenario can suit almost everybody. Part, perhaps, of the problem with nativities is in the eye of the beholder. We see a barn and a baby in a manger and immediately think Jesus, even though few of these tableaux are actually labeled, and though much of traditional iconography is not precisely scriptural.
Change the setting just a bit and things look quite different. If the baby in the basket were on a riverbank, he might be Moses. If Jesus was born under a palm tree as it says in the Koran, well, so was Apollo. If the divine child is experienced as an epiphany rather than viewed as an incarnation, then the blue-mantled mother might even be taken for Fatima, giving birth to the Holy Imamate.
But that's probably a little too ecumenical for most Arkansans.
STANLEY G. JOHNSON
Little Rock
Smell not so familiar
Re the recent story about the low price of shrimp: As is true for most commodities these days, prices are down--way down. However, the story within the story is that the shrimp were caught in the Houston Ship Channel. Can you believe it?
When I worked in Texas in the '60s, the Houston Ship Channel was probably the most polluted body of water in the United States. I stood on its banks one day when a tug went by and the stench drove me away.
So, all you conservationists, take heart: Mother Nature is alive and well, with a little help from the EPA.
RONALD BURKETT
Bella Vista
Statistical conundrum
Assuming that Jerry Jackson's concern about income equality is not facetious, he could benefit from a course in statistics.
Earned income is not the same as personal income, and one can only wonder which average he is referring to. An average is a measure of central tendency and tells one nothing about the distribution of data. Moreover, what standard is he using to conclude any inequality he feels he has observed is bad?
PHILLIP TAYLOR
Fayetteville
Editorial on 11/30/2015