Don't defund provider
As an adoptive mother of two who grew up in a rural area, I have experienced many sides of the need for quality reproductive health care.
When I was a teen growing up in Sheridan, the options for contraception were limited. We could purchase condoms at one of the stores where our parents and aunts and uncles worked, or we could receive free condoms from the Health Department, where we were likely to run into someone else we knew.
Or we could drive to Little Rock. Little Rock was like New York City to us, all bright lights and new experiences, but it was also a place where we could receive services we were afraid to seek in our own county, find protection and information, and worry little about our privacy.
Planned Parenthood offers services that are invaluable and necessary. These irreplaceable services cannot be denied to the patients who receive them and we cannot allow a small percentage of extremists and their supporters to overtake our right to quality health care.
Please support Planned Parenthood of the Heartland for all it does, and encourage your legislators to do the same. Arkansas cannot afford to defund a leading provider of affordable health care for our residents.
JESSI CLARK NALLEY
Little Rock
They're in agreement
After listening to Pope Francis' speech to Congress, I realize that the only thing he agrees with the Republicans on is abortion. At the GOP's recent debate, it seems they believe that's America's only problem.
However, on every other issue, it appears Pope Francis agrees with the Democrats--climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Iran deal, concern about unfettered capitalism, helping the poor, the elderly and the disabled, tolerance of gays, concern about the income disparity between the rich and the rest.
Guess we'll have to change the religious right to the religious left.
JOE SEAMAN
Lakeview
Change in the seasons
Who are those scientific experts--other than Rush Limbaugh and the talking heads at Fox News and KARN--who know with certainty that there is no such thing as climate change?
What happened to winter, spring, summer and fall?
I detected, with almost certainty, what seemed to be climate change on September 23, the first day of what used to be fall.
GEORGE W. McCLAIN
Little Rock
Climate-change hoax
It's not man--the earth, even the sun changes. I believe the earth is a living planet, breathing, heating, and cooling, created by God who does not change. Man plays hoaxes and scams to benefit him with little concern of people.
To worship the earth and not God is pagan because the creator is to whom I heap praise and give thanks for what he has given. Thank you, Jesus.
FLOYD HOPSON
Hazen
If that's the answer ...
Baker Kurrus, acting superintendent of Little Rock School District, was scolded in your recent editorial for trying to do the job he was asked to do by the state Board of Education. Kurrus was criticized for asking the Board of Education to stop approving new charter schools inside the boundaries of the district. He quite logically asserts that if more new charter schools are permitted to siphon off top-scoring students, his task of improving the overall performance in the district will be made much more difficult.
Unlike private schools, charter schools are financed with public funds which might otherwise go to the public school system. So, not only is Kurrus being asked to find a way to raise average test scores with fewer high-scoring students, he must do it with less money, a Sisyphean task at best.
The editorial asserts that if the state doesn't fund charter schools with public funds, thousands of parents will move their children to private schools. That old argument has been around for decades and is as hollow and baseless now as it has always been. Those who wish to leave and can afford to will send their children to private schools regardless of how many charter schools the board creates.
If charter schools are the answer, then the solution is simple. Make all schools in the district charter schools. Problem solved. Job well-done. Who needs Baker Kurrus or a locally elected school board as long as the Democrat-Gazette and the misguided and unelected members of the Board of Education are on the job?
DAVID COCKCROFT
Little Rock
Frog in the water pot
Perhaps it's time to revisit the old story of the frog in the water pot. The frog had been taken from his home in the big pond and placed in a container full of water sitting on a heating element programmed to gradually increase the temperature of the water over a period of time.
The frog remembered his days in the big pond and the freedom he enjoyed there, but he also remembered that the water temperature was not always constant. There were predators too, snakes and other critters always ready to pounce on an incautious frog. So the frog was quite content in his safe new environment. He could have hopped out any time he wanted to but saw no reason to do so. Why bother? There were enough flies passing by to supply his nutritional needs and the water felt so nice.
I am sure most people know how the story ends. The water temperature continues to slowly rise and by the time the frog realizes he is in danger, it is too late to hop out so he perishes.
To borrow and mutilate a catchphrase of the great comic-strip philosopher Pogo: The frog in the water pot is us. Our society is being transformed so gradually that most of us see no need to get excited. We are being slowly but surely transported from our big pond of capitalistic freedom with its difficulties and dangers to the safe, tepid waters of socialism.
It's a terrible thing to fall into the hands of a benevolent state.
JOHN McPHERSON
Searcy
Editorial on 10/01/2015