Mere flights of fancy
Regarding your Sunday Perspective feature on sharia by Asifa Quraishi-Landes: What duplicitous nonsense! Muddying the waters with tortured references to historical (divine and philosophical) interpretations while glossing over and downplaying the brutality of present-day practice is, I believe, just more Islamic dodge. And demeaning references to the great writer, ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali (see her books Infidel and Heretic), are pathetic in the extreme. Hirsi Ali’s riveting descriptions of endured female circumcision and being targeted for honor killing stand in stark contrast to Professor Quaraishi-Landes’ obfuscating flights of fancy.
O.C. CUSTER JR.
North Little Rock
Didn’t need to see that
I thought it was so distasteful having a picture of Muslims bowing to Allah on the front page of my daily paper Saturday morning, as it seems the news being broadcast is nothing but despicable attacks by the Muslim terrorists. Use more common sense.
BONNIE DEAN
Sherwood
Justifies subscription
From time to time the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publishes articles (besides the comics Baby Blues and Pearls Before Swine) that offset the ramblings of Wally Hall, John Brummett and a few of your other popular (?) writers, and that justify my faith in being a subscriber to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since coming to Little Rock in 1990. They were in Sunday’s edition: “Wounded Warriors at the Busch Classic” by Jeremy Muck, and “What is Sharia?” by Asifa Quraishi-Landes.
Good job!
ANTHONY SCHROEFFEL
Little Rock
Only part of picture
In the recent editorial “Some bargain,” you cite the rise in health-insurance premiums as evidence the Affordable Care Act is “one of the costliest frauds every perpetrated” on Americans. Yet you don’t acknowledge that the ACA provides a tax credit to reduce the cost of premiums.
The Kaiser Family Foundation reported on Oct. 26, 2015, that the 2016 premiums for the benchmark plan bought on the health-insurance marketplaces increased by 10.1 percent on average across the country (3.6 percent after accounting for the states’ relative enrollments). But after taking into consideration the tax credit, the average premium decreased by 0.2 percent (0.7 percent in the weighted average). In short, it is incomplete to look only at the premiums, let alone only to look at insurers’ requested premium hikes.
Lastly you should consider the cost of repealing the ACA. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in June 2015 that repealing the ACA will increase budget deficits by $137 billion from 2016 to 2025.
ANDREW THORNTON
Little Rock
It’s for all the marbles
Imagine a bowl containing 1,000 marbles—700 (70 percent) black and 300 (30 percent) white. Let’s call this the Little Rock School Bowl. Four new charter bowls are created, each with 100 marbles. One is all black and the other three are half black and half white. How has the Little Rock Bowl been affected? It now has 600 marbles; 450 marbles (75 percent) are black and 150 (25 percent) are white.
As you can see, the larger bowl has lost a disproportionately larger number of white balls, even though one of the new bowls was all black. Moreover, experience shows that the black balls who seek to join the new charter bowls tend to score better on standardized tests and benefit from more parental involvement than the black balls left behind.
Any intelligent person willing to admit the truth can see that the Little Rock School Bowl and the marbles it is responsible for have been adversely affected by the creation of the new charter bowls, which are funded by monies taken from the Little Rock School Bowl.
One could argue that the 400 marbles that moved are benefiting from being in the new bowls. But what about the 600 left behind? What do we tell them? If our mandate is to provide an equal educational opportunity for all 1,000 marbles, have we not failed our obligation as a society and as a state?
I believe Baker Kurrus is right about the negative effects on the Little Rock School District of creating more charter schools. All the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorials and Walton Foundation millions can’t change the facts.
DAVID ELI COCKCROFT
Little Rock
Ask the question first
I was perusing the editorial page of the Democrat-Gazette’s offering, reading about political spin, etc., when I came on the piece titled “In a pig’s eye.” I found it interesting how the poor pig went from a pet to a feral hog destroying crops, pastureland and game birds faster than it took the officer to kill it. If this was a small dog (as I understand, this was a small pig, not a feral hog) would the officer have shot it from the seat of his vehicle?
I think the writer missed the concerns of the Pine Bluff citizens: A pet is a pet, so ask before shooting.
ANDY PHILLIPS
North Little Rock
Most absorbed, ever
I believe Terry Jones’ letter pointing out Philip Martin’s extreme self-absorption is correct.
I play a game with Martin’s columns. I count the first-person pronouns that Martin uses in the first sentence of each new column. The record is six.
CLINT MILLER
Little Rock