Letters

What we'll leave them

The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10 to a very deserving organization, Geneva-based ICAN--the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. The organization is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons, something the Trump administration is not signing.

Beatrice Fihn, the current CEO who will be accepting the award, is insisting on the urgent need to disarm the world's 15,000 or so nuclear weapons. "Nuclear weapons have the risk of literally ending the world," she said. "As long as they exist, the risk will be there, and eventually our luck will run out."

The month of December is for many the season of joy as we celebrate with our families and friends. But many of us cannot help but worry about the future and what kind of world we are leaving for the next generation.

Listening to the current administration, will there even be a world for them to celebrate?

ANNCHA BRIGGS

Little Rock

Friendly co-existence

On a cold December night in 1956, I was hitchhiking north out of Little Rock and was given a ride by some young black men who were going as far as Conway. We talked, laughed, they passed a bottle of liquor around for me to drink from, let me off in Conway, and wished me a safe journey.

Some may not believe this happened--but it did happen, and after 60 years of fighting and bloodshed, how could this kind of friendly co-existence ever happen now?

Fun and peace seem to have disappeared, and hatred rules supreme.

CARL M. RAINS

Leslie

Relief for middle class

The premise of the Republican tax policy is that the wealthy need money. This is a contradiction in terms. Also, what the wealthy are doing with their present wealth is parking it offshore, combining companies to reduce jobs, and building factories outside the United States.

However, the additional transfer of wealth to the wealthy which the Republican tax bill will bring about is promised by the Republicans to produce American jobs. If you believe that the wealthy are now going to invest in America because they have even more money, you will get what you deserve, inflation!

Why? Because inflation is the traditional way that governments have of coping with the accumulating debt that results from unrealistic economic policy. In simpler terms, if you think the price of housing, gasoline, automobiles, and food are high now, just wait for a couple of years.

On the other hand, no change in the tax rates to the rich but a substantial increase in tax relief to the middle class, which has the highest percentage of tax burden and the greatest need for money, would produce a greater demand for goods and services. That demand is absent in Republican policies. There is no question as to whether that demand would produce American jobs. It would.

Trump promises his bill will give tax relief to the middle class, but whether it actually will is presently being argued within the Republican Party, and if that relief is so little it has to be argued about, you know it is not there.

OTTO HENRY ZINKE

Fayetteville

Be open about pasts

How many readers know your governor, his wife and others of his family really got their first college degrees at Bob Jones University? It seems he hid that in his online biography while running for governor. Why would he do that? I think because it influences his fundamentalist outlook and leads to signing bills that force his religion on us. Like-minded Republicans aid and abet him with religion-based, unconstitutional laws that we taxpayers must contest in courts. A search of BJU's website will tell you more that I can't write in this letter.

That "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" Old Testament stuff he was taught there apparently compels him to execute a deranged man. Moses didn't hire psychiatrists--so why should he?

How about your attorney general? Has she ever mentioned her namesake grandfather was a double murderer in the 1950s? That the men he murdered had families who didn't get "closure" by him being executed? She is on record that all victims' families deserve that "closure." After release from Cummins for the murder charges, he was convicted for "whiskey offenses" and re-incarcerated. He was made a gun-bearing "long-line rider" overseeing field gangs and the record shows he was allowed to carry his own personal firearm. Ms. Rutledge is not responsible for the offenses of her grandfather, of course. But that situation has, in my view, heavy influence on her perspectives and on her motivations.

If there was not reason for the governor and the attorney general to want these matters hidden from the citizens of the state they were elected in--why are they so obviously hiding them?

KARL J. HANSEN

Hensley

The pot and the kettle

I couldn't believe Molly Roberts of the Washington Post when I saw her column titled "Bill Clinton's alleged sex crimes" on the editorial page. She wrote, "Fox News wants to know: 'Is the left ready for a Bill Clinton reckoning'?"

First of all, Ms. Roberts, I and many other citizens couldn't care less about what Fox News wants. Secondly, President Clinton has been investigated (Does the name Ken Starr ring a bell?) and impeached and humiliated and has not been in public service since the beginning of 2000. If that is not enough for you and Fox News, tough!

If we are going to dig up bones, how about WMDs? I don't think the fiasco that caused unbelievable carnage and a refugee crisis in Iraq and, I believe, deaths of around 3,000 U.S. servicemen and women, not to mention the debt we got into is comparable to anything Clinton did. I remember seeing bumper stickers that read, "Clinton's lies didn't take lives."

And why are we talking about the past when we have a president who has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior by countless women and caught on tape bragging about his lewd actions as if they were conquests one should be proud of? Where is the investigation on that? And how about Republicans looking at their president with objectivity? And, please don't even talk about hypocrisy; it's like the kettle calling the pot black!

ROSE GOVAR

Maumelle

Editorial on 12/07/2017

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