Offended by all this
Every day in the news I see where somebody or some group is offended about something.
These people get up every day with a chip on their shoulder, just looking for an excuse to be offended. What a miserable way to live. And frankly, these people offend me.
TIM IRBY
Little Rock
Pandering candidates
There are millions of Americans who do not have adequate health insurance. They include those without insurance, the under-insured, those with high deductibles and co-pays, and those whose finances are too stressed to afford insurance. I see the Democratic presidential candidates are generous to pander by declaring they would give health care to illegal immigrants.
Yes, anyone who is here we should take care of, but that should include the citizens that are already here too. Neither party has delivered on that.
So when these candidates pander, at whose expense will their generosity be?
CHARLES VERMONT
Prescott
No harpist groupies
Philip Martin wrote a column recently that said some people's idea of an afterlife might consist of harps and golden palaces. Who the hell wants to hear some guy playing a harp? Try to picture someone saying, "Hey Bill, let's take our wives to Hot Springs tonight. I hear there's a really hot harp player over there."
When and if I first set foot on those golden streets and see Elvis singing "Hound Dog" while strumming a harp, I'm outta there.
GARY USELTON
Benton
Immigrants to U.S.
Re the recent Katherine Hu column on the editorial page: With all due respect, from one emigrant to another, I just happen to disagree. I have my worries and my battles, but they are of a different kind. My worries come from these movements in our country trying to drive it toward a dangerous path. My family and millions of others, many of them killed (over 100 million), suffered under this criminal enterprise that was and is socialism and communism.
I recognized the same worries in the words sung by the late Merle Haggard: "They love our milk and honey/But they preach about some other way of livin'." That horrible way of living was the reason my family left our country of origin almost 40 years ago. When we arrived at the port of entrance in the U.S., we had our green cards in hand. Legal is the magic word. Once here, we had the duty to adjust and assimilate, and we did. Little by little, we achieved our American dream.
I do not have the slightest desire to improve my native tongue. The irony is that now I have a slight accent in both languages. I do not yearn for the friendships I had because I still have them. My home is here now. I am American first and I love this land with all my heart. The church I chose to attend has at least 18 different ethnic groups. We are all Americans.
What I yearn, since I am also a grandmother, is that my grandchildren will live in a safe country where nobody is above the law, where political correctness will not dominate our daily lives, where we don't glorify those who break our laws. I seriously doubt these worries are Hu's father's. I believe that he taught by example through hard work, honesty, love of family and love of America. But if Hu decides her life here is so unbearable, in the words of Haggard again, "If you don't love it, leave it," at least for a while. I am confident she'll be back.
ALEXANDRA GLADIN
Maumelle
Taxpayers on hook
The big-government Republicans have taken $2.5 billion from the Pentagon's budget to fix their broken border wall. The replacement of 46 miles of broken border wall in New Mexico will cost American taxpayers 789 million of our hard-earned tax dollars. Forty-six miles of new wall to replace the broken wall, at the cost of $789 million, is over $17 million per mile. What did the now-broken wall originally cost? Were there are no guarantees of workmanship? No supervision to protect such a huge investment by American taxpayers?
What guarantee do we have now? The same as before: none. Who destroyed this 46 miles of now-worthless wall? Why would we as taxpayers be expected to pay for another wall? The contractors and security firms that our tax dollars are and have been paying for should be held accountable, not taxpayers like you and me.
Some people complain about the cost of education and health care. Over $17 million per mile to replace an old wall with a new one--that ticks this taxpayer off.
JEFF LAHA
Little Rock
Editorial on 08/05/2019