Greed at the center
Doing a little research into our inflation problem, I have found that inflation currently is a global problem. Globally 60 percent of advanced economies are suffering from 7 percent rate of inflation, while the United States is at 8.6 percent. While we struggle with the high cost of fuel, the oil/energy companies' first-quarter profits for 2022 increased 300 percent over first-quarter 2021. That's $35 billion in profits, just for the first quarter.
High oil and gas prices have boosted the profits of major energy companies, further contributing to the global inflation. You can find those companies and their profits listed on the Internet. See NPR, USA Today, Business Insider, Financial Times, Forbes, Fox Business, etc. Just my personal opinion, but I bet the difference in U.S. inflation and worldwide inflation could be price gouging.
I wish national broadcast news would actually give us facts, not just today's inflation rate, like the current temperature. Geez.
EDITH SEAMAN
Lakeview
Remember the votes
Republicans claim that all that needs to be done to stop mass shootings is to control those who are criminals or mentally ill. Then our four members of the U.S. House of Representatives all vote against the very bill, the one to pass red-flag laws, that would go a long way toward doing just that.
Looks to me like this would be a good start for the Republicans to show a slight hint of bipartisanship and do a good thing for our country instead of just trying to appease their base. Those votes they are wanting and expecting must be very important if they are more important than the safety of all our citizens, including our schoolchildren! I just hope that all voters will remember that when they go to the polls.
PEGGY PERKINS
Little Rock
On closing the casket
Alarm bells started the death dirge as the pallbearers prepared the casket for closure. While mass invasion of illegals, defunding the police, defeat in retreat from Afghanistan, and trillion-dollar government giveaways are troubling, people vote their pocketbook. The average price of gasoline went over $5 per gallon recently, and food is close behind. Socialism is dead in America for another generation or two when Americans again will forget socialism has never succeeded anywhere. A few scraggly politicians of lesser IQ are the only ones not seeing the casket close and understand that the meaning of "woke" has changed.
America is strong. Our people are tough. I almost forgot that.
FLOYD FENIX
Texarkana
The altar of 'freedom'
America is sick. It went on life support the day after Uvalde. This is not a sudden crisis; it's been festering for decades. Reagan's "shining city on the hill" has allowed its lights to slowly burn out. We are now a dim reflection of what we used to be when the concept of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was noble, worthy, and almost sacred--but always tempered within the bounds of common sense. They were such noble concepts that we were willing to go, and to send our sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers to foreign soils, shedding their life's blood to protect those ideals here and abroad.
Now we're too sick to take care of ourselves, much less protect the values that have made us the fabled city on the hill. Certainly, we send our sincerest "thoughts and prayers" to all the families whose children have had their heads blown away in repeating slaughterfests. Then we shrug our shoulders and convince ourselves that the price of freedom is worth the senseless slaughter now and then. We have let our thoughts and prayers become just another drug to numb the pain of our complacency.
If that was our only drug, perhaps we could summon the fortitude to overcome its addiction. Unfortunately that's not the case. We are now an addicted nation succumbing to a myriad of poisons, both real and ephemeral. A numbing "fix" is always at our fingertips. In addition we have dumbed ourselves down to the point where we readily accept that misery, homelessness, poverty, murder and mayhem are simply part of freedom's cost, as long as they happen to someone else. But you will never see the mother of a mutilated murdered child shrug her shoulders and proudly say that her baby's life was just a payment to the cost of liberty. She can see. through the tears of her unthinkable suffering, that this notion is blatantly false.
You and I know that too. We are not dead yet and it's up to us to do the things that must be done to initiate the healing process. If we can do that, then the children who've been sacrificed on the bloody altar of "freedom" will not have died in vain.
CHARLES McCULLOUGH
Mammoth Spring