LETTERS
Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/239102/
Judges’ salaries are higher than most
Arkansas Supreme Court justices are complaining that most receive the very low salary of just under $ 140, 000 a year and they are having a hard time paying for their children’s education. I find it very hard to sympathize with them.
The average household income in Arkansas is around $ 35, 000. I am sure that the vast majority of college students in Arkansas do not have a parent who makes $ 140, 000 a year. Here is a good idea for them: Start a college fund for their children.
How many times have we heard the same argument, that an elected official has taken a pay cut to serve and that this same elected official could make more in the private sector ? The answer: all of the time. Elected officials are usually underpaid. Citizens run for these positions to serve the public. The decisions of Arkansas Supreme Court justices affect our daily lives. Theirs is a very prestigious position. Usually, there are competitive races with multiple candidates for each judge position, whether it is a district, circuit, Appeals Court or Supreme Court position. Before judges complain about their low salary, they should think of all of the other people out in the state who will never make a salary that is even close to the salary they make. We have children and we plan to send them to college, too.
JASON MASSEY
Russellville
Denying care is wrong
The proposed restrictions on foster and adoptive parents would still allow a single person, regardless of sexual orientation, who doesn’t live with a sexual partner to adopt or become a foster parent. If after such a single person has legally adopted a child and begins to cohabit with a sexual partner, does somebody come in and take the child away ? With all of the children who are unwanted in this country due to being older or because of serious illness, I think it is criminal to deny them the chance to be adopted and cared for by those who would love to have them.
DENISE SQUIRREL
Farmington
Festival well-executed
I’ve come a long way in accepting the deluge of motorcycles thrust upon our sweet Fayetteville once a year. In the past, there have been good arguments that the Bikes, Blues & BBQ festival hurts a segment of our city’s businesses. Indirectly, we all benefit from the local taxes generated. To get a piece of the action, I have even considered setting up a booth with my dental chair to sell my services. With all the missing teeth I saw at the festival recently, I might have been busy. All the beer that was being drunk would allow us to cut back on the use of anesthetic and save a few dollars. Speaking of beer, this was a great party crowd. I ventured down to Dickson Street on Thursday and Saturday with my young family in tow and I did not see one thing that made this event dangerous or not family-friendly. Our city should be very proud of the way things went. The police, cleaning crew and festival organizers were amazing to watch and admire. On Sunday evening, the place looked spotless, and nobody would have ever guessed that 300, 000 people had come to our party. Fayetteville rocks !
ROBERT HODOUS
Fayetteville
Work was poorly timed
In light of the fact that Bikes, Blues & BBQ generates huge revenues for our community and local charities, it amazes me that Fayetteville city government has no clue and obviously no concern for the safety of the many bikers who come to our city to enjoy this four-day rally. Our local streets, College Avenue in particular, are so torn up and are such a hazard for bikes. Do you think we might have thought ahead a little and had this work done before BBQ ? Love seeing my tax dollars at work: 30 city workers, most of them standing around talking.
SUE HUBER
Fayetteville
Prices seem suspicious
Before Hurricane Ike, the price of crude dropped from $ 148 a barrel to well below $ 100 a barrel, a drop of about 33 percent. Then the price of gas at the pump dropped about 50 cents. Gas prices should have dropped to about $ 2. 70 per gallon. That sounds like gouging to me. But as Ike occurred, the price at the pump increased again while the price of a barrel of crude went even lower. All of this is unconscionable and unacceptable. Is Big Oil to blame or the middle man ? I can’t believe that it is stupidity in math.
VIRGINIA C. HARRISON
Clarksville
Trend must be reversed
Author Mark Lynas did the grunt work. He read tens of thousands of scientist-reviewed reports on climate change, plotted the information on a spreadsheet, then put the results in a fairly easy to read book, “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.” A rise of 3 degrees Celsius (just under 6 degrees Fahrenheit ) in average temperature is the last tipping point when carbon-releasing feedback loops take over, rushing us into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 6-degree worst-case scenario. The last time Earth had that much carbon in the atmosphere and reached 6 degrees hotter global temperature, it took 100, 000 years to do it and 15 million years to recover from it. We’re doing it in about 150 years. We don’t want to go there. We’ve got a 93 percent chance of stopping extreme climate change at 2 degrees Celsius if worldwide carbon emissions peak by 2015 and drop rapidly thereafter. There’s only one way: Get off fossil fuels within 10 years. To do it, we must change the legal and tax structure from favoring fossil fuels to favoring renewables; start a Works Progress Administration-type program to rebuild and retrofit our infrastructure for efficiency and a Civilian Conservation Corps-type program to restore our forests and wetlands; and build and implement renewable energy sources in America, sell it to industrialized nations and give it to Third World nations (in return for protecting rain forests ). There’s only one party and platform that will do that. Vote the Democratic ticket on Nov. 4. BARBARA FITZPATRICK Fayetteville Real threat made clear We all thought the greatest threat to our national security was al-Qa’ida terrorists. Instead, it turns out to be Wall Street bankers. So much for deregulation and getting the government off our backs.
JOE KRENZ
Little Rock
Open debates to Nader
Whether you’re Democrat or Republican, I think we can all agree—in fact, recent polls show—that a majority of Americans want third-party candidates in the national debate. We are seeing Barack Obama and John McCain represent their corporate parties in the nationally televised (corporatefunded, not publicly funded ) debates. As the two argue their non-specific, corporate-backed agendas, we will miss out on seeing an independent candidate and the champion of true democracy and freedom, the one and only Ralph Nader. Getting into the national debates, Nader could reach 20 million people instantly and bring up serious, relevant issues that the mainstream media aren’t asking. With his specifics, he would force the other candidates to be specific, something neither McCain nor Obama has done. Strong and united, we can and will take this country back from our corporate masters.
MATTHEW DENDY
Conway
Thinker, doer needed
Once again, with this financial bailout crisis, Sen. Barack Obama has demonstrated that he is too busy running for the presidency. It took a phone call from President Bush to even get him to Washington. Obviously, he feels distracted, feels that he can’t waste his precious time attending to this crisis because he is still too busy running for the presidency, even though he has been doing this for over two years. I can just imagine that if he was president and when a major crisis occurred, he would be too busy trying to run for re-election for 2012. Obviously, he is merely a talker when it concerns others and only a doer when it involves himself. Such selfish behavior. Second, he is non-creative. Whatever Sen. John McCain may have said yesterday, he will take that and twist it around and talk only about that the next day during his campaign talks. We need a creative thinker and a doer for the interest of others, and that person is McCain.
RAYMOND WILSON
White Hall
Take care applying rule
I was much edified by the editorial, “Teaching to the test.” Allow me to add a footnote to the math rule 2 + 2 = 4. The rule works OK for numbers, but the kids should be aware of the need for care in applying it to some physical objects. For example, 2 QCM (where QCM stands for one-quarter critical mass of uranium-235 ), when added to another 2 QCM (kids, don’t try this at home ), does indeed give 4 QCM = one critical mass of U-235 for a very tiny, almost infinitesimal amount of time. Then the U-235 undergoes spontaneous nuclear fission yielding many radioactive atoms and, as Dr. Strangelove or any terrorist would say, lots of energy. Kids taking 11 th-grade physics may want to Google Albert Einstein and dirty bomb.
EARL STEDMAN
Melbourne