Sunday, June 22, 2008
Quick
Letters to the Editor
What a nice Father's Day gift—to not be portrayed as a worthless, abusive idiot!
Let the government do it
The implication that national health care will fail because the Senate Cafeteria is poorly run is ridiculous (“Dining Room Dollars,” Jonah Goldberg, News & Views, June 15). I always love when people bad-mouth government and tout business’s ability to solve problems. Haliburton certainly has proved that the private sector is more efficient than the military at providing for our soldiers.
And what about the fact that 90 percent of new businesses fail in the first five years? Government agencies don’t have that luxury.
And then you always pick the one success, like FedEx, to “prove” to us that the private sector is just so efficient. But what if Enron was handling our health care and MCI was running the schools?
Our prisons have gone private, and they are doing great. We now have more people behind bars than ever. After all, what is their motivation to “rehab” anyone? The private sector doesn’t absorb the total cost of its privatized “failures.” We do.
Our present health-care system has failures, too: the number of the uninsured. Society has to pick up the tab for that already. When a poor person with a bad cold doesn’t go to the doctor, and a month later they are at Grady Hospital with pneumonia, taxpayers pick up the tab. No wonder private enterprise can succeed when government can’t. When an energy company burns coal and taxpayers have to clean up the air, the private business still makes money.
It is simply an unfair comparison. What is clear is that our present systems, health care, education, etc., are broken and in need of fixing. Creating another Blackwater won’t necessarily help.
—Dr. Robert Soloway, Decatur
Equitable parenting
Regarding Stephanie Ramage’s June 15 column “Georgia’s Female Supremacist Family Courts”: I’m proud to be the first person to praise Ms. Ramage for going against the primary-physical-custody-mother grain and speaking up for children of divorced parents. I have been operating under Georgia’s “boilerplate” custody agreement for seven years. The primary custodian is burdened with the constant pressure of the responsibilities with the children and is jealous of the non-custodial [parent’s] freedom. The non-custodial parent pays a crippling amount of child support based on gross income (out of their net income) and only sees his or her children on alternating weekends and holidays.
It’s a situation that never seems to resolve (in my case) and the kids have to mediate between the positions. Forget the boilerplate … parents should be required to present their own unique arrangement to the courts, and before lawyers get involved, for that matter. If both mother and father spent equitable time in each other’s shoes for a while, they would be more empathetic and better parents.
—as posted by Sam Lytle on www.sundaypaper.com
Happy Father’s Day
(Ramage, June 15): What a nice Father's Day gift—to not be portrayed as a worthless, abusive idiot! If only judges, lawmakers, mediators, etc., understood what this woman understands intuitively. The author is a rare and brave soul. I am sure that her children, and the world, are a little better off for her actions—and now, for her writing.
—as posted by Fred Hayward on www.sundaypaper.com
It’s the in-laws
(Also regarding Ramage, June 15): This would also have something to do with how parents get along with each other, including [with] extended family members. The court system will do the best they can in fairness to both parties. Although … parents should treat each other kindly for the sake of the child. As we have seen in society, parents that have equal custody are the ones who remain friends for the sake of the child. Therefore, treating/respecting each other [as] parents by not letting any [extended] family members [get] involved is a big aspect.
—as posted by Merry Alforque on www.sundaypaper.com
Would our spies report to the sanctuary, please?
As an African-American citizen, a Democratic Party voter, contributor and proud supporter of President Barack Hussein Obama, I take much offense at Ronald F. Maxwell’s letter published in The Sunday Paper on June 8 (“Pushing Hillary Out”). The news media tried to sabotage Obama’s run for office by sending spies into Trinity United Church, where he and his family were members in Chicago. What kind of lowlife atheists would spy on people while they are in church? In a world where people truly get what’s coming to them, they would be kneecapped. Maybe in the future these sneaky lowlife reporters will get what they deserve. Basically, this election is between good people like the Obamas and evil racists like the Ku Klux Klan, the news media and other Republican sympathizers.
To all the racists who hate African-Americans, President Obama, and America, I say: Delta’s got some international flights leaving this week. Make a reservation today. My money and my vote goes to the Democratic Party.
—Yours in Christ, Thomas Anthony Jones, Sr.
Puzzled
Can some champion there help me out?
On the June 15 crossword puzzle, Down 2 says: “Muslim Nations.” The answer is given as “Islam.” That’s absurd. A clue of “Christian Nations” would not yield “Christianity” would it? Islam is a religion, not a people much less a nation or nations! The clue at 21 across is “S-W linkage.” The answer is “TUV.” What is TUV?
And on clue 22: Draft letters. Answer: SSS. What is SSS?
—Mike Woodward, Atlanta
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