To save U.S., Obama needs to pull troops out of 2 wars

The Iraq war was a monstrous mistake built upon falsehoods. Our Afghanistan war remains a mismanaged attempt to bring a few criminals to justice. We must ponder why our leadership never seems to learn that such wars’ misfortunes trump all possible gains.

We suffer not only from the tragedies of deaths and maiming of thousands of our nation’s youths, (but also) from hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, “collateral damage” resulting in global recruitment of potential terrorists, despite bogus claims of winning our “war” against terror. War squanders our national wealth and propels our middle class into poverty.

Who has the authority to permit our leadership to so wound our nation, threatening our very way of life and which might eventually end the 200-plus-year experiment that is our nation?

Our president inherited this catastrophe. Mustn’t we demand that he exercise leadership in moving us positively out of this nightmarish debacle?

LEW PATRIE, M.D.
Asheville

To solve state budget woes,
legalize, tax marijuana sales

It hurts my brain to think about our economy, here in America.

Why doesn’t our government just do something about this? What, you may ask? Legalize marijuana.

How many tax dollars going to our inmates for pot-related charges? We have to feed and clothe these people. If marijuana was taxed (and not by the marijuana stamp act)  ... how much revenue would that bring to our state government? (It is estimated in the billions of dollars.)

Why can’t that extra money go into our school system?

I can think of a million ways that the legalization of marijuana would benefit everyone!

Beer is legal. How many drunk-driving accidents occur every year, where people die!?!

No one has ever died from smoking pot. Wake up, America! Take a toke and chill out! Rake in the cash. Make a stand for pot!

REBA BOGGS
Arden

EDITOR”S NOTE: The following letter to the editor was written in response to Allyn M. Aldrich’s letter, headlined “Why did pundit fail to note slavery continues in Africa?” that appeared in May’s Daily Planet.

Letter-writer lambasted
for spewing horrible views

Attempting to speak for blacks is a slippery slope exposing ignorance and arrogance rapidly sliding into bigotry. “Yes, the whites freed the blacks….”

My ancestors fought for freedom and none of us including the yellow, red and white dispossessed feel that anyone freed us.
Tallying “dead white men,” is not our goal; the goal is equality for all. “Southern guilt trip,” if there were nothing to be guilty about, like the fact America has never dealt directly with the issue of slavery, we could reason together as brothers and sisters airing grievances.

“I know very few blacks.” Sounds like you don’t know any. Living in poverty in Mexico, Nigeria and right here is preferred to slavery anywhere! Life for the worlds poor is not judged by economic prosperity alone, hard as that may be for you with little experience outside your insular world to believe.  “..freedom under Islam..” Doesn’t exist in African countries under Christianity either.

Churches and mosques force people to choose between eating and converting.  Please do some research before spewing horrible assertions. Try commenting from a place of compassion not antagonism. I am not a pundit, simply a lover of all humanity, even you.

REV. VALERIA WATSON-DOOST
Zamani Refuge African Culture Center
Leicester

Universities need to learn ways to work within limits

Articles in the Sunday (May 19) Asheville Citizen-Times address cuts to North Carolina universities without a single solution to living within the budget. The “we can’t operate on less money without hurting the students” shows a lack of imagination in our educators.

Last year’s cuts of $300 million resulting in about 1,000 positions being cut equate to about $300,000 per position (pretty high-cost positions). With administrative positions at this level, you might expect competent, creative solutions to budget requirements, not plain old “punish the students” as usual.

The student/instructor ratio of the past doesn’t work. The virtual classroom exists and is unlimited in size requiring little maintenance. Many “for profit universities” operate at low per-student cost and accommodate unlimited enrolment. Expanding online classes eliminates the need for physical rooms and allows a much greater teacher/student ratio. This solution, requires a major mind shift away from the “bricks and ivy” of today’s colleges.

Tight budgets should become a way of life for government and learning to live within them should be a requirement. If our universities are creating tomorrow’s leaders, then they should demonstrate the creative thinking needed to survive. Productivity is improving everywhere, in my opinion, but in government and government-supported institutions.

ALLYN M. ALDRICH
Asheville

Tea Party critics assailed
for dishonesty on contract

Tea Party critics argue that they cannot take the movement seriously since their members decline to give up the government benefits they receive through programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Tea Partiers, they claim, can have no credibility when they call for limited government and lower taxes on the one hand and yet reap the largesse of government welfare with the other.

The critics promise (dishonestly) to render support provided those beneficiaries drop from the welfare rolls.

But this is not how contracts work. A contract is a promise between two parties. In a free society, both parties peaceably and voluntarily agree to terms and conditions that presumably benefit each side in the arrangement under pain of law. And both parties are held liable for any default or breach.

For example, I give you a much-needed loan with the promise to pay interest over time. Or, you sell me a product with the promise of repair or refund if proven faulty or phony. If the terms of the contract are not upheld by either side, restitution is rightfully sought — and deserved.

In the case of Social Security, taxpayers fund a national, socialized retirement scheme in exchange for the promise of a measure of financial security in their golden years. Money paid into the scheme during a lifetime of productive work secures benefits paid out during later times of diminished productivity. That’s the promise and it should be kept.

However, the taxpayer’s end of the bargain has been coerced through legalized extortion. There is no option on the part of the working taxpayer to forgo participation in the vicious Ponzi scheme and no indemnification to guard against a net loss. All the more reason to demand restitution in the form of beneifit payouts from the extorting party: the federal government.

Justice means getting what one deserves. Victims of violence or fraud deserve to recoup their losses and the satisfaction of punitive awards for pain and suffering as well. Not only do retired Tea Partiers deserve the meager Social Security return-on-investment they receive, justice demands they be given a great deal more besides.

TIM PECK
Asheville

Sad to see N.C. employees
happily ‘butchering’ trees

Today, I stood helplessly by while state employees butchered many of my healthy young White Pine trees.
These young trees were more than 10 feet off the road and they were healthy!  Not more than three or four even had the tips close to the road.

I begged, cried, and pleaded but these butchers would not stop.  I told them that cutting these limbs off and exposing them to disease and insects would destroy these trees, but they just laughed at me.  I even offered to cut them off myself so that I would not cause damage to these trees.

But they would not let me unless I did it right then in front of them!

What was their excuse?  This was to prevent the trees from falling in the road and killing someone. They were lying and they knew it. These trees were only a few years old.  Their limbs were still soft and young.
They were in the early stages of their growth cycle. Even these butchers said that in 20 years they would be a threat.
Twenty years!

So why cut these new, fragile White Pines?  They even admitted it to me. They have a job that pays more than $20 hour and if they don’t make this job last, then they won’t have a job.

So these butchers are going all over the county cutting good, healthy trees and even logging healthy trees that are also not near the road just because they can. It is one thing to watch this on the side of a busy highway where older trees are showing the signs of stress. It is another to watch them happily destroying young tender trees just to make a buck.

God have mercy on us.
BETSY  SOLER
Green Mountain, N.C.