Letters to the Editors

City request unloads cost

So, members of the Chattanooga City Council asked the owners of Kanku's to put on more security guards in the wake of the recent shootings there. This is not right. This is merely transferring the cost and liability of security onto the back of the private sector. This is not a Kanku problem; it is a city problem, and the city should address it, not just at Kanku's but throughout the entire Eastdale area.

To me this is an admission by the city and the police department that they cannot control the gang violence issues and is a covert way of saying "you need to protect yourselves, the police department cannot (or will not) do it." If there ever was a case for armed citizenry, this is it.

Or there is another way to look at it; maybe it is just a way to transfer the city budget onto the private sector. If Kanku's hires security guards, this is police officers the city does not have to hire and train.

Remember, when seconds count the police are only minutes (in some cases lots of minutes) away!

PAUL BURCH

Hixson

Concert Festival deserves coverage

I wanted to extend the invitation to the East Tennessee Concert Festival sent by Perry Vandergriff in this column on Friday to also include the Chattanooga Times Free Press. There will literally be thousands of young musicians all from East Tennessee performing on UTC's campus this coming Wednesday and Thursday. If this were a sports event (which I enjoy) it would be covered ad nauseam in the Sports section. I noticed your front-page coverage of Allied Arts campaign kick-off a week or so ago. How about the real life application of what that body stands for by covering young people in music?

The educational experience received by both my students and myself in the few years I have been involved with this festival has been exceptional.

RICHARD HICKAM

Band and Orchestra

Director

Collegedale Academy

People in Hawaii looking wrong way

Don't you just love some people! The front page of the Times Free Press (Feb. 28) featured a picture of people looking out to sea. The caption read, "People sit under coconut trees at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu waiting for the arrival of a tsunami Saturday." They apparently didn't figure out that if a tsunami was created off Chile, it had to be going west and hence would hit the east side of Oahu. Honolulu is on the west side of Oahu, about 10 miles from the east coast. That may well account for there being only a total of five people in the picture staring at a completely empty beach.

GENE JONES

Signal Mountain

Is Palin the best we have to offer?

The media and its coverage of Sarah Palin make my stomach churn and I turn the channel.

Why would I want to watch coverage of someone who quit her job that her state elected her to? Why would I care about a book tour she went on to promote herself, and today the coup de grace is she is peddling a reality show about Alaska.

If this is the best America has to offer, we really are a sad nation.

SARAH GUSSOW

Hixson

Senator's office won't take call

I tried calling Tennessee Sen. Ty Cobb of Columbia, Tenn., to tell them to vote "yes" on Senate Bill 262, which deals with making English the only language for the Tennessee state driver's license.

Being a deaf constituent and using the Tennessee Relay to place my call, I was hung up on not once, but twice. I did my best to get the woman to accept my call by telling her that I was calling on a Senate bill that is in the process of being voted on. That is when she hung up on me and I decided to let folks of Tennessee know how our government treats us deaf citizens as well as their constituents.

I for one do not think it is fair that a senator or one of their staff members to hang up on a call from a voter. Maybe with the power of the press, as well as freedom of speech, I can get this corrected.

JAMES W. HURST

Show leaders more respect

I am disgusted by the lack of respect for our president and for the country that has been shown in the GOP fundraising letter/advertising program that shows the president as "The Joker" and Ms. Pelosi as "Cruella Deville." This kind of demonization is unworthy of mean school children, much less people who have been elected to leadership positions in our government. If the children of these people made up and publicized pieces such as these about their parents, they would be "taken to the woodshed" or at least grounded for a period of time.

How can this country expect peoples of other nations to show us respect if the people who are part of our government establishment show such blatant disregard and disrespect to the nation and its leaders? Shame on you, GOP!

Isn't it enough that you obstruct every attempt to get anything meaningful passed in the legislature?

SUE Y. HYATT

Stop direction of progressives

The continuing process of Obama and the Dems to take over the economy by their health control bill is a great example of how progressives think.

I am to give up my freedom to choose my coverage so I can replace an insurance carrier with the creators of the Post Office, Medicare and Medicaid.

They continue with the lie that they will save us money when all of us know they are just moving money from Medicare to this new system of agencies (including death panels).

They will have to raise taxes to make up for their false numbers. Tell me where any government program has shrunk.

We need to elect people who will stop this direction and turn it around. We need a revolution of thought to erase from all of us that government is the final solution to our problems.

Another example of this wrong direction is Sen. Bob Corker's belief his vast bill will make the financial system safer. It will increase costs and decrease freedom to be wrong or correct. This is backward thinking, and we need new leaders who will stop this wrong direction.

BRUCE CALDWELL

Signal Mountain