'Editorial is right, we do need to grow up' and more letters to the editor

Thank you for the June 11 editorial on the Cee Lo cursing scandal: We all need to grow up and it shouldn't be considered scandal at all. I appreciate your thoughtful, sensible, intelligent, balanced approach which I wish could be much better understood by our community. May I add that on that Saturday night, at last, the African-American community turned out in force to support one of their own stars. This is/was my first recollection of such support. Finally a good-sized diverse audience!

I wasn't able to attend the Strut after attending annually for many years. I regret decisions previously made and continued under the guise to "improve and make more safe" the Strut.

Over the years I have never felt uncomfortable or threatened by the former lesser security arrangements. The media has made too much out of situations outside the Strut as if they were in the Strut, caused by the Strut and somehow the responsibility of the Strut, which I believe to be incorrect. I appreciate police concern for citizen safety, but I believe we have been over-reactive, and it has created a negative impact to basically denude a formerly fun evening which once lasted longer, was less structured and, to my mind, more enjoyable.

CHET TSCHETTER

Outrageous medical profits not sustainable

The problem that Dr. Clif Cleaveland pointed out in his column regarding the outrageous cost of treatment of rare diseases is a bubble that will pop. Outrageous profits and disparity are not sustainable. Especially those dependent on collusions. The collusion of pharmaceutical products, drug store chains, insurance companies, government regulators and others are responsible for what Dr. Cleaveland described.

Excessive profits invite competition. Prohibition invites bootleg production, pirating, smuggling and black markets. Be patient. Opportunists will find ways to take advantage of such atrocities as they did in the 1930s.

I suspect this is the tip of an iceberg; that collusion of powerful special interests already has advanced to the point where we must depend on such final options for saving our free-enterprise economy.

JAMES O.B. WRIGHT

Sequatchie, Tenn.

legislators ignoring children's future

Gov. Bill Haslam and the Tennessee Legislature have become so adept at balancing the state budget by passing the buck that old Harry Truman himself must be rolling in his grave. Raising tuition past parents' ability to pay forces our children to take out huge loans to get a college education.

Privatizing and cutting benefits and pay for all "future" state employees so that current employees will continue to vote for them entitles them to doctorates in "buck passing." The hard choices are the ones that don't get you re-elected. Kicking the can down Procrastination Road might not hurt anyone today, but it hurts today's young people tomorrow.

DAVID CLARK

Tullahoma, Tenn.

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