Words on dam lock funding inadequate
For years, we have listened to our state's politicians say they are obtaining Chickamauga Lock funding. About $180 million was spent before work was stopped and all construction equipment removed, including the huge cement factory.
Our politicians didn't adequately fund the project to completion. It was a start-and-stop that cost the taxpayers millions.
So, now we hear them brag that $3 million is available this year to restart construction, and next year a whopping $29 million.
With $780 million required to finish the project, it's painfully obvious our representatives are simply posturing with our tax dollars so they can claim their campaign promises were met and, once again, these insignificant efforts will cost the taxpayers millions.
Ken Hurt, Hixson
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Embrace all to ensure our place globally
I stand with Times Free Press columnist David Cook in hoping that the light shone from Charleston won't be extinguished.
It is long past time for us in the South to realize we cannot take our place in a 21st-century global community if we are not willing to embrace all of those who make up our regional community.
And that cannot be accomplished by miring our thoughts and actions in 19th-century mindsets that hinder growth and opportunity and dignity for each of our citizens.
Patricia Sanders
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Cochran must pay for his crimes
I know Bryant Cochran. We aren't friends but met a few times on business.
I found him credible and trustworthy. When he was a deputy, the same applied; he was respectful and courteous.
But it seems he has broken the law, or a jury of peers says so. It would destroy public trust to treat that like a small thing and hand down a smack on the wrist. Sorry, but we pay when we do these things.
Sometimes I'm surprised to see justice work as in this case it did. As a citizen, I must believe in the jurors' decision.
I say this: Mr. Cochran, it's terrible you, family and friends are going though this mess. However, it's over and time to pay the consequences.
This whole thing read like a Hollywood movie, and I was amazed the facts that came out. Who knows what is happening anywhere?
I would like to think I could go to my magistrate judge in confidence, knowing I could trust this person for help.
If what happened really did, and I assume it did as a guilty verdict was handed down, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentence. Yet, they are appealing? Really.
Bobby Hamrick, Rocky Face, Ga.
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Consider Lee's words after the Civil War
Gen. Robert E. Lee considered that he fought for the sovereign state of Virginia with the right of secession until after the Civil War when he took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution.
From that time on, Lee opposed any former symbols of the Confederacy being displayed anywhere. At his funeral in 1870, no Confederate flag was flown. Veterans in the procession wore no uniforms.
Here is what he had to say: "I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered."
John Bratton, Sewanee, Tenn.