Time to fight for history museum
I am writing in response to the Chattanooga History Museum's money running out. Officials raised $10 million for this museum but have nothing to show for it. The building was purchased for $2.3 million, and the center spent $4 million on renovations. There also were benches, metal frames and glass partitions purchased and installed for exhibits. Now it's said there is no money to continue making the mortgage payment. This museum would have been a great form of entertainment and education. People these days are all about the presentation of information. So, for Chattanooga to have a "world-class destination," as stated by former museum director Daryl Black, that would be special!
With technology taking over in "Gig City," history may fall by the wayside. This museum was going to be interactive and revolutionary. It is disheartening to hear it won't open anytime soon, if ever.
Our community needs to fight for this museum. We need a place to learn about the history of our area. We should stand together and get the funds to keep this museum rolling. It would be such a loss to let it slip between the cracks.
Kristen Schwindt
Ooltewah
Slowpoke bill has it backward
I read an article in a recent Sunday Times Free Press that discussed a proposal in the state legislature to ban slowpokes from the fast lane. The legislator cited speeding drivers weaving in and out of traffic as a principal justification for changing the laws.
When did the legislature start to amend laws to suit scofflaws? Drivers going too fast for conditions or weaving in and out of traffic are a symptom of a lack of traffic law enforcement.
Our traffic law enforcement has been so sparse for so long that we now have a subset of drivers who have the attitude that they have a God-given right to go as fast as they want, and the rest of us have an obligation to promptly get out of their way. This is not conducive to traffic safety.
In 2013, 995 people died on the roads and highways just in Tennessee. If the states are ranked by deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, Tennessee ranks No. 12. These numbers tell me our legislature should devote significantly more resources to traffic law enforcement and driver education, focusing on topics such as safe driving habits, courtesy and patience.
Jim Olson
Restructure EPA; obliterate poverty
Our current concern with poverty in Chattanooga is appropriate but unlimited to nor created by our town. Fixing it only locally is not possible, if it can be done at all. The answer is stupidly simple but politically complex.
Back in the '40s and '50s, any business that wanted to locate within these United States could. Smoke coming out of a chimney was money punching in and out from shift to shift.
But then some folks who worked only within their heads decided that smoke was a threat to unborn generations somewhere in the future, and politicians seized upon a "threat" that provided frightened votes based on a shaky fear of events that, by definition, were beyond any shade of proof.
As a nation, we staked our future on the idiotic premise our nation would thrive on financial and other non-manufacturing workplaces.
"You cut my hair, I'll shine your shoes, and we both will collect."
Never mind that only a fraction of our employed population and a thinner fraction of our needs were retained in worship of wrong-headed domestic altruism. Restructure EPA to bring home the jobs we need to obliterate poverty.
Clif Tinkham
Campaign has frightening tinge
Not many of today's voters lived during the Great Depression and World War II. As one who did and also spent most of my adult life studying and teaching the history of Germany, Europe and the world in the 20th century, I see disturbing parallels in our current presidential campaign.
Today, we have a candidate who promotes the cult of personality, who provides his followers with scapegoats to blame for their problems, who asks his followers to raise their right hands high in a pledge of support, who by his demeanor and rhetoric encourages violence against his opponents and then condones it when it occurs.
What's next?
Perhaps it will be a uniformed group of thugs whose tasks are to keep order in rallies and keep protesters out.
Does this situation frighten you? It does me.
Tyler Deierhoi
Signal Mountain
'Free riders' also aggravate voters
In an interview for the April edition of The Atlantic magazine, President Obama said "free riders aggravate me" in referring to America's allies who turn to the United States for assistance but don't always want to help shoulder the burden - financially or otherwise - of dealing with urgent global threats.
Now he knows how most American taxpayers feel about the 45 percent of Americans who pay no federal income tax.
Gary Hayes
Ooltewah
GOP left Heiskell over fiscal policy
This past week, Walker County Sole Commissioner Bebe Heiskell announced she would seek re-election as an independent and not as a Republican.
The reason she gave in the Times Free Press article was that the Republican Party had strayed too far from the center and had been hijacked by the tea party faction.
The reality is Commissioner Heiskell's fiscal policies have become so radically irresponsible that many traditional Republican voters feel they can no longer support Commissioner Heiskell for re-election.
After failed real estate development and business ventures, Commissioner Heiskell has raised property taxes more than 85 percent in the last two years, and the county debt is now over $80 million. The county currently owes $76,000 in overdue EPD fines, and she has misappropriated millions of dollars in SPLOST funds. Sadly, due to her mismanagement, many citizens are expecting another property tax increase this year.
The simple truth is, Walker County taxpayers can no longer afford Commissioner Heiskell.
Dean Kelley
Rossville
Gas tax not for bike projects
As a driver in Hamilton County and Chattanooga, I take exception to the propaganda techniques used in the March 14 article about a bill in the state legislature.
The emotional headline referring to the bill " that would gut the funding ," for instance. Is this the beginning of the departure from the intent "To Give the News Impartially, Without Fear or Favor"? I am troubled by the claim that thousands of people in our city are biking or walking because they are unable to afford a car.
I would like to defend bill HR 1650 because the intent of the gas tax is to provide funds for maintenance of roadways to be used by automobiles and trucks. Our roads and bridges are in desperate need of repair, requiring all of the funds set aside for that purpose.
I do believe the use proposed in the article is elitist in that diverting designated funds from their intended purpose for maintaining roads to recreational use of the few is clearly putting the wants of a few ahead of the needs of the many.
Judith F. Huffine
Get prescription drug bills moving
There are three major issues facing Congress and the president in the prescription drug area: 1) Importation of drugs from safe countries; 2) Medicare putting its drugs out for bid; 3) Blocking payoffs or deals of drug companies to generic drug manufacturers not to produce. There are now eight bills, many bipartisan, in the Senate and five in the House addressing these matters.
Why aren't these bills moving? It appears many in key positions in Congress appear to be more interested in campaign contributions from Big Pharma than the public good.
None of the bills on these issues represent a budget increase; most are savings. How can Congress talk about Medicare cuts when billions of dollars in savings can be made over the next 10 years? Let's get these bills moving, the public is tired of inaction in this area.
Tony Stamp
Dunlap, Tenn.