Pet shelter faces closure without aid
The Pet Placement Shelter is the only no-kill shelter in our region. We keep our doors open with donations and fundraisers.
Without donations, our doors will soon close after 25 years of caring and loving the cats and dogs.
Please come look at our wonderful pets.
We thank the Chattanooga Times Free Press and all the kind, caring people for your help.
KATHY SLATEN
Pet Placement Shelter
5975 Dayton Blvd.
877-0738
Election slowed dictatorship
Thanks to the voters in Massachusetts for slowing down the dictatorship!
FRANK SIMMONS
Rossville
U.S. Constitution a secular document
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, took the brunt of the questions from the Financial Inquiry Commission Jan. 13. He told the Times of London the Wall Street bankers had a good record. “It was God’s work,” he said. Bankers like him and pols such as George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and Michael Steele are “doing God’s work,” so they claim.
This blasphemous claim reminded me of the interview Alex Kingsbury did with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon Wood. “Did our Founding Fathers foresee what their experiment would cause America to look like in the next 100 or 200 years?” asked Kingsbury.
Answer: “The Founders who lived into the next century were very disillusioned. They (Jefferson, Washington, John Adams and Rush) didn’t expect the country to become so evangelically religious (remember the leaders of our founding were deists), so vulgar, so moneymaking, so capitalistic.”
Deism is a non-Christian religious belief that a disinvolved Creator started the universe in motion, but has no present-day concern for human actions and welfare. Whereas militant evangelicals believe God micromanages the universe for the advantage of particular believers, the leaders of our founding were deists.
Luckily, they invented a Constitution that trumps the Bible, even the Book of Leviticus. It’s a secular document.
B.J. PASCHAL
Sevierville, Tenn.
Don’t weaken Clean Air Act
I want my senators to know that I will be watching how they vote on Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s amendment attacking the Clean Air Act.
The measure was written with the help of lobbyists from dirty energy companies and weakens efforts to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink.
TVA does not need any more help in doing that for us in this region of the country.
A vote for this Dirty Air Act is a vote for backroom deals and polluters who have only selfish short-term, money driven motives.
Any representative from whatever party who wants to lessen the oversight of any measure designed to protect us from the harmful affects of polluters should have to spend three months a year, with their family, in the direct path of the pollutants they have encouraged with the changes they pursue.
These United States belong to the people and not a business or industry! The Senate should spend more time talking about how to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and build up our domestic sources of clean energy.
PATRICIA MORALES
Will Obama learn from elections?
In context of the historic upsets for the Democrats in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia, I wonder if president Obama may be starting to grasp the meaning of the word “no.”
CHARLIE BENSON
Scheme backfires for liberals
Scott Brown’s decisive win in the Massachusetts special election for U.S. Senate is an ironic slap in the face of the political games being played, especially by the Democrats.
In 2004, the liberals in the Massachusetts General Assembly took away the governor’s power to appoint a replacement to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat by changing the law to require a special election. They did this to prevent the then Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, from appointing a conservative replacement in case Ted Kennedy passed away during Romney’s term.
The irony is that their own scheming may be the downfall of the crown jewel of liberal policies, government health care. The election of Scott Brown gives the Republicans the votes needed to filibuster the health care bill, and it gives the majority of Americans, who do not want government health care, new hope.
Instead of governing, they schemed. Instead of being statesmen, they were politicians. There is obviously nothing they will not do to promote their own interests and agenda. This does not sound like change we can believe in. Thankfully we have a chance to change that in 2010, starting with Scott Brown and culminating with the midterm election in November.
ZACH HUBBS
Ringgold, Ga.
‘Conservatives’ can fund own care
Many of my “conservative” friends squall that the proposed health care reform is a liberal, pinko, collectivist, giant step on the road to communism. The latest whine is about the mandate to carry health insurance. They squall even louder when I propose that the Republican obstructionists who are supposed to be representing “conservatives” should float an amendment that would lift the mandate on health care institutions to treat people who can’t pay for their care.
I support the proposed health care reforms but I would also support an amendment allowing “conservatives” to opt out of carrying coverage by signing away any expectation that they or their dependents receive treatment without up-front payment for care in an emergency or in the event of a serious illness.
Sure, bodies may pile up in the street, but I am agile enough to step over them and, should I trip, I hope to participate in a reformed health care system that will fix me right up.
Current economic conditions demonstrate that too often “conservatives” don’t understand what they are asking for and squeal when they get it.
FRANK WHITE
Don’t cut funds for Dawn School
Word is circulating about Dawn School and whether funding is available to keep this school open.
The students who attend this school suffer from mental illnesses and receive care that is specialized, giving much more individual care and medical care.
These special needs kids should not be forced into public schools where they will face chaos without proper care and concern.
Cutting spending can often be good but when it is done without concern for children, it becomes obvious money really rules the hearts of many people.
There are other ways to cut spending.
CHRISTINE DIWAN