Maker has blessed U.S. achievements
It is exhilarating to watch U.S. political leaders liberate hostages, achieve multilateral international peace agreements, obliterate foreign threats, secure U.S. borders, make all of our citizens safer, energize our national economy in ways that benefit all Americans, and perhaps most important, support the values upon which our nation was founded.
These achievements have not been possible without the blessings of our Creator. Like me, the USA is and will always be less than perfect. I pray that a spirit of mutual respect, compassion and wisdom will both take root and flourish in our nation regardless of our differences.
My own faltering attempts to do good to all mankind are limited, but it feels good to know that in very small ways, including my votes, I have played a tiny part in something much larger than myself.
Much remains to be accomplished. May God bless all the children of the world, and may God bless America.
Eric O. Rogers
Hixson
School vouchers are tax break for wealthy
Hamilton County public school students outperformed recipients of state grants to attend private schools two years in a row.
No matter the excuse, this private school grant dog just won’t hunt. Public schools are better than Republicans want you to believe.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ignored a public records request on who receives the state’s school vouchers. Vouchers and the smokescreen of grants is just a way for the rich to get a tax break.
Sure, the poor want to escape bad schools, but the difference in bad schools and good schools is the socioeconomic condition of the neighborhood. Tennessee’s statewide curriculum takes the horse to a full trough. It has been found over and over again charter/private school achievement with a comparable socioeconomic population is no better, sometimes worse, than public schools. As long as the enormous gap in income inequality keeps increasing, more money must be spent to lower class sizes to bring up the achievement of our nation’s socioeconomically deprived. Democracy requires it.
Nowhere has school funding matched the increased rate of income inequality. Smaller class sizes work; grants don’t.
David Bean
Combat readiness is the best deterrent
As advocated by Sun Tzu that the key to peace and a deterrent to war is disciplined combat readiness, as a combat-decorated veteran, and despite their spotty (at best) military involvement, I agree with President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “shape up or ship out” philosophy.
Let’s evaluate the message, not the messengers or their politics or personalities.
Claudos Spears
Young Harris, Georgia