Sinking boats no help to Americans
Sinking boats supposedly packed with cocaine with million-dollar missiles that could have been captured while illegally killing people, Trump falsely asserts each boat destroyed saves 25,000 lives. Trump’s insincerity for overdose victims he’d call losers is clandestine. Sinking boats is low-hanging fruit compared to Mexican fentanyl.
There are about 100,000 U.S. drug overdose deaths each year.
Opioids kill nearly three times more people than cocaine, which comes almost entirely from South America. In 2021, nearly 71,000 overdose deaths involved synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl.
China was the main producer of finished fentanyl and precursor chemicals up until 2019 when China banned fentanyl-class substances, but Chinese chemical manufacturers still produce precursor chemicals sold in Mexico. Mexico has since become the locus for illicit fentanyl.
Almost 80% of drug smugglers caught at legal US-Mexican border crossings are US citizens, not immigrants.
“Death by despair,” by gun or drugs, is due to socioeconomic hopelessness. The wealth of Republican corporate welfare doesn’t benefit America’s workers; it just creates a class of working poor. Trump’s military provocation doesn’t help America’s underpaid living in despair.
David Bean
The shutdown is on the Democrats
A recent Chattanooga Times editorial criticizes conservative governance.
Please remember that the federal government would be operating if Democrats had voted for the continuing resolution, as to allow time to negotiate their demands.
Jim Kennedy
No work, no pay: Congress edition
Adopt a work requirement for Congress — and a big salary cut for this do-nothing group of representatives. We won’t pay if they don’t play.
Helen Barrett
Self-enriching GOP should be imprisoned
It is obvious that the Republican agenda is simply self-enrichment. They have manipulated the stock market for their personal.gain. They are manipulating the bitcoin market. And now they have manipulated the commodity market.
If you bought soybean futures yesterday, your holdings today have doubled in value. Did you have the inside information? We cannot rest until this entire administration is in prison.
Thomas Peck
America, it’s time to say no to socialism
There are three essential requirements for a democratic republic to succeed: an engaged electorate, honest elections and principled elected officials subservient to the people’s will. Conflicts arise when renegade elected and unelected obstructionists instead pursue personal agendas and contrary ideologies. Such is the current dilemma.
Socialists know no obligations or boundaries. Laws are for others. Principles for fools. Integrity an outdated luxury. Hypocrisy a defense for crimes committed. Why would Socialist Democrats oppose voter ID, legitimate registration, verified absentee ballots and monitors except to sustain election corruption? Why would anyone abuse unsustainable public debt other than to purchase now generationally dependent voter blocs with cavalier disregard for the cruelty and resultant suffering from purposeful, perpetual poverty? Why destroy the world’s best health care system through a wholly disjointed ACA?
The interim goal of the socialist cabal is seizure of control, regardless of consequence, as a prelude to communism. They divide America (Obama’s assignment), weaken our global and domestic resolve (Biden’s), undermine the rule of law.
Restoring America’s Republic will not be without pain but only a mild discomfort when compared to the lethal alternative.
RG Kirn
Soddy-Daisy
Free Press editorial disrespectful
I find it almost comical the scolding Free Press opinion page Editor Clint Cooper gives to TFP readers about the potential land swap deal between McDonald Farm and Enterprise South Nature Park. TFP reporters reported on the complex issue. Their reports raised issues of potential bike trail disturbance, a cemetery being moved and the proximity of homes to potential industrial construction.
And then Mr. Cooper says in essence, “yes, we brought up those issues, but we really didn’t expect you to believe they could happen.”
When Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp described the original article as “gotcha journalism” and “clickbait,” I thought his comments were a bit of an overreach. But maybe he was right after all.
Telling readers how to react, what to think and apologizing for reader reactions to those stories show a lack of respect for reporters’ work and worse, it is a lack of respect for TFP readers.
Steve Ray
Ooltewah
One mother’s face; the world’s shame
One mother’s face is enough to show us the human soul and also the evil that has been done to it. In this face we see the cruelty of worldly power carelessly misused. It is the face of Safi Kalinga next to a picture of her 8-year-old daughter Daniella, who died from malaria because Trump’s withdrawal of foreign aid denied Daniella life-saving drugs. Safi Kalinga’s face, in Nicholas Kristof’s article in The New York Times (Sept. 21), is both compelling and at the same time extremely difficult to look at. I put it down; I pick it back up.
This mother’s sorrow for her lost child is a sorrow most parents fear more than their own deaths, but does our response to this mother’s face have something to do with our own souls? What are our options? We could simply not look, or, like Trump, deny the existence of such suffering. Is another Trump option taking responsibility for his actions, rather than choosing mendacity?
The medical journal Lancet estimates that Trump’s cuts will cost the lives of 690,000 children this year and 829,000 next year. Such numbers almost numb compassion. One face is enough. Look into Safi Kalinga’s eyes, and see the truth of evil.
Buzz Sienknecht
Sewanee