We must elect ‘real populists’
Populist or con artist? You decide.
In resigning, Seth Frotman, an assistant director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, wrote Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s appointed head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau: “You have used the bureau to serve the wishes of the most powerful financial companies in America. … The damage you have done to the bureau betrays these families and sacrifices the financial futures of millions of Americans in communities across the country.”
Trump University is the template for his appointee, Betsy De Vos, who withholds records from the Consumer Finance Protection Agency to protect predatory “colleges” and lenders.
With a debt of $1.5 trillion, how can graduates afford to buy homes and raise children? The American Dream is now the private property of the very rich.
Please for your sakes and your children’s, elect Danielle Mitchell, Karl Dean and Phil Bredesen this November. They are the real populists, that is, legislators of and for us, the people.
Lucy W. Taylor
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Blackburn to ride the Trump horse
It was recently reported Marsha Blackburn predicted if elected to the Senate, Phil Bredesen would be a “reliable vote” for the conviction of President Trump in an impeachment trial.
She drew a contrast between her and Bredesen, vowing to be “a strong supporter of Trump and his agenda.”
If you inferred Blackburn would vote against Trump’s impeachment no matter what, she achieved an obvious goal.
In her road to the Senate, however, Blackburn must avoid a big pothole.
A New York Times report noted she has apparently de-emphasized the abortion issue in her Senate campaign. That suggests an acknowledgment many women and younger voters are more pragmatic on the issue than her House district voters. Thus the need to broaden her appeal to independent and moderate Republican voters.
Underlining the latter point, The Times reported Republican Thomas Cigarran, principal owner of the Nashville Predators hockey team, has said he and other Republicans are looking “for a pragmatic … bipartisan leader, not an ideologue.” He’s hosting a fundraiser for Bredesen this month.
The world’s longest yard sale is 690 miles, running through six states, including Tennessee.
That’s about 100 miles longer than the umbilical cord connecting Blackburn to Trump.
Michael Loftin
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Publishing letter shows civility dead
The letter to the editor published on Sept. 10, advocating the castration of priests is a new, all-time-low for the TFP. If someone had written a letter suggesting castration or sterilization for a group of people with a particular sexual orientation or from a certain racial group, would you have published that?
I’m not Catholic, but I’ve lived long enough to know that pedophiles aren’t exclusive to any particular denomination or profession. The story about the sexual abuse needed to be published, but this letter is strictly “hate speech” and should have never seen the light of day.
It seems to me that a new twisted sense of political correctness has perverted today’s media. Certain things are taboo and above question, but if a certain institution, group or person is not valued by today’s trendy humanistic society, it’s OK to say or do anything you want to disparage them.
Apparently civility has died and is waiting to be buried.
Jeff Fisher