Dear editor:
I do hope all veterans in Arkansas have read of the Republican congressional House plan to reduce expenditures for veteran medical services by $690 million, the equivalent of not giving medical service to 70,000 veterans nationwide. This is an extremely sharp difference in the plan of expanding expenditures under President's Obama projections. Perhaps all those veterans who helped elect this radical Congress with the attitude that the president and Democrats are not sympathetic to their needs will now see that the Republican Congress now in the majority with all its radical younger tea party attitudes is not their friend.
In addition to this extreme reduction the House has planned, it also wants to eliminate four new building projects for veterans and, of all things, eliminate expansion of four veterans cemeteries. Talk is cheap, and all their talk in the past to get elected about "patriotism" and supporting veterans means nothing. If they cannot practice what they preach, they need to be voted out next time.
A similar thing happened here in our state. We got a new Republican-controlled Legislature, with many of the new ones of the tea party mindset, and look what has happened. Their agenda, much of which got signed by the new Republican governor, has taken us back to 1915 in many ways, and in turn, caused Arkansas to once-again get a bad image of not being progressive. I was just completing college in the late '50s when the Democrat Faubus brought turmoil and a bad image with his segregation scheme, arguing that it was all to protect the citizens. But the thinking citizens, including college students, knew it was his ploy to get re-elected. Why must Arkansas politicians not learn from the past? And why will voters want to repeat the past? Will we never learn?
Have a good day. Accentuate the positive -- in view of all the negatives facing us daily. As Annie sang, "The sun will shine tomorrow."
John W. "Doc" Crawford
Hot Springs
Editorial on 04/27/2015