Educational freedom
Dear editor:
One day I went to pick up my son from school early from kindergarten. The kids were in a circle on the rug surrounding their teacher, who was reading a book aloud. I looked for my son but could not find him in the group. The teacher saw me and then pointed toward her desk. There sat my child. While the other children were listening to a story, he was installing new computer software for the teacher.
Scenes similar to this were repeated throughout his school years. He didn't learn the same way as most other children. He didn't understand why he had to do homework when he aced every test. He got bored quickly and grew irritated with kids who were not as serious about learning as he was.
This changed in high school when representatives from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts came to do a presentation about the school. After much hard work on his part, my son was accepted to ASMSA.
At first, it was tough, and he didn't think he could do it, but once he settled in, he excelled. In this more serious environment, his performance, which had only been mediocre before, vastly improved. When he graduated, he was accepted into the Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology honors program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He now lives in Dallas and is a high-level cloud project manager with a major telecommunications company.
School choice is one of those words that immediately evokes ideological arguments. All school choice means, in reality, is parents having the freedom to make choices that are in the best interests of their children. That is what our family did, and that is what every family should be able to do.
Jennifer Hopper
Cabot
The great lie
Dear editor:
Who's doing what to who?
There's a joke that actually is true. A billionaire, a working man and an immigrant are in a room and there are 100 cookies. The billionaire takes 99 cookies and then leans over and whispers to the working man that the immigrant is after his cookie.
This is actually what's going on and is nothing new. At varying times in our history it's been the Blacks are coming for your jobs (Civil War propaganda), then women are coming for your jobs, and then to Blacks, the Mexicans are coming for your jobs and blah, blah. When what's really happening is that it's the billionaires who are coming for your job and shipping it off to China. This is the great lie that many still buy into so it's repeated every generation to keep us fighting against our own interests and ignore who the real culprits are. Too many are too quick to accept the lies and not question the messenger.
Judith Zitko
Hot Springs Village
The party's over
Dear editor:
When Biden/Harris took office four months ago, the average driver could fill the tank for $30 and today it would be about $45. At the same continued rate of increase, it will only take $67 to fill up this September. Energy prices are subject to many factors ... flip a coin. Energy prices are a good starting point to determine the real cost of living and today most of us can eat, drink and make merry without taking out another mortgage. That is ending! Many of us are afraid it will get much worse. Many billions/trillions of greenbacks were injected into our economy by way of the stimulus checks but they're history now. The entire time that Biden/Harris has been in office we have been under the influence of the stimulus money ... the party's over, turn out the lights, pay attention, Wall Street. Come to think of it, our future looks very bad!
The new Democrat is pretty nasty to the Republicans and I hope that eases as it has been pointed out to me (in a very hostile way) that the Republican half of the nation should cease to exist. That is more than a little scary when you consider that a divided nation is easy prey for our enemies and I'm concerned for our grandchildren, looks like there is a good chance that they may have to learn some other language such as Spanish, Chinese and/or Russian in order to buy, sell or trade. That reminds me to ask why some people think that our president is so very righteous? Have they really read and understand the beliefs of the new Democrats? Methinks not! I've seen a lot and I'm very concerned for the grandkids.
In Los Angeles, 40 years ago it helped if you could speak Spanish to order a hamburger at the drive-thru window, so I can appreciate what it must be like today.
The Biden/Harris Cabal is flying or busing illegal immigrants in by the thousands. It may be good to learn Spanish so you can interact better with your new neighbor. If you haven't been vaccinated you should put that on top of your "things to do" list because the illegal immigrants, your new neighbors (to be) haven't been vaccinated. Do you suppose President Biden overlooked some things? Surely not!
Darryl Foshee
Hot Springs
'Selective stupidity'
Dear editor:
The Democratic Party is privy to selected stupidity, in response to the GOP being myopic and using selected amnesia with federal spending.
Let us look at what the Democrats stand for: murdering innocent children through abortion. Funny how the only ones that support abortion have already been born. Where would they be if their mother had decided to end their life?
They promote welfare and incentivize breaking the law. Instead of enforcing lawful immigration, they incentivize unlawful immigration by putting lawbreakers into hotels and feeding them restaurant meals while millions of Americans remain homeless. They put children into our public education system that cannot speak English, thereby putting a liability on educators and costing the taxpayer even more funding by having to accommodate this burden.
The top 1% of earners like Soros, Zuckerberg, Bezos all donate to the DNC not the GOP, so who is really making them rich? We live in a capitalistic economical system that is based on the private ownership of the means of production and the operation for profit. Any citizen that is unhappy with that is free to move to Venezuela; I am sure anyone in that country would gladly trade places with you. A top Democrat, Lori Lightfoot the mayor of Chicago, has decided to only give interviews to people of color. For the last 50 years, America has worked on the premise of being a country that judges a person on their individuality not their skin color. Lori Lightfoot, however, is doing just the opposite and her party condones the behavior instead of fighting it.
This is the party that backs defunding the police and letting murderers out of prison early or not putting bail on their crimes to begin with. This is the party that tries to reinvent every word by saying that day care, elderly care, and free college is social infrastructure. This is a party that seeks to persecute Israel for retaliating against a bombing that they never deserved. I wonder what the reaction would be of these Democratic lawmakers if they were sitting in their homes and a terrorist organization started bombing them. The Sentinel-Record publishes disparaging article after article of the GOP but fails to ever publish the rest of the story. In this instance, they also demonstrate selected stupidity.
R. Tracy
Hot Springs