To readers and Gov. Bentley,

I’m writing this letter about the incentive package Gov. Bentley offered the state employees.

These men and women who have worked for the state 25 years or more who were looking forward to this package to retire and spend time with their families, but then you decided it would be best not to give it after all. However, these state employees haven’t forgotten. They were looking forward to it.

I know some people who have worked for the state for 40 years that are unable to retire without this incentive package. Do you know that the sate employees haven’t received a raise in five years and now that taxes are going up these men and women won’t be able to take care of their families? Do you know how much money the state will save if you pass this and allow these employees to go home?

You can then focus your time on welfare and making sure if you receive welfare that you pass a drug test. Because this is where the state is losing millions of dollars a year.

So please, before you say no and take the package off the table for all the hardworking men and women who keep our highways and byways safe, think about it like this.

There are some of these employees, men and woman, who won’t live another 25 to 40 years. So, please give them the package and let them live out the rest of their life without worries.

Thank you,

Melinda Byrd

 

Census sheds light on

nation’s poorest cities

The most recent Census has brought into focus some alarming and distressing data that should concern every American. The 10 poorest major cities of the U.S. were pinpointed and identified by the percentage of population below the federal poverty line. First of all, is it ironic that while we hear so much from the media of how poor Appalachia and the south is, how poverty ridden areas of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia are, that none of the ten poorest cities are located in the south or southeastern U.S?

Perhaps the most telling correlation of this data reveals that ALL of the ten poorest cities historically have a Democratic mayor. These numbers reflect the 10poorest cities by percentage rank and the party in power:

1 Detroit, MI 32.5 percent Democratic since 1961

2. Buffalo, NY, 29.9 percent Democratic since 1954

3. Cincinnati, OH 27.8 percent Democratic since 1984

4.Cleveland, OH 27.0 percent Dem. since 1989

5. Miami 26.9 percent, always Dem. 6. St.Louis 26.8 percent Dem. since 1949

7.El Paso, 26 percent always

8. Milwaukee 26 percent Dem.since 1908

9. Philadelphia 25.1 percent Dem since 1952

10. Newark 24.2 percent Democratic since 1907!

What does this tell us? Is it a coincidence that voters of these 10 cities continue to elect a failing leaders? Or does this speak volumes about about a political philosophy and an unwillingness to turn cities away from hopelessness and ruin and assuring their citizens they too can share the American dream? Albert Einstein once said, “…..the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results…”. The poorest Americans continue decade after decade to elect Democrats. Yet, they never rise from the bottom tier of poverty. At the same time we hear their candidates preach that there is hope by taxing and destroying the wealthy. Abraham Lincoln is known for saying, “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong; you cannot lift up the wage earner by attacking the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class warfare. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they should and could do for themselves.”

Finally, a non-American, former British Rime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said it best when she observed that, “…. Socialism never works out in the long run because the Socialist soon run out of other people’s money to spend….”

If it were possible what do you think our founding fathers would think of the state of our nation today, the hopeless poverty, filthy decaying cities, attacks on our Christian faith, abortion?

James Anderson

Talledega