Unpopular News Isn’t Fake News

Dear Editor,

The Rhino Times persists in referring to Democracy Greensboro as “another one of Nelson Johnson’s organizations.”  This is not true.  To give credit where it is due, Rhino was a purveyor of fake news long before Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin made it popular.

In this case, I think I understand how Rhino gets it wrong.  Rhino admires power and money and mistrusts overt displays of democracy.  The Rhino is a business owned by one person (local developer Roy Carroll, whose yacht is also named Rhino) who answers to no one.

Democracy Greensboro, by contrast, is owned by no one and is fully committed to a democratic process.  No individual has any more power within Democracy Greensboro than anyone else.

After observing the Rhino for several decades, it is clear to me that John Hammer and company could learn a lot about truth telling and fairness from Rev. Johnson.  I certainly have.

Gary Kenton

 

Editor’s Note: Rev. Nelson Johnson certainly seemed to be taking credit for Democracy Greensboro at the Democracy Greensboro Candidates Platform Conference, and his people were running the forum.

 

 

Head Scratcher

Dear Editor,

When I read your newspaper it is with a skeptical eye, which results with a range of humoresque disbelief to head scratching puzzlement at some of the statements printed in your paper.

As such I can’t let a statement published in your Nov. 16 Sound of the Beep section pass.  On page 34, the last call printed is the most asinine, racist, coded call that compares baseball players’ to football players’ actions to take a knee.  The caller has the audacity to say, “They skip down the field like a bunch of little girls beating on each other, and beating on their chests and all like a bunch of gorillas.”  Who is he talking about, the New England Patriots, America’s team Dallas Cowboys or our Carolina Panthers?

The caller expressed his concern to the Steely Dan Fan Man. Maybe Steely Dan could enlighten us readers?

James Wilson

 

 

Everyone Has to Drain the Swamp

Dear Editor,

The favorite formation of the national level of the Republican Party, the circular firing squad, is forming in the Senate and the Democrats are gleefully assisting in loading the rifles.

The GOP is again holding true to form, about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the Senate, by screwing up major legislation that would go a long way to ensuring they retain the House and the Senate. The tax reform legislation is on life support (again) and a GOP hand is trying to pull the plug.

The thing I wonder most is, what do these holdouts want? What kind of deal are they trying to work out? What is their version of the “cornhusker kickback” that will get their vote? Or is it that they hate President Donald Trump so bad that they would throw the American people off a cliff just to avoid giving him a policy success? In the case of Sen. John McCain, I think that’s the reason, despite what he says.

A handful of senators are playing kingmaker with the future of the American people and our way of life. They don’t care about us. They only care about what they can get out of this. If you think otherwise, then you are a fool. They don’t care that they are handing the House and Senate over to the socialists, I mean Democrats, and with it the heart and soul of this country. They don’t care that if and when the Democrats get a majority in the House, the first thing they’ll do is waste time with the impeachment (on incredibly stupid grounds) of President Trump. And that they will waste even more time and taxpayer money in the Senate looking for a reason to unseat him as president.

The left has been somewhat successful in polarizing this country and are well on their way to creating what they tell people is a “social utopia,” which is a buzzword for socialism. Unless the same people that made their point by electing Trump stand up and defend what they got, it’s all going to fall apart. In electing Trump, we told the establishment, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” We shouldn’t have stopped there. We have a responsibility to help drain the swamp. We put them there. We have the responsibility of removing them.

Go Galt and save the republic.

Alan Marshall

 

 

Term Limits for Police

Dear Editor,

Women may be treated better by society because of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Unfortunately some men are allowed to do things that other men can’t.

Have you seen the video of the allegedly drunk woman being manhandled at a Miami football game? She takes a swing at one of the officers. He hits her and knocks her out.

Then there is the case of the two New York police officers who say that they had consensual sex with a handcuffed teenager. She says that she was raped.

None of these police officers have been fired. I think that any police officer who knocks out an unarmed woman who is being manhandled should be fired. I think that any on duty police officer who has sex, whether consensual or not, with a handcuffed teenager should be fired.

Police officers should not be above the law. Police power needs to be limited. These are two good examples of why all police officers should be limited to no more than 10 years of service.

Chuck Mann

 

Taxing Trees

Dear Editor,

On taxes, we often overlook the beauty of the forest and see only a few trees.  It’s a fallacy of the left and the right.  For example, we look directly at what appears as a problem and attack only an element of it.  There is always more.

In this regard, if Trump’s tax plan becomes law, it is claimed $2.6 trillion will start flooding our economy in the return of companies that left to avoid taxes, and in tax havens that may have been legally set up to avoid paying taxes.

Herein, we are not directly taxed but the loss of taxes we should have collected is returning.  To say this another way, if we had really wanted to protect the minority, the same laws should have been applied to all.  Special interest solutions just apply to a few trees and to the detriment of what would otherwise a beautiful forest.  Yet it’s true, minority interests insist on special protections or rights, to their own detriment, when creating equal laws for both better would have better served even the smallest tree.

Ray Hylton

 

Send to letters@rhinotimes.com or 216 W. Market St., Greensboro 27408