What is the State Board of Community Colleges thinking? Illegal immigrants, legally going to taxpayer-funded community colleges?
Illegal means not legal. Nobody started to the corner store in Mexico and ended up in Arizona. Or started to walk their child to school and ended up in North Carolina. They left home intending to commit a crime. And they did.
So we reward them with jobs -- that Americans need -- and education opportunities that we need. We employ teachers to teach English as a Second Language when all of our children speak English. Why not use that money for a drop-out prevention program or a remedial program for slow students? How about a pregnancy prevention program for students and their parents?
America has no obligation to provide education and/or employment for illegal foreign nationals. We do have an obligation to do our very best for our own children. Other nations should provide for their citizens.
Unfortunately, some business owners welcome illegal aliens because they work for lower wages which, of course, allows the owners to make more money for doing the same job. But, patriotism is more than wearing a metal -- made in China -- American flag in the lapel. Patriotism is making a serious effort to maintain the progress that our nation has made over many long years of struggle and constantly trying to improve what we have accomplished and who we are. That should take precedence over becoming a millionaire.
MELVIN HAMILTON
Durham
Public non-option
As proposed, the "public option" government health plan would be about as optional as income tax.
Health insurance is regulated by each state, making health plans non-portable between states. Although the idea of allowing health plans to compete nationwide was brought up, it was killed. Only the government plan would be portable nationwide. Anyone moving from his health plan's area would lose his coverage and "temporarily" join the government plan.
With private plans so restricted, the government plan's size would be much larger than any other, giving it the same power that Medicare has now: the ability to set its rates on a "take it or leave it" basis. That would let the government plan shift some of its costs onto the private plans lacking such power, also like Medicare.
Naturally, the government plan would pay no local, state or federal taxes, whereas private insurance already pays billions of dollars per year.
The latest proposal is to tax "high-cost" insurance policies to subsidize health care for low-income recipients. This is to be paid by the private insurance companies, not their customers. In the long term, without adjusting "high-cost" for inflation, the insurance companies will lie helpless like the victim in Poe's "Pit and the Pendulum" as this tax bites into ever more of their policies, forcing most of their customers to the non-tax paying government plan, and slicing the companies out of the health care business.
When the public "option" is no longer optional, who will pay that subsidy?
HAROLD 'MAC' MCFARLAND
Chapel Hill
Fact distorter
I am writing to you as a citizen concerned about the direction not only this country is taking, but also the direction major reporting agencies are taking in distributing news to the public.
While free speech is something I fully support, I feel strongly that those who have a platform to address the public have a deep and serious responsibility to adhere to the truth. The truth as it is based in fact, not beliefs, dogmas or interpretations, but the facts.
Glenn Beck's show is not based on facts. He consistently distorts facts in order to mislead thousands of listeners into believing terrible, very incorrect things about our president, about U.S. policy and about our country (for starters).
It is a shame Fox allows this garbage to be broadcast on their airwaves. Beliefs and facts are not the same. While Beck has every right to state what he believes, a Fox "news" broadcast is not the right place to do so.
To present his beliefs as facts without any competition with the real and actual truth is akin to brainwashing the entire public with misinformation. If the truth is not enough to make the point, then Fox has no business airing Beck's show.
RACHELE DAWN
Durham
Congress sets tariffs
One principle in the U.S. Constitution that protects the freedoms and rights of American citizens is the separation of powers. It has been said that the U.S. executive, President Obama, is not standing firm on national issues involving the economy -- that he is being influenced by special interest groups like the United Steel Workers regarding tariffs. Who makes our tariff laws, according to the Constitution?
President Obama swore "to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution" -- a document he knows very well and whose principles he taught on the college level. I am certainly not such an authority, but doesn't Article 1, Section 8 give both houses of Congress "the power to lay and collect taxes, to pay debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States, to borrow money, and to regulate commerce with foreign nations?"
In accordance with the Constitution, it seems to me that Congress set up these tariffs, not Obama, and not the state governments without the consent of Congress.
Is the money gained from tariffs not for use of the U.S. Treasury? Will this revenue not help in pulling the United States out of the current recession? Is this not promoting the "general welfare?"
In my opinion, President Obama and his administration should be enforcing the laws that Congress makes. This is the principle of separation of powers in the Constitution.
MARY ANN BIGGS
Durham
Who is black?
When Jimmy Carter accused his fellow Americans of being racists, he did so based upon the commonly accepted assumption that President Obama is black. It is not splitting hairs to point out that Obama's identity as a black man is based on antiquated social customs rooted in southern white culture, to wit, if you have any black in you, then you are considered black.
White slave owners were careful to identify mulatto children as Negroes to protect white families and white fortunes. This tradition, based on white southern paranoia, has survived today and is the historical basis for calling Obama our first black president.
In this age of Darwin and the science of genetics, Jimmy Carter made an accusation of racism based on a flawed cultural assumption used to determine who is black. Carter is not unlike the creationists in that he insists on the primacy of myth over science. To understand racism in America today we should begin by deconstructing the attitudes of the white southern peanut farmer.
ALAN CULTON
Hillsborough
Tainted information
As a proud American, I write in response to Catherine Picut Parker's letter of Sept. 24, wherein she relates that she kept her children home from school so as to not be tainted by President Obama's speech to school children.
Parker said she read to her children from the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. She cited Federalist #45 as speaking to the limitation on the general welfare clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Unfortunately, the paper she should have referred to is #41 (This involves an argument between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton over the extent of the general welfare clause referenced above). As to the outcome of that argument, most Supreme Court decisions have sided with Hamilton that the limitations on Congress's ability to tax for the general welfare, identified by Madison, are incorrect.
This has been true since 1933. Perhaps Parker's children could have learned something new by listening to the president's speech.
ROBERT G. PAUL
Bahama
