Independent thinkers are key to future
GOP attack on women is real and continuing
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“Respected by physicians, trusted by patients” Leslie Gant, Au.D.
DOCTOR OF AUDIOLOGY
61 Haywood Park Drive, Suite B CLYDE, NORTH CAROLINA
828.627.1950 or 866.601.1950 www.mtnaudio.com
Serving Haywood County since 1988.
WNC FAMILY COUNSELING & DWI TREATMENT SERVICES, PLLC DWI Assessment & Treatment Services • Women in Recovery Group • CDL & EAP Referrals • Anger Management • Insurance Accepted
Individual & Family Mental Health Counseling • Adult Survivors • Depression • Panic & Anxiety • Domestic Violence
Yvonne Johnson-Gilbert
(LCSW, DCSW, SAP, LCAS, CCS, NASW/NCSAPPB, Clinical Supervisor)
828.648.7111
CANDIDATE ISSUES FORUM Monday, Oct. 15th | 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. The Community Room of Jackson County Library Downtown Sylva
Hear Q’s & A’s from WNC Candidates Invited:
US Congressional District 11 Mark Meadows & Hayden Rogers
NC Senate District 50 Jim Davis & John Snow
NC House District 119 Mike Clampitt & Joe Sam Queen
Smoky Mountain News
To the Editor: The letter about women’s rights by Margery Abel in last week’s Smoky Mountain News says it very well. I’d like to add the following to what she has said. • Current Republican budget proposals call for cuts in child care, Head Start, job training, Pell Grants, housing, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — all of which would fall disproportionally on women. • Recent cutbacks in state funding have led to reductions in the public sector workforce, so that teachers and civil servants — the majority of whom are women — have increasingly been forced into the ranks of the unemployed. • Fewer services means more unpaid care work. Employed or not, women are the majority of our nation’s 67 million informal caregivers, who pick up the slack when services disappear. The growing practice of moving the elderly and disabled from publicly-funded residential centers to home-based care, and discharging hospital patients still in need of medical monitoring and nursing services, puts an increasing burden on women. They are either grossly underpaid for these essential services or else perform them at home for free while also holding down another job. • With the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs and the decline of the construction industry, the majority of union members are now women in the service sector. Hence, attacks on unions become thinly-disguised attacks on the rights of women to engage in collective bargaining and seek better pay and working conditions. • From June 2009 to May 2012, women suffered 61 percent of public-sector job losses, while gaining only 22.5 of the 2.5 million net jobs added to the overall economy. In 2010, the poverty rate among women rose to its highest level (14.5 percent) in 17 years. It is not much better today. • Denial of government funding to Planned Parenthood and other agencies providing family planning services leads to more unwanted births, more children being raised in poverty, more need for childcare services so women can work to support their families, larger school enrollments — and thus heavier burdens on women for all these reasons. • Men in legislatures, courtrooms, and the media voicing opinions and making decisions about women’s bodies, without consultation with women, is an insult to human
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October 3-9, 2012
To the Editor: Kurt Vonnegut, a prophetic fiction writer of the 1960s, wrote an amusing, disturbing and satirical short story called “Harrison Bergeron,” describing a future day in 2081 when the ruling government has perfected an equalized society. Any natural talents a person might possess beyond the average must be compensated for by the Handicapper General. If one is better looking than anyone else, he or she must be made ugly with masks or distorted features. Taller than average? You wear weights around you at all times. Naturally graceful or athletic? You wear chains to drag you down. And if you are of greater than average intelligence, you hear disrupting noises to impede any sustained thinking you might do. Success in any area of life is met only with punishment. It is a society where equality has come at last, and people have no idea how closely their lives resemble those of laboratory rats living in closely-monitored mazes. This futuristic American society of “Harrison Bergeron” operates on communistic principles supporting the idea that all wealth and power should be distributed equally, and individualism and exceptionalism must be suppressed for the good of the whole. It is a society of mediocrity and stagnation where the media tells you what to think and feel. There are no independent thinkers left. Hollywood portrays many of these same themes in current movies, such as the “Hunger Games,” “The Dark Knight,” and “The Bourne Identity” series, questioning how we are to survive and keep our human dignity in worlds where powerful forces, usually governmental, try to suppress our beliefs, rights and basic humanity by making us totally dependent upon it. The independent thinker, who stands up to these evil, shadowy forces becomes the savior of himself and his world. Are there any independent thinkers left today? Do you call yourself an independent, and if so, just how independent are you? There is little argument that our Forefathers, the Founders of this nation, were independently-minded fellows. They understood subjugation to an out-of-control government that was telling them what to buy and trade, how to live and behave, when and where they could meet, and which imposed unjust taxes and regulations on many areas of their lives never taxed before. Finally they had enough; the American Revolution became fact; and the happy result was a nation of independently-minded people who produced an exceptional country where hard work and success are celebrated and rewarded, where freedoms of thought, speech
and religion are cherished values and where educated people are free to make choices which benefit themselves and society as a whole. Is this the society we still want, America? Or is it more important to have “shared-sacrifice,” a “level playing field,” equal opportunities and benefits for all mankind, “political correctness” and a government which recognizes no needs but its own and gives us the “right” to live by its rules, whims, and definitions? How independent is your thinking? Laurie Wright lwright45@frontier.com
opinion
throughout the day. They aren’t just plopped down in the front of a television screen. I share your belief that the government can’t solve all of society’s ills, but this is one program that will give future generations a head start and enable them to become productive members of society rather than living off the welfare dole. It’s not hard for me to decide who I’ll vote for in this election. Betty Dishman Sylva
Jackson County Commission District 4 Marty Jones & Mark Jones Sponsors: Macon County League of Women Voters, Canary Coalition, OccupyWNC, The Smoky Mountain News
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