Obamacare is not affordable
Obamacare is not affordable health care. Insurance plans with $5,000 deductibles and high co-pays are not affordable for most Americans. An insurance plan that restricts my trusted doctors, limits my hospital choice, and does not cover my medications is of no value.
Americans have been lied to by our president. Our best chance for change under the Obama administration is for voters to give Republcans control of the Senate in the mid-term elections. Period.
GAYE OLIVER, Hixson
Another take on Volkswagen
People must have the financial common sense of a frog. The profit from the sale of Volkswagens goes back to Germany. The research and development was almost exclusively done in Germany, so the high-paying jobs are in Germany. Chattanooga is a colony of Germany and you paid a foreign company to compete against American companies.
DAVID BEAN, Chatsworth, Ga.
Please check your facts
As a long-time subscriber to this newspaper and a voting citizen, I'll have to say, I am beyond disappointed in the letters filled with lies that you choose to print.
It only leads to a less informed public who look to you for a speck of truth, not more lies that we are fed on a 24/7 basis by the networks and high-paid pundits.
The letter just recently, claiming: "After federal funding through 2016 only, it would then be Tennessee taxpayer's responsibility to pay the entire bill for the thousands of new enrollees on TennCare."
This is an absolute lie and can be easily verified. The federal government will pick up 100 percent of the cost of covering people made newly eligible for Medicaid for the first three years (2014-2016) and no less than 90 percent on a permanent basis. So by rejecting the Medicaid expansion offered under ACA, the Governor effectively denies Tennesseans the benefit of their own tax money they have sent to Washington.
You choose to print a lie, which brings your total credibility as a news source into question. That's your prerogative, but it's also my prerogative to not have known falsehoods delivered to my home.
ANN BENTON, Signal Mountain
Let's drop the labels
The corner has been turned. Civil rights for all will be the embarrassment of the Generation X, just as civil rights for people of color were to us Boomers. We look back in shame at what it took for people to realize that just because someone is different from them doesn't mean they don't have the same rights and liberties accorded to all, under our Constitution. It's that "pursuit of happiness" thing. Today when I was signing up online for something, the drop-down box for gender listed "male", "female" and "other." WOW!
The torch is passed. It's time the news media stops referring to Chris Anderson as "the only openly gay councilman" and instead calls him intelligent, driven, committed, and devoted to his community. I feel completely happy now being a stereotypical heterosexual grandparent. Someday I will quit being an avid reader, good friend, casual photographer, car-loving cook, and comedian wanna-be. It's not about who can marry whom or what any consenting adult does anywhere on the planet. It's an identity thing. And one of respect.
Why does gender identification matter? Buy the way, can you tell my gender by my name? Neither can lots of people. Is it important?
ROBBIE MOORE, Hixson
In support of Israel
I wish to express my solidarity with Israel as I write this letter thanking Charles Krauthammer for his recent excellent commentary: "Support Israel - How to Fight Academic Bigotry."
Why do so many of us spend our hard-earned money to send our children to universities where they will be taught something so crazy as anti-Semitism; The American Studies Association voting to boycott Israeli universities is the tip of the iceberg. Children sent where they will get higher learning, where they will sit under professors whose thinking opposes so much; if not all, we hold dear will graduate from these places and proceed to tear down a country that at one time was blessed by God because we believed in Him and the books He chose the Jews to write, the Old and New Testaments.
RACHEL S. DECOSIMO, Signal Mountain
Congress and term limits
The American voters need to establish their own term limits for our congressmen. The creators of our nation did not see Congress as a lifetime occupation, but rather a brief lending of members' talents. Congress will never pass a term limit law and take away their perks. The lack of term limits gives us a Congress doing the things that will get members re-elected rather than wisely governing. So, I for one won't vote for any candidate a third time. Weston you have my vote.
GORDON SMITH, Signal Mountain
Look at your electric bill
Reference the little yellow notice we received in our January electric bill from the North Georgia Electric Membership Cooperation. I want to make everyone aware NOT to toss this notice in the garbage but to read it. It advises you that, beginning in March, if you do not mark the "NO" box and send it back to NGEMC, your electric bill will be automatically rounded up to the next dollar amount, which can be anywhere from 1 to 99 cents, and that change will be automatically deducted as a donation to the Operation Round Up Fund which issues grants to various charitable organizations. I don't mind helping anyone, but just because I don't sign and return a piece of paper, that doesn't give anyone the right to automatically take even a nickel from me. I just want to make the NGEMC customers aware of this.
CHERISE MILLER, Ringgold, Ga.