No campaign inspiration thus far

I have labored through two Republican debates and one Democratic debate and every day I grow less excited about the 2016 presidential election.

First, we do not need another Bush or another Clinton as President, and thankfully there will not be another Obama, but Clinton is a close comparison.

President Obama and his administration (in my opinion) have racially divided this country to its lowest level -- ever! United we are not.

There are three declared candidates who have no Washington experience. President Obama had very little and was elected thanks to the ill-informed voter base. We have now a former accomplished CEO of Hewlett-Packard, a successful financial mogul, and an accomplished successful neurosurgeon. We need a leader who can financially set us straight with a balanced budget, and our great country is in need of major surgery so these three individuals fit the need. President Obama's administration first held senior citizens (Social Security recipients) hostage by refusing a cost of living increase (COLA) because gas prices are at its lowest. When was this item a condition? The current formula for COLAs is outdated and needs revision.

President Obama then singlehandedly vetoed the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), thereby holding hostage again our entire active duty military as well as retirees of a COLA increase as well. His priorities are domestic issues and not national security/defense issues. All these presidential hopefuls make promises of change (I will -- I can), but for all less educated/ill-informed voters out there, no president can fulfill any promise unless he/she has the backing/approval/working relationship of Congress. All must be on the same page. Right now I am not excited unless divine intervention appears.

Jerry Wojtecki

Phenix City

Sad sign of the times

Just saw the video of the police officer forcibly removing the student from the classroom in South Carolina. While I can't condone the officer's frustrated overreaction in this situation, I want to focus on the role that the student played in the incident.

It was reported that this student was being disruptive, and had refused to leave the classroom after being asked by the (a) teacher, and (b) an administrator. Hence, the need for the resource officer, with whom the student also refused to comply.

One can surmise that there was absolutely no teaching (of math) and no learning (of math) in that classroom while that student was refusing to comply with several authority figures. This would not be a newsworthy item had the student just left the classroom when ordered to do so (or done her job as a student and been listening and learning to begin with). It's the teacher and the other students I feel sorry for.

At what point did so many young Americans decide that they were above authority, and that their duty was to defy and disobey? Civility is a distant memory, replaced with a hypersensitive chip on our shoulder, and woe to anyone who "disses" us. What a world!

Ken Paulk

Columbus

Respect, not race

I'm writing concerning the student who was physically removed from her desk due to her defiance to obey her teacher, and then ultimately a police officer. The student knowingly used her cell phone during class, which is very clearly against school rules, then for whatever reason chose to ignore her teacher's orders, disrupting every other student's rights to simply have class. Last time I checked having classes and learning is the reason the students are there in the first place.

This student had zero regard for her classmates, zero respect for her teacher, and zero respect for the police officer. Now, as expected the NAACP has dashed to her defense, instigating a racial situation which in my opinion has no place even being brought up. What needs addressing is lack of respect for all others involved, the need for parents to teach their children to obey and respect law enforcement, and to anyone with rational thinking, flush the racial issue down the proverbial toilet! It doesn't matter what color the defiant and disorderly student is, she needs to be suspended and removed from school so that students who are there to learn can do just that.

C.R. Kruger

Smiths

Accountability vacuum

The recent article about the company named American Sealcoat that had been dumping toxic chemicals into a stream feeding into the Chattahoochee caught my eye, especially the statement that the company no longer existed. If the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper asked the company to clean up its act, it must have existed at that time. The other statement that the owner was nowhere to be found also left me puzzled.

A company must file for and be issued a business license with the responsible persons involved in the business listed as well as the business address. The company must also have had to pay taxes on the county and state level; the company had employees who were caught dumping the second time, so they must have been paid by American Sealcoat and that means that somewhere there must be records -- tax and employment, to name a few.

Another item made me wonder just who was responsible (or in this case, not) for keeping tabs on companies doing business with toxic chemicals and where they were being stored and disposed of. If this company was using toxic chemicals, they were either creating them onsite or purchasing them from another company. Either way, there is another source of information which could be used to track down the delinquent owners and bring them to justice.

There is a pattern here which sounds painfully familiar. If county or state or federal officials really wanted to find them, they could. After all, didn't Citizens United say that corporations are people?

Michael Wade

Ellerslie

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 3:51 PM with the headline "No campaign inspiration thus far ."