Burning Questions

The political nonsense has started on our online forum and it's not usually backed up by legitimate sources because that's impossible to get. I have a few basic questions but I probably won't get any answers.

Some local posters are running down minorities and poor people even if the subject matter doesn't apply. I never get an answer when asked for absolute proof. One poster said that getting a voter ID is not hard at all, especially since poor people all have $600 I phones and I guess the money to pay for the contract. Has anyone's ever investigated that allegation? I believe we do have legitimate poor people who would like to vote and the extra burden, costs, and harassment we are putting on them is an impediment to voting. We should be encouraging not discouraging voters; lord knows we have enough voter apathy.

The same posters think that our legislators think minorities are ignorant and need extra points to pass a hiring test. Affirmative action was set up 1961 as a prerequisite to the 1965 civil rights legislation. It was meant to level the playing field in employment, education, and business. The minorities might have passed all the tests without the extra points, but we’ll never know. Is it time to scale back and start taking steps to do away with this program? I've always said that we should have a serious debate and I believe sensible people would agree that it has fulfilled its purpose. I fully understand the anger one must feel when they are victims of reverse racism but I have also seen the National Guard called out to allow students to go to a public school.

The courts will eventually decide if the Texas voter ID law suppresses voters and if affirmative action should be scaled back. We never have legitimate arguments; all we have is personal stories of how someone's neighbors are cheating the system. That happens all over, I remember my work mates purposefully lying to the Internal Revenue Service but at the same time they were complaining about the EITC. They justify their lying by convincing themselves that they weren't doing anything out of the ordinary.

Which leads me to my basic questions; when can we go back to the issues where we have legitimate differences instead of the silly arguments?

The other burning question I have is one of equal resentment. Why is it that we don't care about waste in the billions if it concerns our defense department but of blood pressure comes to a boil when we hear of a welfare fraud? I think the latter is because we actually can see it sometimes or we put together some unverified facts in our head to back up what we were already thinking. We do get complaints about bureaucracy and government waste but the level of anger is much lower.

I just read where a couple posters are saying that all Muslims must be suspect because moderate Muslims are not condemning terrorism. I don't really know how you prove that but I hope the people of Afghanistan aren't blaming the actions of one soldier who killed 17 civilians on all the troops in Afghanistan.

I don't care if we if we eventually have to use a driver's license to vote but we should wait until after the November election. That way we could take steps to get the people to comply by wavering the fee for birth certificates, finding ways to register the people other than conventional means and giving the time necessary to produce the identification necessary to vote. I know the reason the republicans are using this tactic; it's just a voter suppression.