Cops know their equipment needs
Again we see a knee-jerk reaction by poor-thinking congressmen to limit local police from taking advantage of military surplus (“Legislation would limit military equipment going to police,” News, Sept. 6) Apparently, they do not think local police responsible to local citizens are better able to judge what they need to ensure peace and respond to lawlessness. We don’t need misguided federal law that ignores the higher loss of life and injury resulting from feel-good police response versus confrontation of lawless rioters with commensurate force levels.
BERWICK BABIN, RIVERDALE
Oil firms profit at customers’ expense
When will our passive Congress do something about the gouging of motorists at the gas pumps? Though oil prices have remained stable over the past few months, gasoline prices have jumped by 10 cents a gallon in the past few days. Speculators receive a lot of the blame for higher oil prices, but the oil companies themselves are the biggest purchasers of oil and the driving force behind the increases. They also sell a large amount of the gasoline they produce in the overseas markets, helping to exasperate inventory shortages that contribute to the increase in gasoline prices.
When oil prices increase, oil companies make additional profits on domestically produced oil and on the increase in gasoline prices at their branded, controlled service stations. With so many Americans unemployed, underemployed and on fixed incomes. oil companies should be sensitive to the needs of these motorists and not try to make their financial situation even more difficult.
DAVE PAULK, HINESVILLE
Conservatives lack a sense of humor
What I found interesting about the letter writer who compared cartoonists Michael Ramirez and Mike Luckovich was that he didn’t say he enjoyed Ramirez’s humor, but that he enjoyed how Ramirez’s cartoons upset liberals. I don’t always agree with his views, but at least Luckovich is usually funny. Ramirez is 100 percent one-sided, shrill, obsessed with Obama and, worst of all, just not funny. I would like to see him occasionally skewer a John Boehner or Rick Perry or some other conservative worthy of lampooning, just as Luckovich sometimes does Obama or Clinton.
As a lifelong Republican, I would really like to see conservative media and pols figure out how to be funny, occasionally even self-deprecating. Lack of humor may be why conservatives come across as mean to a lot of folks. A person with a conservative viewpoint who can make me laugh like Stephen Colbert or John Stewart would be wonderful.
PATRICK DINKLA, SUWANEE
