New medical, dental schools can’t solve shortage alone
A quick online search on “What are the barriers to becoming a physician?” shows that studies by the National Institutes of Health, UCLA and many other highly respected institutions rank financial challenges at the top of the list of barriers.
While Georgia may need the new medical school and dental school projects proposed by Gov. Brian Kemp, I doubt these schools will significantly increase the numbers of physicians and dentists in Georgia without major investment in scholarships to allow students to pay for the additional years of education required.
MARGARET PERRY DANIEL, ATLANTA
Legislators only act when it benefits them
Re: “How to speak like a Georgia legislator” (News, Jan. 7), I believe that one very important phrase was omitted from the lexicon: “What’s in it for me?” It appears that this is the guiding principle of most of our legislators, regardless of party or local, state, or federal affiliation.
After all the smoke clears from the chaos of the election cycle and all the promises are a matter of past reminiscences, legislators gather to get all they can for themselves while cloaking their actions as “representing my constituents” or being for the good of the county, state, or country. It’s all hogwash.
Legislators only act when it benefits them and their purses -- period. Our republic is on the verge of total destruction because of these honorable civil servants -- and no one really seems to care. They won’t until it’s too late.
So rejoice that the circus is back in town and another 40-day session of purse filling has begun.
DAVID SANEK, CANTON
Columnist’s defense of DEI shows he’s part of problem
Charles Blow’s “Harvard president ousted in an effort to target DEI” and Bret Stephens’ “What can be learned from Gay’s resignation” (Opinion, Jan. 7) provide contrasting views on Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation.
Blow uses weasel words to euphemize Gay’s myriad academic infractions of plagiarism as “mounting questions about missing citations and quotation marks in her published work” and leaps to defend diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Stephens, meanwhile, doesn’t mince words, labeling the Gay incident as part of academia’s “intellectual rot.”
Blow correctly identifies the issue as larger than Gay and that the DEI paradigm — some say, scourge — is under attack. Stephens says the rot has universities ignoring “their central purpose to identify, nurture and liberate the best minds” and instead has “considerations of social engineering supplant(ing) those of individual achievement” and schools trying “to engineer social utopias.”
It’s said when one defends a position, they own it. Blow’s defense of DEI makes him a co-owner of the resulting intellectual rot.
GREGORY MARSHALL, MARIETTA
Trump never cared for those hurt in Jan. 6 riots
On the anniversary of a date that will likely (to borrow a phrase) live in infamy, the person who uttered the incendiary statements on Jan. 6, 2021, didn’t have a kind word or speak empathetically for the many injured or killed.
He only cared about the rioters, thugs and felons who violently stormed and entered the nation’s seat of government, threatening mayhem on his behalf. That person is, was, and always has been the shabbiest, crudest and most abusive person to hold a federal office in recent memory.
He proves each day that he deserves nothing less than multiple criminal convictions and appropriate but substantial prison terms.
DAVID KAHN, SCOTTSDALE, AZ
