Dec. 8, 2011: our readers write

Reading behind the words
I read Jay Ambrose’s column in the The News-Enterprise and I found it to be very misleading. While you can take almost any statistic and use it to prove your position, there are other factors at play here that negate any tax benefit that might have made life better for the middle class.
His column should have stated: We are at the dawn of a global economy. In order to compete in this global economy we must drive down costs to stay competitive. We can do that in a number of ways. We can take jobs that once provided a middle class status to working America and send those jobs overseas where we are not burdened with minimum pay and any benefits. We can work to get rid of labor laws, which gave workers some clout as to working conditions and benefits. Corporations can cut back on vacations, get rid of pensions. We can toughen up workers’ compensation laws, so an injured worker does not take away from profit margins when they are hurt on the job. We can cut back on safety nets by convincing the public that the system is full of lazy drug users and elderly who should be patriotic enough to just fade into demise.
We can point out the dire conditions of the poor in other countries and make those who complain here feel guilty.
Mr. Ambrose has his head in the clouds. As a person who at one time was the middle class, it is not Democrats who destroyed the lifestyle we used to enjoy but Republicans who keep trying to convince us just how lucky we could be again under their domain.
Carol Pullen
Elizabethtown

Complimenting coverage
Thank you so very much for your sensitive coverage of the World AIDS Day activities at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College. The theme this year is, “Getting to Zero,” and your coverage of our vigil as well as our HIV swab testing service helped tremendously to get the word out that we really can beat this disease.
Ellen Mink
Hodgenville
ECTC professor

McConnell is no statesman
 Steven L. Wright’s Dec. 6 letter to the editor expressed perfectly my own opinion of Kentucky’s senior senator. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s record plainly shows that he is not a true leader, but merely an intrenched advocate for his corporate masters. He never met a corporation he didn’t like.
Moreover, McConnell’s often repeated goal (and his never-ending effort) to limit President Barack Obama to one term shows a decided lack of statesmanship.
The modern U.S. has so little margin for error that it should be the hope of every American for their president to succeed — we cannot stand many more failures. Then again, McConnell seems to have little interest in perpetuating American representative democracy. He and his party would prefer an American plutocracy in which the rich get richer and the rest get whatever’s left.
No, history will not remember McConnell as a modern Henry Clay.
Dan Lee
Cecilia