Re: Why the election stings

Your recent article “Election 2010: Missed chances, dim hopes” (Nov. 10) referred to the sting of the GOP’s wins during the congressional elections and how bleak our futures look. It does sting; however, I wish people would get the real reason why it stings. Everyone wants to speak about the winners (Republicans) and losers (Democrats) and how this party is now taking over. Newsflash: We are all losers. No one is truly looking at the real crux of this issue. It’s not about the party lines, and until we all get that through our heads, we will continue to be losers.

Since the beginning of time, we’ve been separated by race, political parties, financial status, etc. How come no one is really ready to face the actual problem? The root of the problem lies in selfishness. Not political party, not the color of one’s skin and not even where a person lives. The root of the problem is the selfishness of each and every person who lives on this planet. As long as I get mine, who cares about you?

Our lives are governed not by President Obama or the GOP but by the sheer selfishness of man. We are too busy trying to gather and hoard everything for ourselves that we don’t think to help anyone else. It’s sickening that even though we have the right to vote and we exercise that right, none of it even seems to matter. What we should be exercising is the right to help one another. Stop creating a difference between people because of their financial status. Address the real problems instead of glossing over them and trying to find someone to blame.

We call ourselves the United States of America, but the only thing I can see that unites us is our losing record.

T.H. Foust
Raleigh

Re: Wake County’s abortion coverage

The newly elected anti-choicers in the Wake County Board of Commissioners are off to a bad start already. The board has scheduled, for its first meeting [editor’s note: Dec. 6], a vote on the already resolved issue of insurance coverage for “elective” abortions in county employee benefits packages [see “Wake Commission mulls abortion coverage for county employees,” Feb. 10, and “Wake County no longer covering elective abortions for its employees,” Feb. 11].

With so many families still reeling from the current recession, now is the time to be reining in the deficit and structuring the budget to help enable county agencies to retain and create jobs, not for making a political statement by stripping coverage of an essential, safe, legal, medical procedure from female county employees.

Though abortion itself is controversial, abortion coverage is notapproximately 80 percent of insurance policies cover this necessary procedure because many unforeseen things can happen during pregnancy and it is important for every woman to have access to the care she may need; county employees are no different.

The Board of Commissioners needs to quit playing politics with women’s health and get back to work on the real issues that Wake County is facing right now.

Lossie Rooney
Raleigh

Re: Crowther’s column

While I must sadly agree with most of the points Hal Crowther made in his essay “Gone missing: The country’s conscience, brain and heart” (Nov. 17), I want to point out a much more simple explanation for the midterm election results.

The middle class in this country has been spoiled for at least the last 30 years by a nearly unmitigated spending spree on credit. Now the bill is coming due.

When a spoiled child is disciplined, he doesn’t react by building something. He tears it apart. What happened on Nov. 2 was a national temper tantrum.

Robert J. Harris
Raleigh

For more comments on Crowther’s column, click the story link above.