Early childhood education is essential

To the editor:

Research shows that the earlier you invest in early childhood education the better those children do in life.

The courts have ruled that our state’s current policy arbitrarily capping enrollment is unconstitutional.

I agree with Rep. Ray Rapp when he said, “Pre-school education is an investment in our future. Studies have shown that children who attend early childhood programs such as Smart Start and NC Pre-K are more likely to succeed in school and in life. Studies show that these at-risk children are more likely to obtain and keep a job once they graduate and they are less likely to be dependent upon the government for assistance later in life or, worse yet, end up in prison.  We need to support proven, real-world programs such as Smart Start, NC Pre-K if we are to prepare our children for global competition. We are ‘eating our seed corn’ when we continue to cut early childhood, K-12, community college and university programs in North Carolina. Pre-school is not a ‘baby-sitting service’ as some candidates contend, and the North Carolina Supreme Court and Judge Howard Manning have agreed that at-risk children should be served by the state. We cannot shirk this responsibility and sacrifice our children’s future.”

There is a strong debate going on about this during this election season, but the impact of early childhood education for low-income children is hard to dispute.  It has been proven that state-funded intervention early in life helps head off the costs to society later on.  Even John Locke said that tax dollars should be focused on poor children, and Pre-K should be a targeted program aimed at saving money in the long run.  This will be a big issue for the next session of our state legislature; so we need to be thoughtful about who we send to Raleigh to represent us and our children, and how they think about Pre-K education.

Juanita Dixon

Canton

Fight addiction

To the editor:

As a follow up to the great work that Jean Parris has done with “Drugs in Our Midst,” a support group for loved ones of addicts is being offered at The Community Kitchen this Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 7 p.m.  Addicts hurt many more people than themselves, in fact it’s worse because the people that love them have no choice, no control, limited say so.

Loving a person with an addiction is often frustrating, infuriating, debilitating and so very sad.  You are not alone.  The support group is not a therapy group but it is therapeutic to be able to have a safe place to talk about what’s going on in your life without being judged.  A support group is strictly confidential.  To borrow a slogan, what is said there, stays there.

We can no longer take a passive attitude just waiting for things to get better.  If someone knows someone who could use this support, please let them about it and encourage them to go.  The first meeting will be mostly informational, seeing who is interested, setting boundaries as well as regular times and dates.  Someone can come and if they don’t like it, they don’t have to come back.  Let us help everyone in this terrible situation before another life is lost. Prayers and hope.

Rev. Beverly Brock, director

The Community Kitchen

Economic downfall

To the editor:

We must look at the pitiful state of our economy, how it got there, why it is so slow to recover and what it is doing to our future.

Because of education cuts, both local and federal, our girls and boys are being deprived of a good education and many children are going hungry. These problems were caused by Bush’s Great Recession and continue due to the Republican’s non-action when Obama and the Democrats try to fix them.

Legislation (or no legislation) from the Republicans protects the interest of their “big man” backers, the ones who got them elected in the first place.  The big man is not just big; he has become “huge” under the rules (or no rules) adopted during the Bush years.

This elevation to huge has come at the expense of the little man, making him sometimes penniless.

In the Iraq wars, the big man reaped countless billions from “no-bid” contracts for war material and services while the little man, America’s soldier died.

These were Bush’s big man wars that with the graft and natural cost of war would all but break any country.

In this, and tax relief and other “relief,” gained by their lobbyists, lie the reasons we are broke. The big man has America’s money, either in his pocket, in overseas bank account, or has it invested in a foreign country, where almost slave labor is used taking our little man jobs with it.

While the big man elderly are still living high on the hog, the little man elderly are having to scrape to get by. The 2008 crash of the stock market wiped out many of their savings accounts and pension plans, leaving many seniors with little money and sometimes none to supplement their Social Security.

Now the big man is pushing his Republican puppets to cut even this.

Each time Obama and the Democrats come up with a way to improve even a desperate part of the economy, the big man Republican rely on rules spelled out in our constitution to shoot it down, unless of course it can be arranged that the big man gets more out of it than the little man.

Yet, the Republicans while using their power to force government layoffs pushing the little man farther down to balance the budget, believe the answer to everything is tax breaks to small business.

What a joke. Tax relief will help only the rich.  The only way small business can survive is for the little man” to have money in his pocket.

Still, there has been to the Republican’s dismay (they have done everything they know to prevent progress knowing that is the only way to deny Obama a second term) noticeable progress in the auto industry and some progress elsewhere, as well as great strides on Wall Street.

This Wall Street thing — could it be the big man is making it do well just to keep the wealth more centralized making it easier for them to get?  Is their goal to make history repeat itself to return us to the middle ages, the times of the prince and pauper, the king and serf, or will it be something much wors?

The election in the fall is not just a Republican, and  Democratic race as the ballot implies.

It is a “big man, little man” race — that for the sake of our girls and boys the little man must win.

Tommy Boyd

Waynesville