Nutter, it is time to end Council cars, the DROP program and the other burdens that are on taxpayer's backs. In your speech on the state of the city on Feb. 26, you said you wanted to help develop minority businesses. This is good, but don't forget the nonminority businesses that you suck the taxes out of. Mike, run the city like a business not your private little club.
Chris Deluca
Philadelphia
Honoring Rosa Parks
The trials and tribulations Rosa Parks experienced in her lifetime is one entity that sparked the civil-rights movement. Who could've ever imagine that being asked and required to give up one's seat in the front of a public bus would spark social change. But it did.
The new Rosa Parks statue in our nation's Capitol is a welcome tribute. Mrs. Parks is just one year older than my grandmother. Now, when I visit Washington, D.C., I look forward to seeing this newly commissioned addition.
Wayne E. Williams
Camden
Reasonable doubt?
Re: "Trial by social media ought to fail," (Christine Flowers column, Feb. 27).
Christine Flowers, I am appalled that Lt. Josey was acquitted of the crime of simple assault because if it was a woman of another race, he would not have been acquitted of the crime. OK, you represent people of different races during their immigration hearings; that is all well and good but to defend a police officer for committing a crime against a woman is an obstruction of justice in any language.
If a white woman was being beaten by a police officer and it was caught on video camera, do you think that the officer would be exonerated by the judge? (I think not.) How did the officer know that it was the woman, Aida Guzman, who had hit him with a bottle? Why didn't he just arrest her instead of hitting her as if she were a man? If a white person is assaulted, the community comes out in droves to protest the assault. Why should another race be any different?
Shame on you, Christine Flowers, for being insensitive to the needs of others and condoning the acquittal of a police officer who is supposed to protect individuals, not assault them in public. Some police officers give others a bad name just by the way they react to a certain situation. He should never get his job back, if for no other reason than not making a wise decision in his actions.
I may not have been there during the incident but neither were you, so don't make a judgment without reasonable doubt.
Lora Neal
Philadelphia
Gun ban, then socialism
So, Sen. Bob Casey Jr. has decided to pursue an anti-gun agenda (Daily Views, Feb. 22). Like his good friend President Obama, the senator just doesn't get it. The president, like the rest of the Democrat Party, claim to be admirers of President Lincoln and his legacy. Yet he fails to understand that anti-gun laws were created only after Lincoln had freed the slaves.
Southern politicians petitioned Washington to pass a law that would prevent all newly freed slaves from being permitted to own a firearm. These Southern carpetbaggers understood that you can't beat, lynch or burn a cross on the lawn of a black man with a gun. President Lincoln may have freed them, but it was the Second Amendment that gave them the ability to defend that freedom.
President Obama's goal is to strip away this unfair, unjust concept of freedom, and replace it with the great equalizer, socialism. Gun bans are the first step to achieve this. You may not be free, but you will be equal - equally poor, that is. Except of course, for the wealthy elite that will ultimately, under the Democrat plan, dwell only in Washington. And make no mistake, this Washington elite will be allowed to have guns, armed guards, and drones, to protect them, from you, the American citizen.
Stuart Caesar
Philadelphia
