Your views: Readers weigh in

Confederate flag represents hatred The recent letter, 'Confederate flag was a rallying point,' supporting the Confederate flag, raised my ire.

[Mary]

Why does everyone try to tell the southerners what we mean by waving the our flag. Why are we not allowed to be proud of where we come from. We are NOT yankees and are proud of that fact. It has nothing to do with race, color or hatred. Because I am proud of my heritage does NOT make me a bigot and I am offended by these ignorant people who say that.

[Hostile]

Why do people divide America as if it's two countries?

Whether you in the North east or the South west you are a UNITED STATES AMERICAN.

The sooner you all get that the better things will be.

[Ben Witty]

The letter writer is obviously a pc loon, a liberal extremist, and an Obama supporter.

[Michele]

I think these 'controversial' issues are a ploy to distract us from the problems we can not handle (solve). I think as a country we have bigger problems than North vs. South.(I thought that was addressed that issue over a hundred years ago. But I am just a dumb female Negro. Go figure.)

I thought one of the most important problems we are facing is the current trends of economic distribution.
The following states that the rich is getting richer
Income distribution in the United States has remained relatively constant since World War II, but by the 1990s the wealthiest groups had gained a larger share of the nation's wealth.
However, by 1998, the poor and middle groups had lost some ground to the wealthy.
The trend toward the greater concentration of wealth by the rich has accelerated throughout the 1990s. While the relative income of the poorest families in the United States declined by 11.6 percent since 1980, the income of the richest group increased by 17.7 percent.

Read more: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/...

The historical evidence is clear: welfare reduces poverty, and the lack of it increases it. In the 1920s, fully half of all Americans could not make ends meet. Roosevelt's New Deal programs had reduced poverty to about 20 percent in the 50s. Johnson's Great Society reduced this to 11.1 percent by 1973. Since the rise of the corporate special interest system in 1975, individual welfare benefits have been shrinking, and poverty has been steadily rising, to over 15 percent today.

To put this in perspective, in 1991, those making more than $200,000 a year approximately constituted the top 1 percent. This group reported $403 billion in Gross Adjusted Income, and paid $100 billion of those taxes -- an effective rate of 25 percent. Suppose that were raised to 70 percent, which would have brought in $282 billion in taxes. That’s an extra $182 billion, which could have given a pay raise of over $5,000 to each of the nation’s 35.7 million people in poverty. Essentially, this would have eliminated poverty in America.(Remember, most of the nation's poor are already working; the extra $5,000 would easily boost them out of the danger zone.)(17) And we could accomplish this without changing the taxes of 99 percent of Americans.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfarepovert...