Hand-fed

Deadly Christmastime tornadoes in Texas and elsewhere in the Southeast and equally deadly flooding in Oklahoma, Texas and the Southeast took Sen. Jim Inhofe to the air to inspect the damage here. He exclaimed that he did not remember a time when perhaps our entire state deserved federal disaster relief!

Since no part of our country is in the typical tornado and flood season, one would think that some curiosity about climate change might have occurred to him. If so, he let that sleeping dog lie.

Likely he has also not read the widely publicized internal (and thus astonishing) Exxon Mobil scientific study made in the 1970s, which concluded that fossil fuels contributed significantly to global warming. Just think, about 40 years ago, a major polluter thought the world might be approaching the point of no return. Not surprising, Exxon Mobil did nothing to change its output of fossil fuels.

Even if the senator didn’t, one would think that somebody on his staff would have noticed a recent, well-publicized exposition of Exxon. In his public stance, Inhofe is clearly on their side. Could it be the principle of “never bite the hand that feeds you” is operative?

— Frank Silovsky Oklahoma City

They're bullies

We don’t need better educated police officers (Opinion, Letters, “Better educated,” Jay Hanas, Jan. 6, Oklahoma Gazette). We need better police management and accountability.

Like any other organization, the performance of employees is a reflection on management, or lack thereof. You can’t manage everything from a comfy office where you protect marginal employees with friendly performance reviews. There will always be police bullies. I knew many in the military; young guys who boasted about busting heads.

As a teenager in the ’60s, I was arrested by a young policeman who, after positioning me and my friends spread-eagle with hands on the car’s rooftop, pulled his revolver and placed in on the car top, and said, “Why don’t one of you #!!#** go for it.” His partner was standing by to shoot us if we were that stupid. Later, in the ’80s, one of my reserve military officers was also a SWAT officer and liked to joke about how they broke down the door at a wrong address and trashed the house.

A college degree won’t fix this problem; only the watchful eye of a good commander or manager. Police bullies should be counseled, retrained, observed, disciplined and terminated when necessary. The good-ole-boy captain/manager might need retraining, but it doesn’t require a college degree. And for the rest of us, resisting arrest and disrespect toward law enforcement is a no-brainer.

I guess officers could use more firearms training; it shouldn’t take a dozen rounds to down a man. Just more evidence of a culture that resists the biblical common sense our founders had in mind: “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.”

— Michael Moberly Mustang

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