Cesspool of stupid?

Asheville, we are used to doing great things, let's keep that up please.

When my nephew visits I would like to take the bus on Saturday to the nature center — oh, we are going to cut both of those. OK, we'll just walk over to the Malvern Hills Park pool. Oh, cut too. Fine we'll just go watch a T-ball game run by Asheville Parks and Recreation — oh, wait, that was cut too.

Fine, fine, let’s just go to that park where T-ball was going to happen and have our own darn game. No one maintains it so the grass is overgrown. Great visit, eh? These things add to the quality of life in Western North Carolina. Things like voter ID laws and two more county commissioner positions do not add to my quality of life as much as these other services do. I personally would rather have three more elementary school teachers than more county commissioners.

If people were running on the platform of making [the act of exposing] boobs in public a felony, ensuring that I can get however large a soda I want, repealing smoking bans and cutting the parks department, I dare say they would have a hard time winning elections. We need to think of elections as a long-term investment of what we really want.

When elections roll around, don't get hung up on buzz words like gay marriage, fiscal responsibility, WMD — look at what they do. Did they help make this community better or did they legislate crap (soda, repealing tobacco laws that prevent people from dying, disenfranchising voter ID laws, boobs) that they didn't tell you they would.

— Mark Strazzer
Asheville