“When 30 of our young men serving our country are killed, it should be reported on the front page in bold letters. Instead, your editor buries it in Section B, after the sports. This makes one question your priorities.”
— Waynesboro, Pa.
“Debt ceiling debates: Did you ever hear even a whisper from the House, Senate or White House that they should contribute and sacrifice some of their expensive benefits and pay? No, and you won’t, either. It was an eye-opener to learn how much money is actually taken in by our government each month. If each of them voluntarily took a 10 percent pay cut and a 25 percent cut to their personal expense accounts, they would convince me that they are serious about the budget.”
— Hagerstown
“Those 125 construction jobs for that solar plant are only temporary, and the $20 million that that company gets back, the state ... gets none of it, plus the state does not get any type of a benefit, other than the ground rental. So it was a sweetheart deal, and there should have been something that the state and taxpayer could have gotten out of this project besides just renting the land out, which was cheaper than what the farmer was getting.”
— Hagerstown
“I appreciate the searching for the clues in Funkstown; however, in the past week I’ve had six people on my property, walking around my house, looking in my windows, walking around my property, searching every inch of my property, to look for these clues. So I’m going to have to put up ‘No Trespassing signs.’ They should walk down the street and look. They should not be able to enter people’s yards and look for these clues.”
— Funkstown
“Hi, Pleasant Valley caller. You’re new to the area, so let me explain something to you. Pleasant Valley — there’s a lot to be said in that name. You’re not going to find a garden club, you’re not going to find an exercise class. You’re not going to find a reading club, because it’s in the remote suburbs. Get it? If you want all the niceties of city life, move back to your city. Otherwise, drive the 30 minutes or so that you’re going to need to drive to enjoy those things.”
— Boonsboro
“George W. Bush’s tax cuts cost this country $1.8 trillion in revenue. The two wars he started added an additional $1.5 trillion to the deficit, and other programs he instituted cost another $1.8 trillion. So in total, his policies cost our government $5 trillion, which is what has mainly caused our deficit. Conversely, Obama’s programs have only cost $1.4 trillion.”
— Hagerstown
“The senators and the Congress need to take a cut in their salary, and do away with the expense account they get, and the secretaries in the White House that have secretaries, need to get rid of them. That’s the trouble with the economy and the money. It’s all in the White House ... please put this in the paper.”
— Hagerstown
“In Leonard Pitts’ article about the police and cameras, my one comment would be, in 99 percent of the cases, the people that the police are trying to arrest are resisting arrest. Now, if you get hurt resisting arrest, whose fault is it, yours or the police?”
— Brightwood Acres East
“Where are the jobs? To the caller questioning John Boehner about where the jobs are since he became leader of the House: Maybe you forgot, President Obama received a trillion dollars of stimulus money, and said that unemployment would not go above 8 percent, and when he took office he was under 8 percent, and today is over 9 percent. Maybe we ought to ask the president where the jobs are. He is the top man of the country. And remember, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were in charge of the Senate and the House, and he was president, and he couldn’t create nothing but lost jobs.”
— Boonsboro
“I was calling about the article about people losing interest in the Ag Expo. I think part of the problem is that the newspapers are not ... getting involved with ... pictures ... about the pretty animal contests, or even about the 4-H. I’d like to see more of the paper exposing ... the Ag Expo to the people. So hopefully next year there would be more ... that they would, the newspaper would give more attention to the 4-H’ers and positive youth activities.”
— Hagerstown
“I just want to say that there will never be racial harmony in this country as long as you have people like Leonard Pitts spewing their venom.”
— Clear Spring
“Hey, nice Taj Mahal out there off of 70 and Route 65 in Hagerstown. Or wait, that’s not the Taj Mahal, that’s state police barracks. You think that’s been overbuilt or not?”
— Hagerstown
“When President Bush took office, the budget was balanced, plenty of jobs. In eight years, we owed $8 trillion and no jobs — and then another war. In a bad economy, the government has had to spend money to get jobs back, or it will stay bad. You grow the economy, get the tax base back, then make the cuts.”
— Smithsburg
