About Alexandra Pusateri’s News Blog post, “Uber and Lyft to Receive Cease-and-Desist From City” …
Lyft is an illegal car service that needs to stop. They do not have proper insurance. We pay a lot of money to the city to have the right to operate.
Taxi driver James Edgar Tate
I live in a city where Lyft and Uber are legal, and it has been such an improvement! I get picked up in less time, and the drivers are friendlier and don’t blow through red lights in a rush to drop me off and get another rider. The drivers also make good money. I can’t believe Memphis is going to give in to pressure from outdated taxi companies.
Heather
About cover story, “Endpapers: Time to Take Stock of New Books of Local Interest,” edited by Leonard Gill…
Thanks for another great Endpapers literary issue. I wish you did it more often since writing in Memphis seems to figure far down the list of promoted arts, somewhere below music, painting and sculpting, photography, serpent handling, cow tipping, and barbecuing. I’d like to think that reading about books makes people read more, discuss books more often, and buy more books. I’d also like to think that the beautiful woman on the cover is reading a novel of mine.
Corey Mesler
About Alexandra Pusateri’s Flyer Flashback on controversy over a William Faulkner statue in Oxford, Mississippi…
The writer wrote that Faulkner was born in Oxford, Mississippi. He was in fact born in New Albany, Mississippi, also my birth place. There is a museum in new Albany, the Union County Heritage Museum (UCHM ), on the same block where the Faulkners lived at the time of his birth. [In addition to] exhibits, artifacts, and recorded history of the South, UCHM also features a William Faulkner Literary Garden, as well as much information on the writer.
Jane Thayer
About Bruce VanWyngarden’s editor’s column about “tight” states …
I’m a little slow, but I think I get the gist: Red states like briefs, blue states prefer boxers, and those crazy independents are just out there catching every breeze, letting ol’ freedom ring.
Poots
About Toby Sells’ story “Memphis Police Department Hit with ‘Blue Flu’ Protest” …
Toby Sells’ story on the “blue flu” was not quite correct. It was reported that officers were upset about the 24 percent rise in premiums. We understand that the cost of insurance has gone up. What officers are upset about is the fact that all retired city employees will have to pay 100 percent of their health-care premiums. 100 percent. Some of the retirees are not capable health-wise to work anymore, and all they have is their pension. Some do not have Social Security, because unlike the private sector, officers and firefighters do not get Social Security. All they have is their measly pension. With the cost of insurance for a husband and wife being around $1,700, that is their whole pension. Then some say they can get Obamacare. Not so. They make too much to receive Obamacare, or its premium is higher. This is what everyone is so upset about. The city is basically turning a deaf ear to the retirees. They don’t care if they have insurance or not. The retirees did their jobs for 25-plus years and retired expecting to have these benefits, and now they don’t. How are they going to afford their needed medications or be able to go to the doctor? Some have very serious health conditions. Yet all the while our city leaders continue to spend, spend, spend on other items that are not necessary. We are willing to meet the city halfway on this, to come to some sort of a resolution, but not so for the city. Our pension is actually very well funded, more than a lot of other large cities. When the times are hard you have to make cuts, but you should never balance the budget on the backs of city employees. At home when money is short, you might not be able to go out to eat or eat steaks; we eat a lot of hamburger meat in our home, sometimes maybe we get to eat a steak. The city wants to eat steak at every meal, and to be able to do this they make cuts to the city employees. Not right at all.
Brad Newsom