Recently, you published stories about the need to provide computer tablets for some of our local students -- and the costs involved -- in order to keep them competitive. Other news stories predict dire consequences to the Beaufort County economy if we don't get our piece of the $1 trillion dollar for F-35 fighters.

Here we see the ongoing conflict of providing butter in the form of tablets or guns in the form of F-35s. In this economic reality of shrinking funds and violent aversion to tax increases, which of these items should be a priority for our policymakers?

The March AARP Bulletin contains this suggestion: "Here is a thought. The Pentagon is buying 2,343 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, sleek, $133 million (each) supersonic jets for battling a weapon that hasn't been imagined by an enemy that remains unknown. If we bought just seven fewer F-35s we could buy a handheld tablet for every first-grader in America."

Could Beaufort sacrifice a squadron for the education of all American children? Which would be a more positive investment in our future?

Kathy Folsom

Beaufort