Speak Out 5/13/10

A Speak Out caller recently deemed President Obama's administration "ignorant of ... Economics 101" because the president doesn't tax those who do no work and taxes those who do. In fairness to the untaxed financial wizards at Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and others, they worked very, very hard to get out of paying taxes while at the same time making zillions of dollars and bringing our country to the edge of financial collapse. All of that takes real effort.

IN response to the article about VA hospitals, I couldn't agree more. The doctors have no bedside manner and do not understand what you are trying to tell them. It is a fine example of a government-run health care system.

OUR president graduated with honors from Columbia University with a bachelor of arts in political science. I looked up the economics requirements for a political science major at Columbia. Barack Obama would have had to take Principles of Economics, Intermediate Microeconomics, Intermediate Macroeconomics and Introduction to Econometrics. I think his grasp of economics is probably more than adequate. Your politics may not agree with his, but that doesn't mean he's stupid or lacks common sense.

OVER the past week local news has been filled with pictures of the people of Tennessee and Kentucky and the disaster that has disrupted their lives. Now we are seeing pictures of these same people going about the business of cleaning up. What's missing? Pictures of people waiting for the government to do the cleanup for them. You also are not hearing about a lot of looting. What a contrast to New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. I want to be one of the first to tell the people of Tennessee and Kentucky how much respect I have for their American spirit. These are the kind of people that made this a great nation.

CAN anyone tell me why is it legal to sell products that make it impossible to detect someone abusing marijuana and other illegal substances? This makes it almost impossible for businesses and parents to keep a drug-free environment. Pot is illegal, so anything that can make it possible for a person to pass a urine test within a few hours of inhaling should also be illegal. Why bother to drug screen, wasting time and resources? Almost all employers require testing, so anyone using drugs and going for a physical will be sure to invest in a cleanup kit.

I would like to know what Scott City is going to do about dogs that run loose in your garden and yard. The owners of the dogs have no regard for your private property, especially in the west part of town.

I thought I had read absolutely every excuse Democratic apologists could make for this administration. But when I read the comment where someone was trying to defend President Obama's total lack of effort to contain what has become the worst environmental disaster this country has ever seen, I had to laugh out loud. Maybe that person doesn't want the spill to be the same as President Bush's Katrina, but certainly it is.

I am a longtime resident of Cape Girardeau. My children and grandchildren have attended Cape Girardeau's public schools. I've always been supportive of the Cape Girardeau School District, but now I feel as though I've been duped. Voters in the district passed the bond issue, and the very next day the district announced pay freezes and teacher cutbacks. Retiring teachers are not being replaced, and others are being transferred all over the district. I read this to mean that money is tight. So tell me why the central office wants to add a new administrative position to its ranks. Now I hear the district is cutting core teaching positions to make room for a football coach. When did the district stop focusing on children?

SOMEONE seems to be blaming the Rev. Larry Rice for St. Louis' decision to close Hopeville, the Tupper Street tunnel where for many years homeless people have made a decision to live because it was a little better than sleeping on the street. How is the closure of Hopeville Rice's fault? The Matthew 25 people will need help even more from someone like Rice once Hopeville is closed. I'm sure St. Louis, like Cape Girardeau, would be very happy if all poor, homeless people would leave. Read what Jesus says about the help we are supposed to give and Jesus' reward to us if we do it. Matthew 25 says eternal life to those who do it.

I hope the person who stole my lawn critters has a hard time sleeping. God sees everything you do. I try so hard to make yard look pretty with my rosebushes and everything, and I cannot believe somebody would stoop so low as to steal five of my little critters from me.

THERE should be more police officers patrolling the traffic on Jackson Boulevard. The posted speed limit is 40 mph. One of these days there's going to be to an accident because people are driving way too fast.

PUTTING a casino in downtown Cape Girardeau would be bad for existing businesses. If you look at other communities that have downtown casinos, it has devastated businesses. I think a better location would be Southern Illinois across the river where there's plenty of room for development of a casino and parking and it would still benefit Cape Girardeau in employment opportunities.

ACCORDING to some of the comments I've seen, a lot of people seem to think Medicare is free to seniors. It's not. My wife and I are both on Medicare. By the time we pay for that plus our supplement plus our prescription drugs, we're paying right at $600 a month for insurance. It's not free.

FINALLY Missouri has done something that makes sense. The front page of the paper said the state might not fund the Tour of Missouri bicycle race. That was the biggest waste of money. I work for a school system. We barely have any money to give tests. We had to let a couple of the teachers go. For the state to waste money on a bicycle race is insulting.

OVER the past quarter-century we have witnessed enormous shifts in the composition and volume of income tax payments by the highest income earners. In 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office, the top 1 percent of income earners as reflected by the adjusted gross income of all tax filers paid 17.58 percent of all federal income taxes. Twenty-five years later, in 2005, the top 1 percent paid 39.38 percent of all income taxes, representing more than doubling of the share of tax payments made by this group. How much longer do you think people will continue to work when they make money like that and taxes are doubled? There's no incentive for them to continue to work. You can't constantly soak the rich, because we won't have any rich to provide jobs for the rest of us.