Speak Out 1/6/14

Christmas celebration

I agree somewhat with the person that we emphasize too much on Jesus on Christmas but not enough on the rest of the year. I do agree we should emphasize more of the year also. Yet at Christmas we are celebrating the remembrance of His birth. Don't we celebrate by big parties and etc. on our other birthdays and even on our former presidents and other people? So, really, I think we should emphasize more at Christmas and on our Savior's birthday. I love celebrating our Lord's birthday and His death and resurrection on Easter. If we didn't emphasize so much more, a lot of the children wouldn't ever even know the meaning of Christmas and Easter because they never hear it at home.

Obamacare, insurance

Insurance companies are the only winners in Obamacare. If you pay $500 a month and a $5,000 deductible, you are out $1,100 before they pay anything, then they only pay 80 percent. If you can afford the premium, you can't afford the deductible. Insurance lobbyists probably wrote the bill.

Broadway traffic

City administration is out to kill business for downtown. The so-called improvement of Broadway has not helped to make a bigger flow of traffic downtown, but has made it less. I never use Broadway to go downtown. I only use Independence or Williams streets. Now they are going to waste money again and hinder the traffic flow on Williams Street. They need to make improvements to the drainage ditches and things like that as well as make repairs to the streets.

Schoolteachers

That was an interesting article on the teaching profession you recently published. I particularly admire public school teachers because they deal with the whole spectrum of students, accountability standards erroneously placing full responsibility for student achievement on the teacher, often out-of-control parents who consistently blame schools for the disciplinary shortcomings of their children, and a not-insignificant number of interest groups whose goal is not to support but to destroy public education.

Street changes

Oh please. Do not mess up William Street the way Broadway got messed up. Can hardly drive safely down Broadway anymore. Please leave the streets alone and in peace. Let citizens decide, not just city council planners.

Medicaid expansion

What do you think? Though I admire and support his efforts, I can't make up my mind as to whether Gov. Nixon's renewed push for Medicaid expansion in Missouri could best be defined as banging his head against a (Republican) wall or an exercise in futility.

Guest columns

Was it really necessary to ruin my New Year's Eve by publishing not one but two reprints (Wall Street Journal and Americans for Prosperity) advocating policies that in my view will widen the already-shameful income gap between the rich and the rest by reducing middle- and working-class folks to low-wage slaves?

The irony

A group of global-warming scientists, global-warming journalists and global-warming activists chartered a Russian ship to take them to Antarctica during the summer in the Southern Hemisphere. They wanted to show the world how global warming is melting all of the ice near the South Pole. Now their ship is stranded in over 10 feet of ice and Chinese ice breakers cannot get to them. For some unexplained reason, the ice is thickening during the southern summer. That is global warming at its best.

Children, Scripture

This is directed to those people who complained or frowned at parents of young children on Christmas eve or Christmas Day services. If their child was crying or fidgety, if they didn't have the patience for them and gave them bad looks, must I remind you that in Mark 10:14 it says, "Let the little children come to me. Don't stop them, because the Kingdom of God belongs to people who are like these little children." Must I remind you Jesus meant all the little children, not just the quiet good ones, but all of them, the wiggly, the whiny, the sick, the misbehaving ones? At least they're taking them to church.