Speak Out 2/17/14

Rate increases

There's a reason that people live in Jackson as opposed to Cape. It's a nice place to live, but now the city has raised the electric rate over 2013. They've raised the sewer rate over 2013. They've doubled the fee for sanitation. And now they're wanting a bond issue so they can double our water bill again over what it already went up in 2014. They've gone crazy with their increases in electric, sewer, water and anything else they can raise the rates on.

Correction

I want to make a correction in the Speak Out in the newspaper delivery service. The name was my husband, Jim Monahan. That's not right. It's Jon, my son. He's a carrier for this route. So if you would please change that, I would appreciate it.

TV content

I agree with the caller in last Tuesday's paper about bad TV. Sex, suggestive language and off-color jokes that leave nothing to the imagination are all over prime-time television. It's not only the shows, but also the commercials that are disgusting, running between 5 and 7 p.m., when young children are watching. Commercials that focus on erectile dysfunction, four-hour erections and painful sex after menopause aren't aired just once in a program, but numerous times, making for some pretty uncomfortable questions at the dinner table. This is a disgrace.

Think about it

Seems that in St. Louis, a construction crew was installing a fiber optic cable in this building and they hit a gas line. And the workers smelled gas, and they called 911. And the dial for the gas level, to read the gas levels, was going crazy. And the workers in the building, of course, were smelling gas and they gathered at the back of the building. Well, they credit the firemen for saving their lives by telling them to leave the building. Now, what I find odd, is that the workers needed the firemen to tell them to leave the building. You mean to tell me they couldn't think about that themselves?

Campaign travels

Republican governors running all over to campaign when they should be in their own states taking care of business. Gov. Perry has been all over, as well as Gov. Christie. And you can see what is going on in Christie's state.

Flexible president

Thank you, President Obama, for being so flexible and working with the business community by making more time available for complying with some provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Front-page story

Why is it front-page news when eight people in a school district as large as Jackson get together to complain about Common Core? If I find seven people to protest against people having to follow traffic laws or whatever, will you publish it? Or is it just a tea-party thing?

Paved roads

I just don't understand why the streets in Cape Girardeau (such as Lexington Avenue) can't be paved the same as Mount Auburn is. The concrete streets just do not hold up, and they are constantly being repaired, costing the city a lot of money. Also, the concrete streets are a lot noisier. A lot of us are tired of hitting all of those potholes on the concrete streets. Lexington is paved on a small portion that runs into Kingshighway, and there are no pot holes and it is very smooth. This certainly needs to be addressed. We need asphalt streets!

Health-law debacle

Its official, the Affordable Care Act is going to cost $2 trillion and 2 million jobs. What's worse is the system doesn't work; they even included a bailout for insurance companies in the bill. As Obama said, this is a Trojan horse for single-payer. Americans must not accept this vast overstep of federal authority.