Speak Out 4/8/06

Making a fortune

MANY OF the Founding Fathers gambled their fortunes for the welfare of their country. Today far too many of our elected officials are gambling the welfare of their country for their own personal fortunes.

Corn into ethanol

IN 2003 the whole state of Missouri produced slightly over 302 million bushels of corn. In 2005 five counties in central Illinois produced 249 million bushels of corn. In other words, five of the large counties in central Illinois produced 80 percent of the corn that was produced in the whole state of Missouri. Plans for an ethanol plant in Southeast Missouri are foolishness. Backers of the plant are talking about using 36 million bushels of corn a year. Each of the counties in Central Illinois produced that much corn. They don't feed it, and most of it is exported. McLean County in central Illinois could run an ethanol plant and have over 20 million bushels of corn left over.

Hospital smoking

I CERTAINLY hope that Cape Girardeau's hospitals follow the examples of the hospitals in Illinois that are banning smoking. It's sad to see patients smoking at the front doors of the hospitals where I have to cough all the way in.

Dangerous job

I JUST finished reading the Speak Out poem "The job I do." It touched my heart. It was about police officers and the risks they take. I had a son who worked at the police department several years ago. I admire the police and the job they do. But I would have to say I was glad when my son decided to change jobs. I spent a lot of nervous nights.

No proof

THERE ARE no data proving a correlation between student achievement and class size. None.

On thin ice

THE SOUTHEAST Missourian's editorial inference that schools with "more diverse student populations" do not do as well on achievement tests seems to be skating on thin ice.

If at first ...

WE USE the roundabout. We sure hope the third time will be the charm for our city engineering department. Let's hope the engineers will get the roundabout at Gordonville Road and Silver Spring Road big enough. Before, we had city officials and sidewalk engineers telling the department how to build the roundabout. We hope this time the project will be done properly.

Stop the illegals

DOES U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson side with big farmers or does she side with the working men and woman of her district on the illegal immigrant problem? Emerson should do whatever she can to stop the flow of illegals crossing the border and penalize businesses that employ them. Constituents in her district are waiting to see who she serves.

Holding down wages

THE UNENDING flow of illegals into this country keeps wages down and hurts low- and middle-income wage earners.

Can't be changed

IF THE governor of Texas and all of those before him -- including at one time George W. Bush -- can't stop the problem of illegals getting across the border, what makes anyone think Missouri or any other state is going to fix the problem? Illegals cross the border by the hundreds every day, Texans have been paying their way for years. Stop complaining, because change in the system is a long way off.