Speak Out 6/9/06

Must be busy

OUR COUNTY commission has apparently been too busy with the cab company purchase and a search for additional parking sites for its potential occupancy of the federal building to deal with specifics of the new tax increase.

Thanks for purse

I WANT to thank the person who found my purse and turned it in when I left it in a shopping cart at Wal-Mart. God bless you.

School funding

IT'S A shame that the school system is wasting $2 million on the old Schultz School building. A few years ago we were told the building was unsafe. That was just another lie to get the people in the Cape Girardeau School District to pass a tax increase so there would be lots of money to give the administrators big raises.

Yard-sign policing

MY NEIGHBOR and I had a garage sale at my home. We had two signs on my yard. The police showed up and removed one of our signs. An officer pulled up the sign and handed it to us. He made my neighbor pull up all the signs from neighbors' yards, even though she had permission to put them there. There were a lot of people here, and they were upset this was done, I did not know about the new ordinance. I called Mayor Jay Knudtson, who was kind and spent some time on the phone conversing with me about this situation. He promised he would see if the ordinance can't be altered.

No higher taxes

Revolution? We need to do something, because our officials are spending our money like it's nothing. We need to do something about that. They want to raise our taxes. I think that is wrong. We need to do something about it. We need to stop them.

No to sales tax

I THINK the proposed increase in the county sales tax is wrong and we need to vote no, because the county's just going to waste the money.

Office hours

I AM so tired of going to the Cape Girardeau County Highway Department and finding it closed. Does the secretary set her own hours? Why can't this office keep the same hours as the rest of the county offices?

Different story

RECENTLY I was on the plane from Dallas to Portland, Ore., and visited with an Iraq War vet. What he said matches nothing that the news media are saying. He said many of the Iraqis find out about roadside bombs and risk their own lives to help U.S. soldiers.

Great painter

ON THE front of the newspaper you had a picture of a college student named Will Brown putting a sign in a front yard after they had painted the house. Will Brown is an excellent person. He was an excellent Boy Scout, and I would trust him to paint my house any day.

Stem-cell research

THIS IS in response to the op-ed column on the stem-cell research initiative by Miki Gudermuth. I believe she is the one who is misinformed. If cures are to be found, they should use stem-cord and umbilical-cord cells or adult stem cells, not embryos.

No answers

DOES ANYBODY else get as disgusted as I do when I make a telephone call and cannot speak to a human being? You get the runaround, and you don't get answers to your questions. How are we supposed to find out what we want to know?

Money mystery

FOR $375,000, Cape Girardeau County can pave five miles of road at $75,000 a mile. Why is it the county can only pave 10 to 12 miles with $1.5 million instead of 20 miles at the same rate? What happens with the extra money?

Which is it?

THE BUSH-Cheney regime ridiculed the United Nations, declaring that if the Security Council refused to pass a war resolution against Iraq, the U.S. would attack anyway. The administration claimed the right to disregard to the will of the U.N. Now Iran says it too has a sovereign right to ignore the U.N. and will continue to develop its nuclear capability. Secretary of State Rice said, with a straight face, that the Security Council is the most important institution of the peace and stability and cannot have its will simply ignored by a member state. Duh.

No signs, no sale

I'D LIKE to thank Cape Girardeau for killing the garage-sale business. We've had six garage sales over the years. We're having one this morning, and it's the worst garage sale we've ever had. People cannot find you if you cannot put up signs.

Spending money

I WAS reading about where we're going to give Iran a bunch of money if it stops producing nuclear weapons. Look like we could have worked out something with Iraq instead of losing all our boys and going deeper in debt. The president made bad judgment going into Iraq.

Phenomenal concert

I ATTENDED a concert at La Croix United Methodist Church several weeks ago. The Southern Brothers were good. They're local talent. However, the Jeff Treece Band was phenomenal. We need to hear more of them. We hope they come back.

History lesson

DR. ROBERT Hamblin should spend less time studying literature and more time studying history. What he wrote suggests that he has little understanding of how many Chinese men, women and children were brutally tortured and murdered by the Japanese during the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Close scrutiny

I HAVEN'T noticed illegal aliens getting away with anything. If they commit a crime in our country, they're brought to justice. Not too many people are getting away with much in America. Everyone's scrutinized so closely that there's not much getting away with anything anymore.