Speak Out 8/2/06

Supply and demand

FARMERS DO not set the prices of the crops they produce. Prices are decided by the market. The same is true for oil companies. It is all about supply and demand.

School hiring

THE EDITORIAL on Jackson School District's abuse of the law allowing hiring of retired teachers/principals in hardship cases was on target. Once again, corruption at the top is being witnessed by our children. Superintendent Ron Anderson claims the district made a good faith effort, but in the next breath admits that the district did not even follow its own normal practices for advertising the principal vacancy. Why change procedures just this one time?

Immigration hearing

WAS THE meeting about immigration at the Show Me Center for the public or just for businesses wanting to continue the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of today? If this was open to the public, I missed the notices. I would have been happy to give state Rep. Nathan Cooper my thoughts on the subject. Instead he hears from wealthy Sikeston farmers who want to keep exploiting illegal aliens. They will get their cheap labor, and taxpayers will be left to pay the bill.

Not cheap labor

FIVE MILLION of our older Americans did not sign up for the Medicare Part D drug plan. They are old and confused. We are not going to grant them an extension. However, 12 million illegal aliens are in our country, and we are going to allow them to stay, protest, procreate, receive support money, attend public schools, avoid paying taxes, have our teachers take 300 hours of English-as-a-second-language training at our expense and send their illegal wages out of the U.S. never to return to benefit our economy. Does that sound like "cheap labor"? Maybe for the businesses that hire them for low-cash wages, but not for the rest of us U.S. taxpayers. We must really dislike our old people. Or we must really love paying taxes to support illegal immigrants.

Stuck in the dust

COMPLAINTS ABOUT dust on gravel roads? What's next? Stopping farmers from creating dust when they disc the fields or from cutting corn? Believe me, from having a farm next to a housing development, we've received multiple complaints over the years. Everything from "Your pigs stink" and "Your crop dusting killed our garden" to "Your tractors are slowing down the traffic." We were here first, so we're grandfathered in. No one can stop our right to farm. I'll fight that battle to the bitter end. All the complainers can go back to town where everything smells good and is dust-free and you can drive like a maniac.

Right on stem cells

IF SOME of you would bother to do a little research, you would find that it is a matter of public record that George Bush is the only U.S. president who has ever provided any funding for stem-cell research. He vetoed the embryonic stem-cell bill because there is no evidence that embryonic stem cells are more valuable to this kind of research than stem cells collected by other means. In this age of rapidly advancing scientific breakthroughs, he felt it prudent to take enough time to make sure we are not creating a climate that could result in a black market for fetuses. If you would put aside your partisan rhetoric and blinding hatred for the president long enough to think for once, you would see that this is a reasonable position. I find plenty of issues to disagree with President Bush on, immigration and out-of-control spending being the main ones, but this isn't one of them.

Banner leadership

THIS IS in response to the person who said business owners were thumbing their noses at the sign ordinance. The building that the mayor's business occupies has a banner stretched across the wall that has been there for as long as I can remember. Perhaps, the mayor would like to lead the rest of us criminals in having this banner removed, setting an example for the law-abiding citizens of this community.

Nail on the head

I STARTED reading June Seabaugh's column with trepidation. I feared this was going to be another right-wing diatribe blaming all societal woes on abortion and homosexuality. By the end of her column, she hit the nail on the head. There are far more sins than those that involve sex. Sadly, most Christians focus solely on the sexual practices of others and totally ignore the real presence of sin in their own lives. And her last statement says it all: We need forgiveness, and we need to change or lifestyles. Well said, June.

Good pay, less turnover

HIGHER SALARIES cut the turnover rate for public employees? No kidding. You know, I'll bet that's true for the private sector as well.

Tobacco dollars

TARA KENNARD of the American Cancer Society stated that the ultimate goal of the proposed cigarette tax hike "is to eliminate tobacco and tobacco use." Those who honestly believe that are not thinking for themselves. If you believe our governments want to bring in millions of dollars in tobacco tax money while hoping to eventually lose those millions from the lack of tobacco sales, and then having to scramble to find other ways to tax us to make up for those losses, then I have a bridge to sell you.

Ugly, but legal

DRIVING INTO Cape Girardeau from out of town, I had to laugh as I watched a man placing political signs all over a corner on Mount Auburn Road. Thinking about Cape's new ban on garage sale signs, I paid more attention to the political signs and laughed even more at how trashy they make so many areas look. The funniest thing is, they will be there for months, right?

Family medicine

I WOULD like to know if a family physician still practices pro-active, whole-body preventative medicine. When a family doctor has test results right in front of him and asks "Who is following these results?" I wonder what he is doing practicing medicine. Have we gotten to a total-body part-by-body part physician care system? I expect to only have to go to a specialist after my family doctor detects an issue that he is unable to follow up on.

Decorative eyesores

IF YARD-SALE signs are against the law, then leaving up Christmas decorations all yearlong should be as well. I believe there are more important things to deal with than a sign.