Speak Out

Sharing trash bags

JACKSON SENIORS: How would you like to form a new club? No forms to fill out. No dues to pay. And you might receive your neighbor's nomination for a Kindness of the Week award. Let's call it the Refuse Savings Neighbor Program. It is really a share-the-trash program. You have one bag. Your neighbors have four. Invite them to give you one bag. They save a buck. You get your Kindness of the Week award. Simple and neighborly.

Election is over

I FIND it a joke that the Republican Southeast Missourian stated the candidates for the 157th District were united to help Scott Lipke keep the seat for the party. The paper stated that the 6,136 Republican votes compared to the 798 Democratic votes was not a factor. That is a joke. The candidates did not believe the crossover votes were a factor. We all know unless we were out of the country the last 22 years that Cape Girardeau County is Republican territory. The Southeast Missourian has done its part in labeling the Democratic Party as evil. The Republican Party has its share of evil. The election is over for that seat. If you do not believe it, then I wish I had Enron or WorldCom shares to sell you.

Nazi comparison

INVOKING THE words of Nazi war criminal Hermann Goring apparently to try to stir up anti-war sentiment against attacking Iraq is irrational and insane.

New level of blame

Columnist Kathleen Parker seems to say we were all responsible for Sept. 11 except for Osama bin Laden. Parker has taken blame-America-first to a new level.

Preserving way of life

WE ARE not an excessively litigious society as the conventional wisdom and some Speak Out caller claimed. Trial lawyers who side with the little guy try to keep crooked fat cats, corporations and the like in line. Many take cases on a contingency basis and don't get paid if they lose. Litigation on behalf of the little guy preserves liberty, equality, justice and the American way.

Taxes on everything

WELL, WELL. The poor city wants more taxes. When the city drops the frivolous River Campus idea, maybe we can talk. I think we are being taxed to death already. There are taxes on our phones, our food, our restaurants, liquor, cigarettes, cars, gas, guns, tires, income, Medicare, Social Security, drugs, rentals, real estate on and on and on. Where does it stop? Heck, they even tax you for dying.

The off button

I WOULD rather hear a pre-recorded message from an aspiring pol on an answering machine than to endure a personal message from him or her. At least I can turn off my answering machine.

Contentious course

I LOVED your feature story on college courses. I think it's cool that colleges and universities are offering courses in witchcraft, the sociology of weddings, women in detective fiction and so forth. I'm too old to go back and take all of those courses, but I would like to teach one at SEMO. The title I have in mind would be "From the Stupid to the Sublime: A History of Speak Out Commentary."

Lose-lose situation

GET OFF the back of the Kansas City School District. It developed an incentive program to promote good school attendance, and it worked better than anyone dreamed. Only you guys could think up an excuse to give them grief for it. Believe me, if it had flopped you would have been all over the district's case as well.

Oppressive regulations

A STRENGTH of private and parochial schools may be that they do not have to meet all of the silly state and federal requirements, many of them downright counterproductive to good education. Instead of trying to impose all of these requirements on private and parochial schools, public schools should be using political pressure to try to rid themselves of some of these albatrosses around their collective necks.