Speak Out 9/2/06

Not a good idea

I SEE people on television driving through flooded streets. They drive fast instead of slowing down and easing through the water. That shows a total lack of any brain function at all.

Taking our rights

GOVERNMENT DOES not care about your life. All it cares about is making money off of you. You have to wear seat belts in your car. You have to have booster seats for your kids. Only so many people can't ride in the car with a 16-year-old driver. Government says it's to save lives, but people get killed with seat belts and air bags in cars. Government is taking our rights away from us little by little every day.

Thanks for help

THANK YOU to all customers, ambulance personnel and orchard employees who helped with my parents when they had their accident. Your kindness and quick response will be remembered always by them and my entire family.

Hurricane blame

IT'S BEEN a year now since Hurricane Katrina, and I feel sorry for people who were hit. I'm not in a position to take time off to go down there to do anything to help, so whenever I can I just give donations like most people do. Katrina hit more than New Orleans. The Mississippi coast was devastated by Katrina. We don't hear nearly as much about that. What bothers me is we have no control over the storms, but so many people are still blaming the federal government and the Bush administration for things not being in any better shape than they are. Blame doesn't get us anywhere, but put the blame on the local and state government, not on the Bush administration.

Dressing for church

I AGREE that we need proper attire in the courtroom. I recently witnessed flip-flops, T-shirts and tattoos during a trip to a courtroom. But I disagree with the comment regarding church attire. How often does the average person attend court? How often does the average person attend church? Why should I have to take money away from my family and spend it on expensive clothing that I only wear for two hours a week. A couple of years ago, I came to church with goodness in my heart and a yearning to learn more about my Lord and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I left after two women behind me talked loudly about how offended they were that I should show up in their church dressed casually. I was wearing jeans, clogs and a shirt. I cried and left. I did not go back. If a prostitute, junkie or homeless person were to walk in the doors of your church, scoot over and make room for them. Get your noses out of the air.

Storm swindles

I'M LISTENING to the news about the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and how the people affected by the storm are saying they need money, but it isn't coming. It seems the media are letting everybody forget that some of those people swindled the taxpayers out of well over $1 billion. Nothing has been said about what has been done to them. We need to know that our government and our legal system have some respect for the taxpayers who produced all this money. It's not coming out of the sky as the rain did. It's coming from people's paychecks and pockets.

High standards

IF THE Cape Girardeau County commissioners did meet in private, they need to resign. They want to hold everyone else to the highest standards. They need to meet these standards themselves.

Working on roads

I KNOW from experience that we tried for years to get our county road paved. The traffic is heavy, and we had a bridge that was too small. We tried contacting the county commissioners. The only one that returned our calls was Larry Bock. He talked to us and made several trips up and down the road at different times of the day to check the traffic. He was interested in our input. It took a while, but Mr. Bock got it done. We didn't know him personally before, but we all agree that as far as we're concerned he was the only working commissioner we had.

School bus safety

SCHOOL HAS started. When you see a school bus with flashing red lights and the stop sign out, that means you are supposed to stop. I'm a bus driver. I have two or three people run through my stop sign every day.

Behind the doors

THE ARTICLE on Cape Girardeau County Commissioner Larry Bock and Cape County Transit was interesting, but you'd be surprised at how many other private meetings went on during that transition and are still happening. It's supposed to be open to the public, but there's a lot of behind-the-doors stuff going on.

Rainy August

WOULD YOU believe in August we had 16 inches of rain in the 1300 block of North Kingshighway? This is the most we've had in 60 years.