Speak Out A 02/04/02

Get out and vote

I WANT to encourage the voters in Cape Girardeau to please get out and vote, because our voices need to be heard if we want to elect the people in who are good for our city. We need to get out and vote.

Why Gephardt?

I THINK the most disgraceful event ever to take place for any party was the day Dick Gephardt led his party to the White House to show support for Bill Clinton, who had just been impeached. And now he gives the Democratic response to President Bush's State of the Union speech. How low can you get?

Tell whole truth

LEAVE IT to David Limbaugh and the Republicans to believe that being mostly truthful should be reported as a positive. I guess Republicans perceive being mostly truthful as good enough. Doesn't the public have the right to be told the real truth? Makes you wonder what the Bush administration is hiding about the Enron scandal, doesn't it.

Just a coincidence

LET ME see if I understand David Limbaugh's argument. Enron was President Bush's biggest money contributor. The head of Enron is a close family friend. Enron was allowed to help track legislation, and the head of Enron got to interview prospective regulators and attended meetings at the White House on policy. Any suggestion that there might be something unethical about all this is simply slanted journalism. I guess I have to agree. Sounds like politics as usual. In fact, I hope the Bush stimulus package passes and Enron gets another $200 million or so.

Being left behind

PROLIFERATION OF administrators at SEMO reflects the lack of academic leadership. President Dobbins is a good financial manager but has failed to articulate an academic vision for the university. The SEMO administration is proposing an endless parade of construction projects while slashing the library budget. Rather than bricks and mortar and more administrators, other schools in the region have focused on increasing the quality of academic programs. Sadly, SEMO University is being left behind.

Tell the truth

I WONDER if any president will ever tell us the truth about the state of the union. It would just thrill me to death for George Bush to get in front of everybody and say this country's in bad shape. That would be the truth. All I have ever heard in my 70-something years is for every president to tell us we're in good financial shape. But it's never been the truth.

Control those drugs

I'M CALLING about the article concerning Jo Ann Emerson and the senior drug benefits. I think she's got a point. We all know that we get yanked with medical costs whether we have insurance or not. We should get on the drug companies for charging way too much. We pay sometimes two to three time more in this country for the same drugs that they sell in other countries for a lot less money. That isn't right. And we should get on to our doctors. There are drug substitutes that could be prescribed that are a lot cheaper. If the government wants to control everything, let it control something for the people's good like the cost of these drugs.

No free drugs

I'M READING about the senior drug benefits and the need of many seniors to have some help with their drug bills. I have no problem with that. I'm a senior myself, but I don't think seniors should be getting drugs paid for by the taxpayers so they can save money to leave to their kids. If they're going to get money for drugs, their estate should be frozen as far as any giveaways or anything for at least five years prior to that and through all the time they're receiving this. When they die, the taxpayers would get the money they spent for their drugs back from their estate. This is only fair. They're hollering about spending their savings. What did they save for if it wasn't for their use?

Put the can back

HOW HARD is it to put a garbage can back on the curb? They leave my can sitting in the middle of the road. You would think they could at least do a simple task like that. It isn't that hard to set it back up on the curb.

Take it to court

RESIDENTS WHO are being harassed by teen-age noise pollution should take down license numbers and then sue their parents for their teen-agers' harassment and peace disturbance.

No orchestration

THERE IS no carefully orchestrated Speak Out campaign against the River Campus. The River Campus is a ridiculous idea and is supported only by limited few college people and locals likely to benefit financially. We need to vote again with the clear understanding of what we are voting for. Thanks to Jim Drury for speaking out and standing up.

More reading

WHOOPS! I accidentally read the Opinion page of the Missourian again. This is something I promised myself I wouldn't do. There it was: one of those unbiased and most unpredictably insightful David Limbaugh columns, this time on the Enron situation. Limbaugh invites us to read a book called "Mobopathy." In addition to this book let me also add Robert McChesney's "Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy" and also the classic by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media," to Missourian readers' burgeoning backlog of must reads.

Learn at home

OBVIOUSLY A town like Cape Girardeau just doesn't want higher education. All anyone does is complain about the university and its efforts to increase culture and intelligence levels around here. So let's raze the entire campus and everyone can be home schooled and go to Bible class. That sounds more appropriate for the yokels in this area.

Looking cool

TINTING WINDOWS should not go by the wayside, since it would destroy the self-esteem of those who had their windows tinted because they thought they'd look cool even though, paradoxically, you couldn't see them.

Famous Missourians

CAPE'S MISSOURI Wall of Fame must be immediately graced with a likeness of Cape native and billionaire Richard D. Kinder. In addition, there should be a somewhat lesser rendering of a small-town Missouri lad who made it big at least for a while: ex-Enron CEO Ken Lay.

Behind a curtain

IT'S A shame they couldn't buy some drapes to hang in front of Ashcroft. He's a lot more obscene than the statues that prude wants to hide.

A lack of trust

THE GAO's lawsuit is important, especially since we recently learned that California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein was refused access to the president after three written requests during the California energy crisis. Yet the supplier of that energy, Enron, was given open access to the vice president. More troubling, however, were the recent requests made by both the president and the vice president to Sen. Tom Daschle asking him to limit the congressional investigation into the events of Sept. 11. Why? Do the people of this nation not have a right to know what happened, including what led up to that event, rather than merely trusting what the pundits tell us? Could you imagine the response of the so-called liberal media if Al Gore were president and made a similar request of Sen. Tom Lott? OK. I am part of that 15 percent who does not believe any wartime president should be given a blank slate. But this president's and vice president's penchant for patronizing secrecy do little to induce my trust in them.

More part-timers

WHILE THE number of full-time administrative positions at SEMO continues to grow, many teaching positions are staffed by low-wage, no-benefit part-timers.