Speak Out B 01/25/03

Speeder is nabbed

THANKS TO the Jackson Police Department for nabbing the person who was constantly speeding on Mulberry Street. We will not miss this dangerous speeder or his loud mufflers that disrupted the peace and quiet of the neighborhood.

Anti-war pattern

I TOO am ashamed that a Missourian, Sheryl Crow, would vocalize such negative thoughts. It looks as though we are going to revisit the past of a very high-profile person with an audience of millions, Jane Fonda. The degradation of our Vietnam soldiers will remain till all of the soldiers and their families die. All the lies, hurt and pain Fonda caused is still in many hearts and minds. I cringe to think that Crow would feel that war is something politicians and military personnel want. There have been wars since the Dark Ages. Do we expect they will end because a well-known music artist espouses the idea that war is wrong?

Defending foreign lands

MOST OF us commoners in this area are strong believers in the U.S. Constitution as being the law of the land. Where does it say in the Constitution that it is the purpose of our government to defend the rights and liberties of those who live in foreign lands?

Cape Girardeau's needs

NEEDED IN Cape Girar-deau: 1. New police cars. 2. More policemen. 3. Fire chief. 4. Replace all 1970-era fire trucks. 5. Street repairs. 6. Business friendly government. 7. Fewer assistants working for department heads. 8. Less micro-management by the city manager. 9. More informed city council on why employees are leaving at an increased rate. 10. Less sports and theater and more core education (reading, writing and math).

Incentive program

FOLLOWING THE last Bush economic incentive program, hundreds of thousands of working Americans lost their jobs. If you are a working American, you may not survive another Bush incentive program. Can you afford a tax program that risks your employment while giving you a few dollars more in your paycheck while giving the fat cats thousands?

Trashy reality

YOUR EDITORIAL about reality TV couldn't have spoken truth more plainly. Networks are so excited about these shows. But the fact is, compared to shows of old, relatively few people watch them. Thank God. They're trashy, ridiculous and a waste of time, just as most network TV is.

Affirmative action

GEORGE BUSH has intervened in the Supreme Court case challenging the University of Michigan's affirmative-action program. Will he also weigh in on the affirmative-action programs for alumni children that have given every Bush family applicant a leg up at Yale?

North Korean ransom

NORTH KOREA'S Kim Jong Il may be crazy, but he's not stupid. He bet the bank that President Bush, for all his promises not to respond to nuclear blackmail, would do exactly that to avoid a distraction from Iraq. So Kim called the president's bluff and will soon get his ransom.

Placing the blame

THE PERSON who blames the Republicans for the state's deficit needs to recheck the facts. Gov. Bob Holden didn't succeed a Republican. The two governor's before him (Roger Wilson and Mel Carnahan) were Democrats, not to mention the fact that both the Missouri House and State Senate were controlled by Democrats. Carnahan taxed the fire out of this state and spent just as fast as he could tax.

No comparison

I WAS reading Speak Out and found the pro-life comparison between abortion and Gov. George Ryan commuting death sentences repulsive. There is no comparison between a heinous convicted criminal and an innocent baby. I am pro-life and find nothing admirable about what Ryan did. My heart goes out to the families that must suffer yet more indignity due to someone trying to make themselves look good one last time before leaving office.

I AM and former smoker, and so is my husband. I have apologized to all my friends and family for having the ill manners to smoke in their presence, especially our children. Because of smoking my husband impaired most of his taste buds and olfactory nerves. After many years he is beginning to get these sensations back, but now he doesn't know what he is smelling. I wish I'd never picked up the first cigarette. Smokers have the right to smoke just as we have the right not to smoke. But by our not smoking we are not offending anyone, whereas smokers do offend, pollute and cause innumerable health problems.

Death Row facts

A FORMER Illinois correctional officer commented that former governor George Ryan should have "faced the inmates on death row." Thirteen people sentenced to death in Illinois were exonerated and released before any commutations because they were innocent of the crimes they had been condemned for. The Chicago Police Department routinely beatings to gain confessions. Illinois prosecutors have routinely withheld key evidence and suppressed witnesses that would exonerate defendants in an effort to improve their conviction rate. Last week four more inmates were released from death row because they were innocent of the crimes they were convicted of. The majority of those exonerated were minorities. Ryan issued a full pardon to a person released form death row years ago because he too was proven innocent. In light of those and many other facts about the death penalty, it appears that the good people of Illinois want to kill people whether or not they are guilty.

YOUR EDITORIAL damning the numbskulls who introduced starlings is half-right. Indeed, similar numbskulls introduced kudzu and honeysuckle and released domestic horses along the Current River. Unfortunately, only the small number of feral horses can easily be eliminated without great risk to untold numbers of domestic species that feed at the same trough as the pests. Again, your simple-minded solution to a complicated problem is revealed.

Mideast policies

THE WHITE House folks are amazingly naive. While pursuing policies that are destructive and racist, they seem really to think that Middle Eastern and Islamic peoples can be persuaded by a few Madison Avenue commercials that the United States is their friend. Talk about wasting money. What the Republicans time and again fail to understand is that resentment toward the United States around the world is not a function of misunderstanding of where we stand and what we do but precisely because of where we stand and what we do.

Doesn't make sense

DOES IT really make any sense that you can be arrested for cruelty to animals if you kick a pregnant dog, but killing innocent babies is acceptable as long as we change the word "murder" to "abort"? The real crime is the lack of respect for the rights of the unborn.

More on Florida

THE LETTERS criticizing Heidi Hall for poking good-natured fun at Florida provoked a couple of Floridians to defend the Sunshine State. Hall was only half serious. If she'd really have wanted to tell it like it is, she could have called attention to all the terrorists who were trained at a flight school outside Tampa, a professor who was canned for alleged sympathies with al-Qaida, the state's social services disaster, the fact that large numbers of citizens don't understand the voting process and that a cursory glance at the population proves Ponce de Leon's supposed discovery of a fountain of youth in Florida to be a myth.

Liberal media: a myth

I JUST want to say that no thinking person could possibly believe that the news media are liberal. Take PBS, for example. It's all corporate funded, and 90 percent of the shows reflect it. The pundits are all right to middle. There's only a business report. There is no labor report. Just like there's no labor section in any major newspaper. "Liberal media" is literally a myth concocted by the media.