SPEAKOUT

Older workers

IN SPEAK Out some young people were talking about how the old people should have a retirement plan. I'm one of these older people. I did have a retirement plan until my grandson decided to come live with me. He thought I should support him. I work two part-time jobs to make end-meets. I still pay taxes, Social Security, retirement and everything. I still work and pay taxes, and a lot of older people do too.

Unsafe situation

WHAT DO you think a drugged-up, gun-happy thief is going to do when he attempts to rob a store and the clerk tells him he has to hang around for 10 minutes to get his money? I have been a victim of two armed robberies, and there is no doubt in my mind what would have happened in these circumstances.

Car technology

I WANT to thank Speak Out for being a call-in forum. The person who thought there was no alternative to the gas guzzlers obviously can't, or doesn't, read. If that caller had checked, he would have known that a senior executive of Ford Motor Co. said that the company had made a major breakthrough in fuel-cell technology and that Ford expected to have fuel-cell-driven cars on the market in the next few years. Any of the fuel cells can be run by an electro-chemical process and produce electricity directly from fuel. This would give you an electric-drive car with almost no pollution. This and other developing technologies will, in the next few years, give us a replacement for the internal combustion engine as we know it.

He had eight years

GORE IS promising so many things for the people. How come he and Clinton didn't do this in the last eight years? He's a liar, just like his boss lied about several things that are coming out now. Do we want another liar for president? I think not.

Keeping up

I RECENTLY read where someone was complaining about the point-of-service situation at the secondary schools in Cape Girardeau, whereby students have IDs and pay for their lunches in advance and then they swipe their cards.. This person said we didn't need all this newfangled stuff and was very irate that these kids had this new technology just to pay for their lunch. At the junior high cafeterias, they feed over 700 kids a day. If you don't have the little swipe cards, you've got a lady standing there trying to find kids' names on a list. She has no clue that that child is who he says he is. So a kid goes through the line, she searches for his name, the line's backed up even more than it would be with the point-of-service cards. So you say you want them to pay every day? That's another nightmare. Use some sense. Just because you can't be with the times doesn't mean that this community and our school district needs to slow down to stay with you. There are always people a little bit behind, and they get left behind. It sounds like you're one of those people.

A waste of money

IT'S A wonder Mr. Clinton was able to balance the budget at all with the money that was spent on Whitewater after 6 1/2 years. I see they're closing the office with no indictments. All that time and money spent it added up. We might have a big tax surplus if they hadn't spent so much money on these investigations that turned up nothing.

Feed yourself

TO THE person complaining that because his pastor doesn't feed him, he probably doesn't burp you either, does he? Assuming you're an adult, for crying out loud, feed yourself.

Think for myself

WHO GAVE the media, the columnists and the journalists permission to think for me? They try to tell me what I think about a candidate such as Al Gore. Kathleen Parker tells me that Al Gore has no charisma, and I am supposed to go, "Duh, you're right!" Gore has more charisma than any politician I see running for anything of late.

Detrimental ideas

DOGGONE IT, David Limbaugh, you are a wonderful person and a world-class columnist, but the ideas you express are so wrong-headed. You recently questioned Al Gore's plan for the future and referred to it as a bizarre vision of Utopia. For goodness sakes, Gore is in no way a Utopian. He is a common-sense pragmatist with sensible solutions to some of our ongoing problems. If implemented, I'm afraid Limbaugh's dystopian vision of the future is so detrimental it rivals the Dark Ages in its potential to turn back the clock to an anarchic barbarism.

No bridge overlook?

THE WAY it looks to me, the River Campus board is seeking to build a museum with a view up the Mississippi River after the old bridge is torn down. I thought the city was talking about leaving a small portion of the old bridge sticking out for a river overlook. Is the college now going to rule that out?

We want the prayers

SO THAT'S it. We're not going to pray before Jackson High School football games any more. Our school board and Ron Anderson never received a complaint and never received a signed letter requesting us not to pray. And never have any of our opponents ever asked Jackson not to pray before home football games. Once again, it's lawyers who are running our school district. The board members were elected to represent who we are as a community. This is another decision by our school board that does not reflect who I am. Jackson board members: Do these two passages sound familiar? "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other." And, "I tell you the truth, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times."

Mark these words

WHEN THE television was invented, they said it would be very good for society. That's the same thing they said about the Internet.

Losing our liberty

IN SPITE of the tax burden, capitalism has been so successful in eliminating disease, pestilence, hunger and gross poverty that other human problems now appear to be both unbearable and inexcusable. Free enterprise is thus threatened today not because of its failure, but somewhat ironically because of its success. Although the rise of capitalism brought about better treatment of women, racial minorities, handicapped, criminals and the insane, social reformers assert that it doesn't work and is dehumanizing. In the name of ideals such as income equality, sex and wage balance, affordable housing and medical care, orderly markets, consumer protection and energy conservation, to name just a few, we have imposed widespread government controls that have subordinated us to the point at which considerations of personal freedom are but secondary matters. If you take tiny steps toward a goal, one day you will get there. And the ultimate end of the process is totalitarianism under socialism, which is no more than a reduced form of servitude. Or, as it's been said by one of the great men of the past, it's seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.