SPEAKOUT

Get rid of Mona Charen

YOU NEED to get rid of the columnist Mona Charen. She's suffering from major hormonal imbalance.

A positive influence

I JUST saw Officer Dan Niswonger, the officer who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident a couple of years ago, in a quick shop, and I said "Hi, Officer Dan," and his face lit up, and he said, "Hi, how are you?" He'd never met me before. He was just so enthusiastic and a happy person that I'll think about that when something bothers me. I'll just have a better attitude. I have both legs. Everything's going good for me. He's a good man.

Brawlers in Carbondale

I MUST be getting very old indeed because I'm 27 years old and I don't seem to be able to understand people who are five, six or even seven years younger than I am. There's some sort of enormous generation gap. What am I talking about? I'm talking about these thick-headed skulls at Carbondale sending people to the hospitals and throwing bottles at police as they do every single year. Two young ladies, and I use that term loosely, were on the Illinois news, and they said it was a tradition since the 1960s and nobody has the right to shut this party down. The businesses have to suffer from Wednesday until Sunday. They can't serve any alcohol, so they're losing money, but that's not good enough to stop these idiots from turning cars over in the street and just generally acting like drunken idiots, which is something I never did even when I was their age and in school. Let me tell you something. There isn't one of those kids over there, who if they got into trouble of some kind, wouldn't be glad to see a police officer. I can't believe. But I'll tell what the worse part is. I weep for the future.

Thanks to honest person

I WANT to give a large thank you to the lady who found and turned into Schnucks my purse that I had left in the shopping cart. With all the untruths and the lies that are TV now, it's wonderful to find someone so honest. May God richly bless you.

Change the discounts

MY WIFE and I are empty nesters. In other words, we've raised our children, sent them to college and now they are starting families of their own. We no longer have a mortgage payment, tuition bills, teen-age car insurance premiums and all the other expenses involved with raising children. We have more disposable income than we have ever had in our lives. That's why I can't understand all the retail establishments and motels that offer us senior citizens discounts. If anyone can use those discounts, it would be our children who are struggling as we did several years ago to raise their own families. I'm certainly not criticizing those seniors who take advantage of those discounts. I just think that businesses should extend the favor to young working couples who really need the help.

Sad day at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

IT'S TRULY a sad day in the United States of America when drug dealers are welcomed into the White House and men and women wearing a uniform of the United States military are not allowed on the premises in that uniform. It's truly a sad, sad day, and no one seems to care.

Less quality, higher cost

ONE OF the problems with our education has been in the last 20 years that we're turning out products that are inferior while at the same time we've increased the contributions of tax money five times. Money is not getting to the classrooms and is not getting to the teachers who really need it. An indication of this is seen in the current status in the National Education Association. The NEA has 2.2 million members, more than 13,000 affiliates nationwide and a luxurious Washington, D.C., national headquarters worth $65 million complete with a staff of 500 and a budget of $193 million. Total NEA dues at state and local levels equal an estimated $750 million a year, according to Forbes magazine. NEA president Keith Geiger reportedly earns about $335,000 a year in salary and benefits. At least 2,000 NEA employees and affiliate employees make salaries of more than $100,000 a year, almost triple the average teacher's salary of $35,000. With all these assets, the NEA is a cash-wielding power house for the political left. It's only a unionized mechanism headed up by administrators who are destroying the educational system. Let's bring it back to the states, give it to the local communities, disband that Department of Education and cancel out the NEA.

Beautiful mountain lions

I JUST wanted to comment about the article on mountain lions. Having seen one myself and seen that it's a beautiful animal, knowing three other people that have seen them around Cape County, Perry County and Wayne County, I'm sure that there are more than just one or two tame ones running loose. There are mountain lions in Missouri and they are beautiful animals.

Other side of the Oran story

THE SOUTHEAST Missourian and KFVS have done it again to Oran. Many times both the paper and TV station had been contacted to report achievements and educational undertakings of Oran High School but there has been little or no response from the Cape media. However, when some of the questionable characters of the town report some silly, unimportant incident of childish mentality, representing a minority of the students and citizens, the paper and TV station, rush to present that to the public. Oran is very fortunate to have administrators and teachers of superior ability who try desperately to improve the quality of the school and of the town by educating. Which means giving evidence of training, knowledge, culture and formation of character. These administrators and teachers need all the help they can get from local desirable citizens and certainly, from those of the media who consider themselves fair representatives of noteworthy happenings. Such happenings occur not only in urban communities but in rural depressed communities that are struggling to maintain values and disciplines and quality teaching against great odds.