Speak Out 9/10/09

Big difference

IN response to the comment "Patient interference": This comment said the Republicans screaming that no one should come between the patient and his family is the same party that interfered in the Terri Schiavo case. Terri was unable to speak on her behalf. Her husband (Mike) wanted life support removed. Her family objected. Mike transferred his authority, as guardian, to the court. Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation to keep her on life support. There is a big difference in the action of keeping someone alive and the decision by a government panel that you are no longer productive and therefore not necessary. You might review the makeup of the Florida 6th Circuit Court that ruled life support be removed.

Health statistics

PEOPLE keep providing anecdotal stories about people who suffer due to lack of health care treatment. However, they tend to neglect the big picture. According to the BBC, the U.S. breast and prostate cancer survival rates are 83.9 percent and 91.9 percent, compared to 69.7 percent and 51.1 percent respectively in the United Kingdom. The statistics don't lie.

War blame

PEACENIK conservative George Will has written a follow-up column to his recent one calling for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Will is now offering advice to peace-at-any-price Republicans as to how to hang the war in Afghanistan around President Obama's neck, although the war would be over by now if President Bush hadn't concentrated his efforts on a needless war in Iraq.

Approval ratings

On the day when the Southeast Missourian published a Zogby poll claiming the president's approval rating was at 42 percent and his disapproval rating was at 48 percent, the much more reliable Gallup Poll found his approval rating to be at 55 percent. In addition, I don't recall the Southeast Missourian being obsessed with the poll results of the previous president when they dropped into the 25 percent range. Fifty-five percent is about 1 percentage point more than the landslide percentage gap he received during the presidential election. So let not your heart be troubled, Obama supporters.

Forming opinions

What is it about President Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren that frightens the extreme right? There's no indication the speech contains even a hint of partisan policy. Are some parents afraid that their children will be free to form their own opinions about our country's president?

Rules of the road

THIS is in response to the comment about children on bikes blowing through stop signs. I have seen adults do the same thing. I am tired of hearing about sharing the road with bicyclists because they are supposed to have equal rights as motorists. If they want to be treated the same, then they should abide by the same laws people in cars do. If you cut a car off, you should be fined. If you do not stop at a stop light or sign, you should be fined. If you drive on the wrong side of the road or weave in and out of traffic and cause a wreck, you should be fined.

Truck plate

REGARDING trucks with only one license plate: If the truck is licensed for 18,000 pounds or more, it is issued one plate, and it is for the front only. This is not a new law.

Hard work, top pay

SOME would have us believe that those who make what seems like obscene amounts of money do so because they have worked for it. Stephan J. Helmsley is the CEO of United Health Care. He makes $230,000 an hour. That's approximately 6,150 times as much as I make. I'd love to meet someone like that, who works 6,150 times harder than I do.

Hefty gains

SOMEONE lamented that insurance companies are just squeaking by. This seems to fly in the face of the documented evidence that since 2002 the percentage change in average premiums paid to large U.S. health insurance has risen 87 percent while the percentage change in profits of the top 10 insurance companies during this same period has increased by 448 percent.

Teaching excellence

I am of the opinion that the current push for excellence in education and high achievement among the majority of students is doomed, as have been such attempts during the past 50 years, as long as teachers are hired, retained and promoted more often on whether or not they will be or are popular with parents and students, rather than on whether or not they can provide students with skills and knowledge. My experience in education for 30-plus years is that there are a few blessed individuals who are both the most popular and the most capable of imparting skills and knowledge to their students. Most teachers, however, are one or the other. Few lists of favorite teachers includes those teachers who taught the most challenging subjects or had the highest standards of achievement.

Failed attempt

I was at first enthused. I thought Wayne Bowen had written a long broadside against the nuts who compare President Obama to Nazi and communist leaders. He did make brief mention of their irrationality but quickly proceeded to reveal his real purpose, which was nothing less than a tortured and failed attempt to project a scenario whereby the U.S. may be headed the way of a declining 17th-century Spain, the 20th-century ending of the Ottoman Empire or the rise of 18th-century Bonapartism. Bowen's baseless scare tactic was erudite enough so that it will have no appeal to Republicans or those who incorrectly call themselves conservatives. In that sense, it was an exercise in futility. Beyond that, Bowen still seemed to feel compelled to bash the Obama administration for alleged anti-business and anti-free market policies, never mind that corrupt and unregulated business and financial practices and the unfettered free market are what got us into this problem in the first place. The good news for Bowen is that his piece was so Byzantine and obscurantist there will be no need (at least for now) to send him to a re-education camp.

Incoherent host

DURING the MDA Telethon, host Jerry Lewis was incoherent and his jokes were crude and tasteless. He used profanity. I appreciate the work he's done for the charity, but it might be time to call in a new host.

Rational argument

IN a piece by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, "How did economists get it so wrong?," published in the New York Times Magazine, Krugman claims that there was a woefully wrongheaded assumption among economists that a rational free market would, with little tinkering from the federal government, prevent any and all economic meltdowns like that of the Great Depression. A belated realization that people and the market are subject to unpredictable periods of irrationality contributed to what appeared to be the beginning of the end, had not the feds intervened. Krugman, a neo-Keynesian, is indisputably correct. In truth, what opponents of the stimulus don't realize is that, rather than doing more harm than good, it seems to have saved our economy, although the amount spent should probably have been much more. However, a word of caution. If you try this argument out at Cape coffee klatches, be prepared to fight or flee.