Speak Out 4/25/12

Outdoor classes

I hope area school administrators are helping to improve the mood of their students as well as their receptivity to academic learning by giving teachers the freedom to take their students outside during these beautiful spring days.

Austerity budgets

Austerity budgets are destroying Europe. The only way to stop this from coming to the U.S. is to re-elect President Obama.

Illogical legislation

"Mo. senators back firearms discrimination bill" was the headline. This General Assembly has been guilty of some really dumb stuff this year, things unconstitutional, things illogical, things they know they won't pass in the end anyway, but this takes the cake. An absolutely useless bill that does nothing but put some lawmakers in the good graces of the NRA lobbyists. Where are the jobs? Where is the health care? Where is education? Where is infrastructure?

Charen column

Conservative columnist Mona Charen chastised Mitt Romney for not being clear on where he stands on the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. Of course, Charen opposes it. And, of course, Mr. Romney doesn't know where he stands.

What fairness?

What kind of bad joke is President Obama trying to play on the American people with all this talk of "fairness?" He loves to say that we need a country where "everyone has a fair chance" and "everyone does his fair share." Huh? He knows very well that everyone does not do his or her fair share. When 47 percent of wage earners pay no income tax, they are not contributing to the solution of America's economic and debt problems. They are in fact a good part of the problem itself. You may not be rich when you earn $30,000 to $50,000 a year, but you aren't poor, either, and all of these people should be paying some amount of income tax.

Alcohol, health

Here's to your health. A couple of beers or glasses of wine a day are now universally said to be good for your health. That's why I think if they were really serious about it, we'd be reading about a lot of applications for liquor licenses by local health and fitness centers.

More tickets

Citations for people who feed deer -- what a joke. To do that, you have to have police willing to write tickets, and that takes time. I drive in to Cape everyday and I could write an average of five tickets a day. One that really scares me is the so-called helmet law in Missouri. Where are the tickets there? This law is a life preserver. We need to write more tickets.

Do-nothing Dems

I recently referred to the Democrats as the "do nothing" party, and an Obama supporter disputed that based on the fact that the Republicans won't roll over and do Obama's bidding. During his first two years in office, Obama had control of both the House and the Senate, so he didn't have to negotiate with anyone. The American public spoke loudly in the 2010 elections and sent a new wave of legislators to Washington specifically to stop Obama and the Democrats from running us off a financial cliff. Obama wants to reign supreme. He wants everyone to swoon when he enters the room and blindly vote for whatever progressive agenda he brings forward. The Republicans are protecting America's future by blocking Obama's wild spending programs and giveaways to his big-money supporters.

State budget

The Missouri Senate is almost completely controlled by Republicans. Therefore, you would think approving a state budget would be a snap. However, it's chaos bordering on anarchy as our state lawmakers battle to keep their pet projects alive while fighting to eliminate those of others. About the only thing the senators seem to agree on is to cut funding for preschool education and state assistance for the blind. These people are giving representative government a bad name.