Speakout 11/5

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Crosslines is a welfare program which is being funneled through churches. Nice sized salaries are being paid to administrators and, yes, it is certainly being funded by taxpayers.

Recently, I saw a newscast in which the reporter was lamenting the fact that Americans are giving less to charitable organizations due to the economy, however, donations to the Red Cross are up. Apparently it never occurred to the reporter that people are willing to help their fellow Americans in times of disaster by giving to the Red Cross, but are growing weary of supporting generation after generation of people who make little or no effort to support themselves. I am a compassionate and caring person, but as Americans, we have transformed from FDR's "noble society" into the "welfare state." With that in mind, and in response to Mike's recent editorial regarding the Community Christmas Campaign, I recommend that you end it now. While noble in its mission, the program has generated no long term benefit for the recipients and duplicates numerous welfare programs we already fund through our taxes. Likewise, I am dismayed by the Oct. 28 article regarding Mission Missouri's $1.5 million drug treatment program. Although I am certain Mrs. Pfefferkorn and Mr. Harris are well intentioned, I believe their program will do more harm than good for the participants in their program and our community. With the smell of that much money in the air, Sikeston will be inundated by scores of miscreants wanting to check into the program so they can be free from the stress of personal responsibility for as long as they can. This is just one more in a long list of many welfare programs set up in Sikeston which helps us reign supreme as the welfare capital of the state. The Chamber of Commerce in the surrounding communities will be delighted by the news of this new program because it will mean some of their drugged-up deadbeats will be relocating to Sikeston, the land of free milk and honey. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Friend, I have a suggestion for your Citizen's Priority Summary. Do all you can to rid our town of the welfare offices and charitable organizations which blight our community. A temporary outflow of riffraff will be followed by an influx of productive citizens.

After reading the Oct. 26 Standard Democrat, there was misinformation about the Chaffee football game. I am a subscriber of your newspaper and I purposely subscribe because your paper has always done a fine job of covering Chaffee sports. After I called to say that there was misinformation, why was there not a retraction so the child involved could get credit? It's pretty nice for a child to see their name in the paper and then find out that someone else's name was in instead. I checked the paper on Monday and Tuesday and there was no retraction.

We are unaware of the mistake. Please call (573) 471-6980 and let us know what it is, then we will run a correction.

Something is terribly wrong when you are a law-abiding citizen, you work your butt off trying to make a decent living and you still can't afford any insurance. Then you have prisoners who get medical insurance and you have these people having babies out of wedlock and they get Medicaid. It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong.

They need to stop giving the farmers handouts just like the Christmas Campaign. The farmers get a bonus and they get paid for their crops every year. When the crop is bad, the farmers get a handout every year. So why are you talking about the people getting handouts from the Christmas Campaign? Talk about the farmers too.

I would like to SpeakOut for the United States. Everybody is talking about how they can do this or do that. How about this? During the Vietnam War, people cried "peace." How about other people having to go to other countries to fight us? How would they like that?