Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Letters 11/07

Savings ahead

St. Clair Township recently purchased electricity for our sewer plant from an independent supplier that Ameren listed on its Web site.

This purchase is guaranteed to save our sewer customers $13,000 over our nine-month contract if we use the same amount of electricity as we did for the same period last year. This is a savings of nearly 18 percent on our sewer plant energy supply cost.

Ameren actually encourages companies and individuals to purchase electricity from independent suppliers because Ameren does not make any profit on the electricity they supply. They make all of their profit from the fees they charge to delivery the electricity.

It sounded too good to be true that the electric company would encourage us to buy electricity from an outside source so we could save money, but we have found it to be true.

Timothy L. Buchanan

Supervisor, St. Clair Township Swansea

Get a clue on Obama

Anita Dunn, the acting White House communications director and most likely Woody Allen's lost sister, made an interesting speech not long ago to high school students. She said she often turns to guidance from the now deceased founder of Communism in China, Mao Tse-Tung.

She spoke passionately about Chairman Mao and his wisdom when confronting challenges. Mao is author of the "Little Red Book" or "Mao Zedong," meaning quotations from the chairman, which everyone in China had to ascribe to and memorize during his "Cultural Revolution" in the 1960s and 1970s. If you didn't embrace Mao's teachings you were either executed or sentenced to labor camps, where you either died or got your mind right.

It is conservatively estimated he had more than 35 million people put to death, with the upper estimate being 70 million. He made Hitler look like an underachiever.

Josef Stalin, a Russian Communist, holds a strong second to Mao in murdering his own people. Even the Chinese government after Mao's death in 1976 pulled away from his teachings and considered those who followed them to be a "left deviant."

What does that say about Dunn? And people say President Barack Obama doesn't have Socialist/Marxist leanings.

Keep your heads in the sand, folks. Obama is counting on it.

Brent Rains

Collinsville

Socialism is here

Here is a quote from Adrian Rogers, former senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn.:

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

"When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiple wealth by dividing it."

Welcome to the world of the socialist and President Barack Obama.

Cliff Burton

Mascoutah

Not made in the USA

They say it's hard to find a good, steady, paying job these days, because of fewer jobs all around. Well, take a look at this.

I get up at 5 a.m. with a clock that's made in Japan. While my coffee is being made from a maker from China, I shave with my electric razor that's Hong Kong made. After that, I brush my teeth with Colgate paste, made in Mexico. I then put on my T-shirt and dress shirt that is from Sri Lanka (where's that?), my Levi jeans, which are now made in Vietnam but with U.S. cotton, and my tennis shoes that are from Korea.

After having some bacon that's fried in an Indian skillet, I used my calculator from Mexico to see what I can spend this day. I set my watch that's from Taiwan, to the stereo from Indonesia.

I'll get in my German car with a full tank of gas that's from Saudi Arabia. I at least hope it's not from Chavez' Venezuela, right? After a bad job day, I go home to check out my Malaysian computer. I'll relax in my slippers from Brazil as I pour myself some French wine in a Chinese glass. I'll turn on the ballgame to watch it on my Indonesian TV.

I at least sit on my toilet and shower in my tub that's made in America. You all get the picture? Something is not right.

Wally Platz

Fairmont City

Inspiration for a cure

What a wonderful and moving profile Teri Maddox wrote Oct. 2 on Parker Weiss, "Smithton boy tries to live normal life despite diabetes."

I wanted to give all your readers the update on the 15th Annual Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Walk To Cure Diabetes recently in Forest Park. The Weiss Family Walk Team (Parker's Pitchers) was one of 350 family and corporate walk teams who helped raise more than $1.5 million for diabetes research.

JDRF was founded in 1970 by the parents of children with diabetes. To date, we have raised more than $1.3 billion for diabetes research. Our goal is simple: To cure, treat and ultimately prevent diabetes. And with the help of the Weiss family and others like them, we will achieve our goal.

M. Marie Davis

JDRF executive director Metro Saint Louis/Greater Missouri Chapter

Raising the offer

I will double the offer made by letter writer Daniel Wayne of $100 for a birth certificate for President Barack Obama.

His grandmother said he was born in Africa. So who is lying, Obama or his grandmother?

Bill Boyse

Belleville

Never too late for life

I listened to the radio as a woman told her story of transformation from being the director of a Planned Parenthood office to a pro-life advocate. She had convinced herself that she was doing good work at Planned Parenthood. Women needed her help; God approved of it.

Then the economy declined, and although Planned Parenthood offers many services, its most lucrative is abortion. She was told to encourage pregnant women toward abortion as opposed to adoption or parenthood. She began to doubt her position.

The turning point for her was watching a sonogram of a baby, safe in his mother's womb, then watching the abortion of that same baby. The murder of that child broke her heart. She knew then she was part of a horrible evil but didn't know to whom to turn.

Just then she looked out the window and saw the pro-life advocates quietly praying. She went to them and wept. They accepted her with open arms, and now she is one of them.

We are blessed to have these same pro-life heroes in our community. Daniel and Angela Michael lead the Small Victories Ministry. They have stood outside the Hope Abortion Clinic for 17 years. They have given their lives selflessly for this cause. They adopted a beautiful little girl who was saved from abortion.

I don't think the Michaels could do more. But I know the rest of us can. And, as the woman on the radio proved, it's never too late to change one's position.

Donna Brosh

Belleville