BND readers sound off on bullying, sportsmanship, state spending
School’s responsibility
The bullying video from Granite City is vile and disturbing. It’s also disturbing that the BND took Jim Greenwald’s statement out of context. The school district’s responsibility is exaggerated for this act. This act took place off school property and off school hours. Where does the school’s responsibility end as far as a student’s actions and morality after school and off school property? Are school districts responsible for students at the grocery store or in the neighborhood? Let’s hope the parents of all of the children involved in this horrendous video take responsibility for ensuring the safe arrive to and from school for their children.
Winning ways
Thanks to Todd Eschman for the spot-on perspective concerning the Centralia/Althoff controversy. When it comes to sports, usually only one thing matters: winning. If Althoff had a losing football program the past few years and hadn’t dominated the head-to-head matchup, do you think the Centralia bigwigs would be pleading for them to be expelled from the conference? How hypocritical of them to complain about poor sportsmanship when they don’t even shake hands with opposing coaches and players after the game.
Patient care
The CEP article forgot to mention that Memorial Hospital pays millions to the ER and hospitalist groups as a stipend just to see patients at the hospital. In addition to taking money from the hospital simply to see patients, CEP bills the insurance companies and patients for the ER and inpatient services. When the community doctors saw their own patients in the hospital, the community doctors received no stipend. Maybe the solution is to reach out to the community doctors and ask them to start seeing their own patients in the hospital to save millions of dollars that could go directly to the care of the patient instead of to a California for-profit company.
$300K doctors
The national average hospitalist salary is $218,000, and the national average emergency physician salary is $248,000. CEP hospitalists and ER docs often brag about their $300,000 salaries. With the 20 percent contract cut to the ER and hospitalists, Memorial is trying to realign the salaries to ones that are closer to a national average. Most of the hospitalists are not specialists and simply did residencies in internal or family medicine. A few local doctors joined the hospitalists for the nice salary bump. It will be up to the handful of local doctors to decide if they want to care for local patients at a lower salary with IPC or move to another CEP facility with a higher salary.
Broke borrowers
Can anyone believe state Rep. Jay Hoffman wants to issue new bonds to pay for road and bridge repairs? The credit of Illinois is one step above junk status. Illinois will be paying the highest interest rates because of the state’s fiscal mess. Big spender Hoffman doesn’t care about wasting more of Illinois’ money. Hoffman and the rest of his Democrats only care about re-election. Can’t get elected in Illinois without teachers and unions voting for you. Illinois is broke. Issuing high risk bonds for capital projects, just to make unions happy, is stupid.
Democratic minions
If U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth endorsed Brendan Kelly for the 12th Congressional District, then you know Kelly isn’t the politician Illinois needs. Duckworth, like a good Democrat, does what she is told. Kelly hasn’t done anything for the voters in Illinois, except do what the Democrat higher ups tell him to do. The Democrats have destroyed the state of Illinois.
VA disability pay
Veterans Administration disability is a life saver for some, scam for others. Retire at 20 years with 0 percent claimed disability, reapply for VA benefits when you hit 60. Receive a disability rating of 60 percent or higher. Spouse separates from service at 10 years with 0 percent disability rating. Spouse reapplies for VA disability rating at 60. Spouse receives a rating of 70 percent or higher. Apply for property tax relief and pay nothing. Buy a motor home, drive all over the USA on the taxpayer’s dime. It happens.
Silent resistance
The Silent Personally Responsible Illinois 1818 is a nonexistent group that subscribes to conservative values. We are nonpartisan: we don’t care if you’re a Republican, an Independent, or a Never-Madigan-Hoffman-Pritzker Democrat. We ask you to continue working hard and elect responsible individuals to represent our families and future. We don’t have a website, Facebook page, events, protests or funding from any political party, operative, agent or taxpayers. We simply go about our lives working hard, paying taxes, raising our children, saving our own retirement money, advancing our community — even though those things require discipline and hard work and are disdained by some. We don’t ask you to join us, because there is nothing to join. You know who you are and we do what we do every day, no matter what. The Illinois Resistance is silent, busy, engaged and strong.
Union wounds us
If you are bleeding, do you enlarge the wound to increase blood flow? That’s exactly what 38,000 Illinois state workers (AFSCME) want to do. Democrats just increased your state taxes 32 percent. The already overpaid state workers are demanding a 29 percent raise. With 2018 elections coming, the Democrats are desperate to maintain power. They will give in to the state union demands for votes. Democrats already know taxpayers won’t mind getting their taxes raised again to pay these already inefficient, unproductive, overpaid workers. The Illinois teachers unions should be happy, too. If the AFSCME gets their big raises, won’t be any money left to pay into the already $116 billion unfunded teachers retirement fund. I love it, and the dumb teachers will still vote democratic. Intelligent people try to stop the flow of blood. The Democrats allow the patient to bleed to death, then blame someone else.
Forked tongues
The Illinois democratic politicians want to improve roads and bridges? The motivating reason is the jobless rank and file union voters are starting to figure out the Democrats speak with forked tongues. Where have these Democratic “I’m for the middle class” political clowns been for the past two decades? Racking up $17 billion in unpaid bills and raising your state income tax another 32 percent. Rep. Hoffman says infrastructure spending will create jobs (or maintain union votes). There’s no money. If Hoffman and his cronies were really worried about Illinois infrastructure, they wouldn’t have spent Illinois into its current state of massive debt. You’ve wasted all the money on your political pet projects, boys. You’ve let Illinois roads and bridges fall into decay.
Property owner?
Following the legal proceedings of the deceased Clinton County teen, at a teen party at a rural clubhouse, what is happening to the owner or lessee of that property?
Money for sex abuse
Not a single dime of Illinois taxpayer’s money should be spent on any projects to “fix” the lawmakers’ sex-harassment behavior. We can’t afford that and desperately need the backlog payments to health providers to be paid.
Art gallery here
With the overwhelming success of Art on the Square, I am surprised that there are no art galleries or museums in Belleville. That could be an interesting solution to the Meredith Home situation. Some want to preserve it for its historical significance. Some want to turn it into a park. Frankly, I could go without the place entirely. I just want them to do something with it. What about a compromise — how about a public art museum or a private art gallery?
NFL boycott
The Veterans Day weekend boycott of NFL games due to outrage over past National Anthem protests was either a resounding success or failure depending on your sources. If you watched the division-leading Los Angeles Rams game on television, it was hard not to notice there were more empty seats than full. You could have thrown free footballs into the stands and not hit anybody. On the other hand, the NFL reported attendance in the spacious, 93,607 capacity LA Memorial Coliseum was 60,032.
Wolf as sheep?
This is in response to an editorial written by Eric Rhein, which was published on Nov. 12. Eric is critical of the Belleville Police Department. I am fortunate to know many men and women in blue who work at the local, state and federal level, protecting the civil rights of all law-abiding citizens who are victims to criminals. He mentions his prior boss, State Attorney Brendan Kelly, making it clear that “in the criminal justice system there are sheep and there are wolves.” What Eric fails to do in his editorial is give the readers the full understanding of sheep and wolves and the story of “On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs” that is well known in the law enforcement community. Most of us are sheep who have no desire to hurt anyone. They need warriors to protect them from the predators, who are wolves. Wolves feed on sheep without mercy; they are evil people capable of evil deeds. Sheepdogs live to protect the sheep and confront the wolves. Perhaps Eric is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Whiners, complainers
We are doomed. Truth in advertising, read the fine print. Truth in news, based on an anonymous source. Don’t feel well, take a pill, but there may be side effects. Pregnant, get an abortion. Old and feeble, assisted suicide. It’s not my fault, but society’s. Get the money you deserve, sue their pants off. Served in the military you deserve disability, the list is long on what can be claimed. Times have changed. We are a society of whiners and complainers. Sit down, shut up and color. The government knows what’s best for us.
This story was originally published November 19, 2017 at 4:30 PM with the headline "BND readers sound off on bullying, sportsmanship, state spending."