SpeakOut 8/19

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Call 471-6636

I would like to comment on Jack Stapleton's column on welfare kids. You can tell the man doesn't know a thing about what actually happens in the welfare system. When the children are put into foster care they are given food, beds, homes and loving care and help in every way possible with the transition of what is happening in their lives, and why it is happening. His last line about Jeff City needs to recognize the best way to help children is to help his or her family. He doesn't know beans from a hole in the ground because that's what DFS does do. The parents are sent to classes. The parents are put into anger management and are given every chance and every opportunity to learn how to be better parents and what to do. But when he suggested that the parents who have eight or nine kids and two or three of them are sick and the rest are dirty or hungry - my grandmother used to say you can be poor, but water is free - there is no excuse for it. The parents are taught. They are given classes and are given every opportunity to better themselves and to learn what to do to help their children and the country and the government just keeps giving the parents more and more rights and keep sending the children home to drug-using, alcohol-using, abusive (verbal, mental and physical abuse), they keep sending them home and they end up hurt, and the kids don't have any rights, no protection. It's because the parents have all the rights.

I would like to thank a couple of guys at B.J.'s on Aug. 8 who helped me when I had trouble with my van. Thank you and God bless you for helping me because I did not know what to do and they did their best. I'm glad we have good people like this in the world.

I would like to SpeakOut about the big cement that big company from Switzerland wants to build in Ste. Genevieve. I heard on KFVS News where the environmental people were getting in the way again and giving them a little trouble. We need industry. You people up there need industry. You stayed right in there until you got the flood wall finished. Now stay in there and battle those environmentalists. You have people like Jim Talent, Kit Bond and maybe JoAnn Emerson (I don't know if she'll be in there or not, but if she is, she will be in there pitching). I haven't heard anything from Jefferson City on this yet. Why don't you people (city fathers and things) wake them up in Jefferson City and see if they can give you a little help; at least give you some support? I feel in my heart that you people will get that cement plant. Stay right in there and don't give up. Don't be a quitter. You don't want to quit on something like this if a big company from across the ocean is this concerned about building a big cement plant up there. I think you people deserve it and I hope you get it.

My daughter's silver Mitsubishi was hit on Aug. 9 between 7:30 and 8:30 on the Wal-Mart parking lot by a bright Chevy truck. Anyone with information on this, please call (573) 471-6191 or 472-3895.

I read in SpeakOut where someone needs a truck to haul gravel. I would be more than happy to use my truck to haul that gravel for them. Call me at 471-9455 or 931-0504 and ask for Rob.