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telephone number. We edit all letters for libel, length and clarity.
Send letters to: Letters, Illinois Times. P.O. Box 5256. Springfield, Illinois
62705. Fax: (217) 753-3958. E-mail: editor@illinoistimes.com
FIRST AIMEE, THEN WHAT?
I read Karen High’s letter [March 10]
about the banning of Aimee, and I ask myself, “Don’t the
neoconservatives have anything else better to do?” As a
writer and an avid reader, I’m extremely disappointed and
angry that, once again, conservatives flex their power to attack
the arts. I have not read the banned book, but I’m positive
it’s not as vile as American
Psycho and A Clockwork Orange, for both
portray murder, rape, and extreme violence; or perhaps Weasel, a novel for
young adults about a serial killer living in the woods. The Lord of the Rings
series deals with warlocks, monsters, and spells. And how about Lord of the Flies? In
this book, preadolescent boys murder each other!
Whether the neocons like it or not, most
books aimed at young adults are like the pieces I just named. The
content of most teen books is usually gritty to capture the realism
of the society they live in today. So to even ban Aimee from
Glenwood Middle School is preposterous. Besides, teens and children
can’t and shouldn’t be protected from everything. And I
find it hard to believe that a district employee had the community
in mind when the book was withdrawn.
The conservatives’ crusade to ban books
they consider unsuitable is suspicious, as well as ridiculous. If
they continue to attack every piece of art that supposedly violates
“community values,” there will be no books left in the
schools.
Shermeeka Mason
Springfield
STARVING THE BEAST
While almost everyone else was in a dither
about Social Security plans that President George W. Bush
highlighted in his State of the Union speech, Rush Limbaugh was
ecstatic and flying high about the proposal to eliminate possibly
150 governmental operations. And well he might be!
After all, it has been a number of years
since a little-known conservative foundation created by Texas
energy and defense scions laid down a strategy following the Reagan
proposition that government is the enemy of the people.
That strategy — directed at programs
created in large part by Democratic administrations — was
simple: Starve them out of existence. It is now called
“starve the beast.”
The initial critical reaction was a
presumption that the creators of this grand plan were most
interested in targeting administrative regulations they considered
painful to their own prosperity. After all, if you elect an
administration friendly to your philosophy, you can effectively
weaken a government regulatory agency to the point it is
meaningless. First, tax cuts were basic. Next, get Congress to
accept budgetary restraints on operations.
The guys who helped put Bush in the Texas
governor’s chair also were there to guide him and Vice
President Dick Cheney in their tax-cut and energy plans immediately
on taking over the White House. From budgetary surpluses under Bill
Clinton there emerged tight fiscal policy.
Thanks to the war in Iraq, there is now a
ballooning deficit that the president says he can cut in half
sometime after he leaves office — if we just make massive
cuts in ongoing domestic operations. Of course, he doesn’t
want to take the Democrats’ suggestion of lifting that tax
cut on the millionaires to better handle expenses or raise the
Social Security deduction ceiling from $90,000-a-year incomes to
perhaps $100,000 or $120,000 to better fund Social
Security.
No, it is better to quit underwriting Amtrak
operations outside the East Coast corridor, get out of most
low-cost-housing subsidies and so much assistance to Small Business
Administration operations, and on and on in areas where, Bush says,
there is no demonstrated success. (Excuse me, isn’t this a
direct commentary on four years of Bush administration of the laws
and programs involved?)
Even while talking about expanding his No
Child Left Behind Act (which he never fully funded last year), he
would gut vocational-education programs and make other cuts in
educational areas. Without checking all of the 150 areas of alleged
nonperformance or worth, I am sure not one of them deals with his
wealthy friends’ interests.
It is interesting to note that Tom DeLay and
his Republican House powerhouse team always load up massive
pork-barrel projects every time they can on spending bills —
but it is almost always in special-interest matters and not toward
ongoing budgeted operations. And Bush has never vetoed one of them!
It is a travesty to think what has happened
to the philosophy enunciated by that Republican from Illinois
— that this was a land where we had a government of the
people, by the people, and for the people. It is not a conservative
policy we see in Washington. It is a radical policy motivated by
greed.
Burnell Heinecke
Springfield
READ ALL ABOUT IT
If you read only one more book in your life,
let it be John Perkins’ Confessions
of an Economic
Hit Man (Berrett-Koehler
Publishers, 2004). It puts together all the pieces of the puzzle to
spell out the agenda of the American global empire since World War
II. It reads like the plot of a James Bond movie. But, besides
that, learn why Saddam Hussein could have remained in power and
Iraq would have become another Saudi Arabia. Learn why we really
went after Manuel Noriega. Learn why 9/11 prevented us from
carrying out an invasion of Venezuela, which had been on our hit
list. And much, much more.
Perkins speaks of what he calls the
“corporatocracy,” a secret collaboration by big
corporations, international banks, and the government whose goal is
to deprive Third World countries of their precious resources and
put them into perpetual indebtedness and servitude, subject to our
political will. Learn why so much of the world hates us.
And when you have finished reading this book,
tell your friends about it.
Beni Kitching
Springfield
PROTECT PRIVACY OF MEDICAL RECORDS
A suspicious and dangerous trend is emerging
in Kansas and Indiana. Politicians are tramping on the
public’s rights and invading medical privacy to further their
own ideological ends.
In Kansas, Attorney General Phill Kline has
demanded the full, unedited, and private medical records of
approximately 90 women who were treated at two Kansas clinics that
provide abortion services.
Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter is
abusing the power of his office by seizing the medical records of
minors who received birth-control and related health-care services
at Planned Parenthood of Indiana health centers.
Why? It’s not clear. Kline has implied
that it may have something to do with a hunch he has about whether
the records indicate some sort of sexual abuse of minors.
Planned Parenthood cares deeply about
protecting minors from sexual abuse, and we work hard every day
across the country to care for the survivors of sexual assault. But
we cannot allow the sacred medical privacy of our patients to be
violated because of a hunch, guess, estimate, or intuition —
no matter whose it is.
Roger Ricketts
Member, Board of Directors
Planned Parenthood Springfield Area
PROMOTING CONDOM, NOT LIFE, SKILLS
There is new sex-education legislation on
Illinois’ horizon thanks to the seven senators who voted it
out of committee: Carol Ronen, Mattie Hunter, Iriz Martinez, Kwame
Raoul, Jeff Schoenberg, Susan Garrett, and Maggie Crotty.
Senate Bill 457 would require tax money to go
only toward comprehensive sex-ed school curriculum. What, exactly,
is comprehensive sex-ed? It’s everything you can imagine
— and some things you haven’t considered. It promotes
condom skills, not life skills.
Here’s an example taken from
comprehensive sex-ed curriculum for adolescents titled Be Proud! Be Responsible!: “Go to the store together. Buy lots of different
brands and colors [of condoms]. Plan a special day when you can
experiment. Just talking about how you’re going to use all of
those condoms can be a turn on.”
Parents, if this concerns you, contact your
state senator and ask them to oppose SB 457 and use our tax dollars
to teach our children abstinence until marriage.
Kathy Valente
Illinois State Director
Concerned Women for America
Lansing
CORRECTION
The name of House Minority Leader Tom Cross was
misspelled in a photo caption in the March 24 edition.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2005.
