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We welcome letters. Please include your full name,
address, and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to Letters,
Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256, Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958;
e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR HEALTH There is indeed a major health-insurance problem in
the U.S., as your article on March 29 pointed out [David Moberg, “The
health-care monster returns”]. Health care is very expensive because
very expensive solutions are very profitable. Drugs and surgery are the
main methods but only treat the symptoms and not the causes of disease. As
a result, disease usually doesn’t go away, and people get sicker.
Sick people fill hospital beds and run up large medical bills. Since
employer-paid insurance pays for most of it, the consumer thinks he’s
getting a great deal. Most everyone is making money — drug companies,
doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, insurance companies, stockholders, and
hospital-equipment suppliers — except that everyone is sicker. What can the average person do? Wake up! Start
thinking for yourself. Take responsibility for your own health. Be prepared
to put forth some effort to get healthy. Look for natural solutions that
address the cause of your problem. Put away the junk food and start
exercising. Bill Wellington Springfield
YOU CAN LEARN FROM ANNA NICOLE
Perhaps the recent situation involving Anna Nicole Smith’s
death carries with it a message of awakening. Even the most spiritually minded among us can fall
into the trap of thinking that fame and fortune will bring happiness
— and the more fame and fortune, the better. Oftentimes, however, as
dramatically evidenced in Anna Nicole’s case, the bigger they are,
the harder they fall. One of the last things Anna is reported to have said
was: “If I had it to do all over again, I’d still be waiting
tables at that little restaurant.”
There’s nothing wrong with having lots of things
and notoriety. The difficulty comes when we look to these things to provide
a feeling of self-worth and as a substitute for the real thing. What is the real thing? The fact that inside us is everything
we’ll ever want and need, a well-kept secret in this world of
external seeking. The truth is that well being can only come from within. Most of us have it all backward. We think that once we
have this or that thing, we’ll be happy. The very opposite is the
case. Once we uncover the peace within, external things often come to us.
And then we recognize things as quite secondary to what’s inside. To the Anna Nicole in all of us, what’s it to
be, inside or out?
Michelle
Sullivan
Chatham
THE WALKER REPORT ON WALKER I wish that you had received the final version of my
book instead of the prepublication advance galley that was edited before
final publication. As a prelude to his judgment that as governor I had a
“tendency to exaggerate,” Fletcher Farrar uses as a source the
famous writer John Barlow Martin, a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson in
1952, to contradict the galley’s statement that I “ran the
governor’s office while Stevenson was campaigning for
president” [“Dan Walker tells his story,” March 22].
Farrar quotes Martin as saying that I was merely “a helper to Newt
Minow, who was designated to run the governor’s office.”
All of this is wrong. First, in the book as edited,
the description of my role in Adlai Stevenson’s 1952 campaign was
rewritten by me. Nowhere does my book as published either say or imply that
I “ran the governor’s office.” But John Martin is wrong,
too. I was not a helper to my good friend and accomplished lawyer Newt
Minow (later chair of the Federal Communications Commission and a man whom
I much admire). In 1952, I worked for Carl McGowan, then legal counsel to
Gov. Stevenson. Carl controlled the state-government staff. John Martin and
Newt Minow served on the presidential campaign staff. I did work some with
Adlai on the campaign but mostly on state matters with Sherwood Dixon, the
lieutenant governor who under the Illinois Constitution became governor in
law and fact whenever Gov. Stevenson left the state, as he often did while
campaigning for the presidency. I don’t know what else caused Farrar to conclude
that I had a tendency to exaggerate my own performance but I do hope that
in the light of these facts he takes another look at that impression. I did write briefly about Barack Obama in the
conclusion to my book, but the statement regarding U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin
and Barack Obama that Farrar quoted in his review is not in the final book,
having been eliminated at the page-proof stage. [This is what appears about Obama in the final edition:
A rising star on the political horizon is
Illinois U.S. Senator Barack Obama, who has raised hopes that he can
restore luster to the land of Lincoln. He opened his campaign for the
presidency with generous praise for Mayor Daley, carefully sublimating the
existing Chicago scandals in his statement. This was in striking contrast
to his hard-hitting attack on the corruption in Kenya when he was recently
in Africa. Is the Kenya corruption worse than that involving more than 120
criminal indictments that helped label Chicago “the most corrupt city
in the nation?” Regrettably, Obama seems to be following in the
footsteps of those Illinois “independents”: Democrats before
him who ended up kowtowing to a Boss Daley. If Obama quails before a
political boss in Chicago, how will he as president deal with powerful
major malefactors abroad?] I will quarrel with Farrar’s judgment that I
arrogantly refused to accommodate Mayor Richard J. Daley. Not so. I many
times accommodated the mayor of Chicago, just as I did the mayors of many
other Illinois cities. I did not accommodate political boss Daley, and I
thank Farrar for including my conclusion that I “hold high an
independent head that has never ‘cottoned to
bowing.’”
I do have to ask again the question I asked in my book:
Why do you and others ask, as so many reporters have over the years,
“Why didn’t Gov. Walker more often accommodate Mayor
Daley?” and never ask, “Why didn’t Mayor Daley ever
accommodate Gov. Walker?”
Naturally, I hope that all your Illinois Times readers will be
curious enough to read The Maverick and The
Machine to reach their own conclusions. Dan Walker Escondido, Calif.
Editor’s note: Dan Walker made the statement
describing his role during Stevenson’s presidential campaign in an
interview with Fletcher Farrar in 1973.
PUSHING BACK AGAINST PUSH POLL I recently received a call from a “political
survey” that purported to be checking out my reaction to certain
things concerning Mayor Tim Davlin and Ald. Bruce Strom and checking my
reluctance to vote for either of them on the basis of alleged information
about each one. There was also a section of the “survey”
that inquired about my reaction to certain things about Bob Bartnik and Sam
Cahnman, who are running for alderman in my ward. The
“information” about Bartnick was based on his association with
the existing political framework and certain personalities within it, but
the “information” about Cahnman was entirely personal, ugly,
and had nothing to do with his ability to do the alderman’s job
and/or his past experience in local politics. I objected then to this line of campaigning, and I
object to it now! I want to vote for a person on the basis of his or her
ability and experience and willingness to do a job with enthusiasm, not
with alleged personal issues or any other factor that doesn’t enter
into his or her capability on the City Council. I do not know who is responsible for this low style of
campaigning — placing garbage in a “survey” calculated to
pass gossip and innuendo — but I am sure others are sick and tired of
that ridiculous lack of integrity. Let’s hear the issue and vote on
the basis of ability! Let’s clean it up, Springfield! Judy Brown Springfield
GIVE POWER COMPANIES SOME RELIEF Remember the power outages we had this past year?
There were at least two big ones. If the power companies had downsized it
would have been worse. I am not saying that we should give the outrageous
amounts they want, but more is fair and should allow them to stay
effective. Sure, we all want something for nothing; most people do. That is
not a successful way to conduct business. Give ’em a break and keep
us powered up. Patrick Johnopolos Springfield
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2007.
