I am writing to express my sincere appreciation to all those who recently attended the memorial services for Chief Warrant Officer 2 Chris Donaldson. As you know, Warrant Officer Donaldson was killed in Afghanistan while serving his country this past May 5th.
The stunning turnout at the memorial service was eloquent testimony to the love and affection felt for Warrant Officer Donaldson and his family, and also to our nation’s continuing fidelity and the ideals of freedom and honor. As Pastor Rensner said so well, “heroes fall so we may stand.” We here in Illinois, along with the rest of the nation, can be proud by the fact that we still honor the sacrifices made by our heroes in uniform, and their families.
A special thank you should also be directed toward the members of the Patriot Guard, who appeared in impressive numbers. Their willingness to be present to honor the sacrifice of Warrant Officer Donaldson and protect his family is something we should all be grateful for.
As always, it is an honor to serve you.
DALE A. RIGHTER
State Senator
55th District

The Republicans are doing it again. They are pulling the Democrats into yet again, another one of those election year traps. President Bush announced awhile back (during a time when he and his administration were once again being listed in the headline news for their abuses of power and their lies) that he planned on fighting for a “real immigration bill, one that includes a guest worker program.”
In walk the Democrats, immediately pushing for the president’s plan with a few exceptions, such as, no punishment for wanting to be an American, etc.
The Republicans know that Democrats have always been the party for the underdog. Therein lies the famous trap. Get the Democrats on record for wanting what most would call amnesty for illegal aliens. Get them on record; saying we shouldn’t be punishing these people for wanting to be Americans and why shouldn’t they be allowed to draw Social Security and medical care, they’re human beings too.
The Republicans know that President Bush isn’t running for office again.
This issue will not hurt him. They know they can walk away from the president’s guest worker program and still be on the side of most Americans.
The polls say that most American’s wouldn’t mind allowing the illegal to stay, but they must pay for their crime of crossing our borders illegally and using a false Social Security number and other things like that. Polls say Americans don’t want an amnesty program; these people must go back and work their way into our system legally, they say.
What do you suppose Americans will do on Election Day when they find out their candidate supports an amnesty-‘like’ program? There are other polls out there telling us Americans won’t support a candidate the supports the war in Iraq. Do you honestly think they will vote for one that supports amnesty for the illegal?
The trap door has been shut.
What will be next? Abortion? Gay marriage? I wonder if the Democrats will be smart enough to set a few traps themselves. How about discussing tax cuts Americans didn’t get because of the near tripling of gas prices in five years of GOP control. Perhaps, they could discuss how our privacy is being sucked away, along with good jobs, or the user fees added by this administration. Can’t wait to see what traps Democrats set.
CONNIE MANES
Mattoon

It appears that SBLHC or Mr. Barnett has chased another doctor from Coles County. We saw what happened in Neoga, is your corporate arrogance so out of control that you think you can keep doing this unchecked? If you treat your physicians and staff this way, it makes us wonder how much you really care for the patient.
You see a person’s decision in insurance coverage is sometimes directly related to the doctors offered by a particular plan. Not so much by how pretty the landscaping is or how big the building is. It’s what you have inside of that building that matters, When your choice is a doctor that no longer practices at SBLHC, it makes your decision much easier to leave town for health care. With the Carle surgical center, you remind me of the class bully that stomps around demanding everything be his way.
Are you afraid of Carle or are you afraid they are going to use your play book on how to manipulate employees, customers and competition. After all we are the customers (patients). If you keep chasing away the people we feel comfortable with then we will feel compelled to leave town and taking our insurance and health care dollars with us.
I don’t see the problem with Carle coming here if your insurance is with them then you are already going there for treatment anyway. The only people you are going to hurt by not letting them build their surgical center here is the people of Coles County that have to drive to Urbana. Trust me, if they already have the insurance for Carle and don’t like the hospital politics going on down here, then they are not about to change it just because of a short drive.
It is hard to read any credibility from your employees, letters to the editor, or newspaper ads with signatures. It isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that this might be a requirement to maintain a job at SBLHC. Possibly, a feeling promoted from management?
Someone needs to remind Mr. Barnett that turning a respected hospital into a ghost town would look bad on his resume. Something he might be wise to update. I cannot imagine our distinguished board of directors putting up with this much longer.
JIM NEES
Charleston

All of us are affected in some way by the high price of gas. After housing, transportation is the second highest cost for American families, outpacing both food and health-care costs. Since January 2003, gas prices have increased by 100 percent. Everyone has an opinion about what should be done, but no one has been able to provide relief.
Today, June 8, the Illinois Public Transportation Association is calling on residents throughout Illinois to fight high gas prices by using public transportation for all their transit needs. Labeled National Dump the Pump Day, cities across the state will be joining other public transportation systems throughout the nation to show that using public transit is the quickest way to beat the high cost of gas.
This initiative will help attract first-time riders or those who are unfamiliar with using public transportation. It is well-documented that when drivers try transit, many become regular users and want more of it. During the past 10 years, public transportation use nationally has grown 25.1% — faster than highway travel (22.5%). National Dump the Pump Day can show thousands more residents that our state’s transit systems offer easy, comfortable, and convenient ways to get to work or almost any other destination.
Beyond helping the family budget, transit offers other important benefits. Public transit use saves 855 million gallons of gasoline every year. If Americans used public transportation for roughly 10 percent of daily travel needs, the United States would reduce its dependence on imported oil from the Persian Gulf by more than 40 percent.
Also, as traffic congestion becomes an increasingly serious problem in more and more communities, it reduces travel time for commuters.
Today, leave your cars parked in your driveway, invite a friend or co-worker to join you, climb aboard your local transit system and participate in National Dump the Pump Day!
If you don’t have public transportation in your area, take your bicycle out of storage and see what that bike trail is like or join your neighbors for a brisk walk to work or to the grocery store. Dump the Pump is today.
LINDA W. PODESCHI
Executive Director
Illinois Public Transportation Association

Nearly everyone knows of President Harry Truman’s famous quote, “The Buck Stops Here.” However, few know of another of his less famous quotes. He once said that there was a point in his life when he had the choice of becoming a piano player in a Whore House or becoming a politician. He chose the latter of course, but was known to have exclaimed to friends in private, that there was really wasn’t that much difference in the two vocations.
As corruption escalates in the political field’s of both parties, we can easily understand where Harry was coming from. Too bad that most would be politicians didn’t just learn to play the piano, and stay out of the political arena.
In far too many cases, congressmen and senators of both parties have hung the for sale sign out shortly after taking office. Will Rogers quote from many years ago still rings as true as ever. “We have the best politicians that money can buy.”
Unfortunately, these people feel that they are above the laws that we common people must live by. Many, Republicans and Democrats alike, were terribly upset when the FBI searched the home of a Louisiana congressman and found $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer. Apparently not so upset by what was found, but upset by the fact that the FBI would respond in such an aggressive manner to one of their own elite members, even though that congressman had ignored a subpoena.
Illinois politicians in general are but a microcosm of the national scene, and one parry is every bit as corrupt as the other. The “culture of corruption” as one Democratic spokesman has characterized Republican officeholders, needs only a change to Democrat power for us to see the same morally corrupt business as usual. Dishonesty knows no party affiliation. There are very few ethical statesmen in public service today, but many unethical scoundrels hold high public office across our land.
JACK PIERCE
Charleston

There is no “magic wand” or magic in evolution. The principles and processes of nature have been going on for millions of years and are still at work today. You can see the results in the corn and beans in the fields, the bread on your table, the roses blooming in your gardens, and the people that walk down the streets.
Psalm 139-16 states, “Your eyes beheld my unformed substance, In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” What on earth does that say about evolution, or DNA or even creation?
Now verse 13 might have been quoted, that states , “for it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” That verse isn’t against evolution. That is just an argument for God starting it all. Remember there are two separate issues, the mechanisms that carry life along and what started it all/set everything in motion.
Evolution is plain and simply “Change with modification.” It really is quite remarkable when you realize that built into every organism is the ability to modify itself, piece by piece, one little bit at a time, to change with the times. Not all changes are successful (they don’t work perfectly and die out). Changes are made slowly and some organisms don’t have time to make the changes needed to survive (extinction of the dinosaurs). But some of their genetic material lives on, not all life on earth was wiped out with the dinosaurs.
We share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees. Their hearts and lungs function as ours do. They reproduce the same way we do. They care for their infants, live in family groups, have aggressors and peace makers in their populations the same as we do. A recent commercial for the St. Louis Zoo on TV asks, “What are we doing with our two percent?“
Somewhere in that two percent is the ability to ask questions, to read, and to wonder. Also within that two percent is the ability to be fearful of science and education. I hope you will use your two percent to embrace learning, and science, to ask the questions and search for answers. When you learn about evolution you will discover that it really is a “miraculous” mechanism.
SUSAN HUMPHREYS
Oakland

We are very concerned with what is happening to health care in Coles County at the hands of Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center. We were disturbed when Mr. Padgett was dismissed when he was clearly valued by many patients in Neoga. Now we see that Coles County is going to lose Dr. Spaniol, Mr. Pitts, and possibly Dr. Climaco and Dr. McKechnie.
We don’t have all the facts, but the reasons for these dismissals do not appear to be related to the quality of health care provided by them. We know by personal experience that Mr. Pitts is an excellent provider. Testimonials to Dr. Spaniol’s competence have already started appearing in the newspaper, like in Mr. Padgett’s case.
Personal conflict with the administration of SBLHC seems to be the driving force behind these dismissals. Quality health care should take precedence over personality conflicts. Patients should also have their own choice of doctors, not just the ones that agree with the administration of SBLHC.
It appears that the administration at SBLHC is trying to control who provides our health care. In doing so, the community is losing many good doctors. Recruitment of new doctors could be difficult — what doctor in his or her right mind would come to a community with our precedent of dismissing health-care personnel? Also, a shortage of doctors in the area would not be an attractive hiring point for any employer in Coles County. Do the administrators at SBLHC realize how far-reaching an effect their policy will have on our community?
Please join us in urging the administration at SBLHC to reconsider their current policies. Demand that they stop firing or restricting the hospital privileges of our healthcare providers without good cause. We need to keep these valuable people here in Coles County. The well-being of our community depends on having good healthcare.

Ellen and
Keith Wolcott
Charleston

My husband and I visit Charleston for several weeks during each year, and we often feel that we might like to settle there for the remainder of our retirement years. I grew up there, and am a graduate of Eastern.
Now we wonder whether such a choice might be wise. Like most elderly people, we need to know that we will have access to good medical care, and the things that we are hearing about Sarah Bush Lincoln do not make us feel secure about that. It sounds as if the voices of the “ordinary folks” are being ignored in favor of those with more political and financial power.
We are familiar with Sarah Bush Lincoln Hospital, and we respect the doctors, nurses, and other staff members whom we have met there. The major problems do not seem to stem from those people.
The community is losing good doctors, forcing many people to seek other care; in most places, that is not an easy thing to do.
Maybe, instead of good doctors leaving their well-established practices, Sarah Bush Lincoln needs to re-evaluate the performance levels of its executive branch.
MARGARET BRIGGS METHENY
Green Cove Springs, Fla.

Setting record straight on pension funds reform
There has been a great deal of misleading rhetoric surrounding the reforms the Illinois General Assembly made last year to the pension funds of teachers and public employees. I would like to set the record straight.
Unfortunately, more than 30 years of neglect and underfunding, coupled with recent economic downturns, left Illinois’ pensions in poor shape. The massive salaries (as much as $350,000) and pensions that administrators in suburban Chicago were receiving at the expense of downstate teachers and classroom funding only added to the pressures on the pension systems.
I have supported reforms to end such abuses and protect the long-term solvency of the pensions systems. I also supported legislation during my first term that allowed the state to take advantage of historically low interest rates and contribute an additional $7.4 billion to the state pension funds. Furthermore, more money has been put into the pension funds of our teachers and public employees on average per year for the last four years than had been contributed during the previous 12 years.
This is an election year, which is undoubtedly the reason some politicians and their leader from the Chicago suburbs are using scare tactics to mislead and frighten many retirees into believing their retirement is in jeopardy. Their tactics do not change the fact that every person contributing to the state’s pension systems will receive their full benefits upon retirement, as provided for in the state constitution.
The challenges facing the state’s pension systems did not happen overnight and they will not be fixed overnight. But I remain committed to working toward ensuring that our local teachers and employees receive the benefits they have earned.
BOB FLIDER
State Representative -101 St District

As a patient of Dr. Jack Spaniol’s for many years, I have been pleased with the medical care I have received.
Dr. Spaniol is a very caring and competent physician. The news that he is no longer affiliated with SBLHC and will close his office is very discouraging.
This turn of events causes me to wonder if our hospital is truly concerned with the welfare of the residents of Coles County.
FLORENCE WOODYARD
Charleston