From our readers

Letter to Editor:

Gardening and Politics

Plant your garden and remove all weeds to prevent the lifeblood from being sucked out of the plants you want to eat.

Plant responsible leaders in federal and state offices. When they start to suck the lifeblood out of the hardworking Americans, go to the polls and weed them out with your vote. There are so many free handouts out there now that the hardworking people can’t support them too much longer.

Some leaders are giving out free entitlements of every kind, just to get your vote. After Nov. 6 I think all those free entitlements will be taken away from you. Don’t vote for free entitlements, vote for leadership only.

We need a budget and a farm bill or our country could be heading for trouble. Farmers don’t know what to plant next spring without a farm bill. Vote for responsible leaders only.

Kathy Heidewald

Letter to the Editor:

I am very worried about the future of our country. We are facing a “fiscal cliff” in January, in which things in our already stressed economy could rapidly get much worse. Much depends on the outcome of the election. While I cannot tell you how to vote, I strongly urge you to consider all the issues carefully and to exercise your right to vote.

I would like to present some facts to take into consideration. We are all in this together, although the current administration and the press have created an environment that pits employers against employees, doctors against patients, the “rich 1%” against everyone else—as the government “spreads the wealth around.”

A huge part of the problem concerns the one-seventh to one-sixth of the economy called “healthcare.” People are very worried about the future of their medical care.

ObamaCare promises to solve the problems in our medical system. It promises to lower costs, to cover everyone or nearly everyone, to improve quality, and to allow you to keep your insurance plan or your doctor if you like them. You have probably heard about pre-existings and 26-year-old children many times. Those two popular pages come with nearly 1,000 other pages that people dislike when they learn about them.

The Congressional Budget Office’s estimated cost has already more than doubled. The “savings” from taking money out of Medicare payments are now $716 billion.

The costs of insurance premiums have gone up about $3,000, and many employers may drop their workers’ insurance plans. The premiums may be much greater than penalties for dropping coverage. One way to decrease penalties is to lay off workers. Many workers will wind up on Medicaid.

Many believe that physicians are among “the 1%.” Some even say that American medicine is more expensive than European medicine because doctors make too much money. I won’t ask you to feel sorry for physicians, but you might like to know that the costs of running a practice siphon off 60% or even more of all revenue. With ObamaCare, bureaucratic compliance costs will go up, and revenue will go down.

Many physicians love their practices and their patients so much that they have been subsidizing their payroll and office expenses from their savings, but this cannot continue indefinitely. Physicians are selling their practices to hospitals or other large entities or even retiring altogether. What this means to you as a patient is that you may not be able to keep your doctor because he simply won’t be there.

Alternately, your doctor might be there but he might not be working for you. He will rather be dependent on a payout from an accountable care organization, which is focused on decreasing total expenditures and eliminating “disparities.” That means redistributing care from the patients who need it most to those who best serve to meet the plan’s “quality” and cost objectives.

It is believed by the Administration that at least a third of the care that is rendered to Medicare patients is unnecessary. This may mean that your hip replacement, your cataract surgery, or treatment of your heart disease or pneumonia is among the unnecessary costs—or perhaps “futile” costs because you are after all frail and elderly and have many chronic conditions and cannot be restored to a robust state of health.

The House of Representatives has voted some 30 times to repeal ObamaCare. This will not even come to a vote in the Senate and will surely be vetoed by the President if there is not a change in the majority party in the Senate or the occupant of the White House.

You may recall from reading George Orwell’s classic book Animal Farm that as problems on the farm grew more and more severe, the good old workhorse named Boxer decided that he would just work a little bit harder. Ultimately, however, he could no longer carry the load and was sent to the glue factory.

Our country is in dire financial straits. “Asking the rich to pay a little more” is not going to solve the problem. We must unleash the forces of free enterprise in the economy so that the economy can grow, generating wealth and productive enterprise.

I think the choices in this election are pretty stark: Between those who plan to increase the load on the productive area of the economy and extract more and more to be redistributed to less productive sectors or individuals—or those who believe that we need to unleash the forces of freedom. We need to have all of our nation’s talented and productive people working as hard as they can and investing their capital, rather than deciding to quit while they are still a little bit ahead.

ObamaCare is an experiment—of a type that has always failed—and we are the guinea pigs. But once the current system is destroyed, there is no going back.

Will your candidate vote to repeal ObamaCare? Or does he want to redistribute your wealth and your care? Please think about these issues. Talk to your friends, family, and associates. Do not be distracted by talking points or by promised benefits that politicians simply cannot deliver when we’re already $16 trillion in debt. The future of our country, including the lives of your children and grandchildren, depend on you.

I hope that when the New Year comes, I will still be here to sign your paycheck or to serve you when you are ill.

If you have questions, ask me. I would be delighted to discuss the issues with you.

Sincerely Your Doctor,

Robert T. McQueeney, M.D.,

Marinette

Editor:

“The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.” Jean de la Bruyere, French moralist.

With the results of Harvard’s study of fluoride showing the lowering of IQs in children, I hope that this would get to the public’s attention regardless of politics, and of agendas.

Fluoride dulls the mind as well as making people passive, so startlingly shown in Nazi Germany where it was given to prison and concentration camp inmates to make them passive and less likely to riot or escape.

Dr. Dean Burk, former head chemist at the National Cancer Institute, said, “Fluoride causes more human cancer than any other chemical.”

Should one look further into the fluoride myth, you will find it has no effect on cavities.

Robert Davis,

Marinette

To the editor:

Medicare and Social Security are crucial programs for Wisconsin seniors. Many of my friends and neighbors need these services in order to remain independent. These are American citizens who have worked for their entire lives. They've played by the rules, paid into the system, and they deserve to receive the benefits they were promised.

Calling for an end to programs like Medicare and Social Security amounts to a slap in the face for senior citizens. Congressman Reid Ribble voted twice to cut Medicare and called Social Security a "Ponzi Scheme' that should be phased out. Frankly, that's an insult to seniors everywhere and he should be ashamed of himself. We made a promise to our senior citizens, and we need to keep that promise. For this reason, I will be voting for Jamie Wall in November.

Respectfully,

David S. Patz

Green Bay

Editor:

The time has come for someone to step up and take credit for all the mistakes made on our City Beautification Project. Two years ago everyone at City Hall knew the bridge would be out in 2012 yet all the bids for the project seem to have got lost or not signed properly.

The bridge ended up taking one month longer than reported to the public and that affected ever business in town way too much. They took forever to complete the so-called pretty Brick Project on Oconto Ave. and of course the new city-owned parking lot.

Now the Green Area by the river is getting done - of course. But someone forgot the taxpaying businesses along French St. need sidewalks, driveways and street lights. Just beautiful!

Shame on you, Mayor Al, City Engineer and the entire City Council.

Tom Lund,

Peshtigo

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