Sound Off, Sept. 6: Head lice, gun control, abandoned cars
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On Westgate party: I want to thank the west side businesses and patrons that had the Westgate party the other night on Saturday. It was really a good time by all, and I know they go out of their way to provide a good venue on a Saturday afternoon and night.
On Obama visiting glacier: This particular glacier was first found to be retreating in 1800. It had retreated a mile by 1900, well before the industrial revolution and certainly before man's supposed impact on the climate. Now the president is going to go and try to pretend that this started late in this century, and he'll tell all the low-information voters this, and, of course, they will lap it up because they don't check their facts or have a clue.
On Gov. Walker: This concerns Walker denying being a career politician. He's been on the taxpayer's dime since he was 25, and if it walks like a duck and looks like a duck and smells like a skunk, it's a career politician.
—I'm wondering who is running Wisconsin while Walker's out campaigning.
On Hillary Clinton emails: On Page 1A Sept. 1 The Gazette says experts deem emails not mishandled. Well, there are experts that deem the absolute opposite—that they were mishandled—but The Gazette puts this on the front page. Now, why do you suppose that is?
On Obama secrecy: To those people who want more transparency from Gov. Walker: Where were you during these last seven years with President Obama? We have never had a president who hid more and then lied when he was exposed.
On sales tax: Illinois has a sales tax of 9.25 percent. Why can't our state legislatures get together and increase our 5.5 percent sales tax one-half percent to 6 percent? It would probably bring in millions of dollars for education and roads. Come on, legislatures, get together and make this happen.
On head lice: I've always felt it disgusting and gross that the Janesville public school system would allow sharing of headphones in libraries and language classes. Now we find that our system thinks this is very much acceptable even with the possibility of head lice, head lice that are now resistant to medication. Janesville wake up, no shared headphones. Mrs. Schulte, would you please stay home and pay attention to what is going on in the Janesville public school district.
On gun control: Why, why, why every time innocent citizens are shot and killed our leaders immediately segue to gun control but with all the evidence on the subject of our nonexistent mental health system is given brief lip service and quickly dropped as a solution?
On Janesville schools: Superintendent Karen Schulte is doing the best she can. The system is better than it was. As far as balancing the budget on the backs of employees, what do businesses normally do when things get tight? Usually the employees have to bear their responsibility in tightening up the budget. Teachers have had such a free rein for so many years that they're just having a difficult time living in the real world. As far as Quirk and Meyers not going along with Schulte, is this any surprise, people, when you elected these two?
—Why aren't school employee spouses paying more for insurance? Janesville school employees pay only $150 a month for a family plan with a $200 deductible for families, yet they still complain of a 2 percent raise, this is totally wrong. We the people of Janesville should be able to vote the issues like this, not school board members. Costs that low would be like winning the lottery.
On Innovation Express: Has anybody paid attention to the numbers that us taxpayers subsidize $450,000 per year? There are 24,000 riders on the bus both ways, and if you divide the numbers, that's $18.75 per rider that us taxpayers are subsidizing, and they say that this year's ridership is half that so basically we are paying $36 for every person who gets on that bus. I think that is a little obnoxious.
On abandoned vehicles: The city ordinance defines as abandoned any vehicle parked on the street longer than 24 hours without being driven. We're retired. We don't drive our vehicles every day. There's times we go a week at a time without driving our vehicle, so they're going to take that as being abandoned? This is ridiculous.
On postal workers: For anyone complaining about post office workers, unless you work there and know what they have to endure, you'd be crabby too.
On border wall: Scott Walker said recently he would look at building a 5,800-mile wall on the Canadian border if elected president. Are you kidding us? Scottie can't get an 80-mile road built and paid for from Madison to Rockford—the I-90 project.