The September 15th "Roscoe Watch" - Online Version

A "front-page" article in the August 4th Sumner Press:

When Will it be Our Turn

" Federal highway budget passed within the week is for $284 billion over six years. Illinois should receive at least $10 billion of that amount. Will the long overdue Illinois highway building boom begin? Apparently not.
For starters, Illinois Department of Transportation allotted $75,000 for 2005 highway building in Lawrence County. In obvious irony, The Daily Record headlined, "Improvements to be made at RHSP entrance."
We remembered former Senator Fitzgerald's claim that IDOT had committed all federal funds to O'Hare Airport road construction until the end of time. We weren't shortchanged; we were robbed.
Forty years ago, Route 50 was made four lanes wide from the Wabash River westward for ten miles. Life's too short to wait another 40 years for the modernization of the highway that would bring industry, jobs, opportunity for civic revival, retention of the youth in home communities. But none of these dreams will come to pass without a public uprising. The chant must become a roar, "Throw the rascals out."
Only by such determined effort can there be a better economic tomorrow in a county that's going down the drain without a gurgle."

Then, in the August 25th edition, we see in the article about the Republican rally for the "meet and greet" of James Oberweis, gubernatorial candidate for Governor:

" While the candidate made an impressive showing in the Republican primary for U. S. Senate, 2004, he has, by own admission, a "tin ear" for politics. That trait was evidenced by his refusal to predict four lanes for Route 50, Lawrenceville to Salem, during his first term, or even to promise to strive mightily to create this area's identified needed lifeline.
The Press will support no candidate for Governor who doesn't promise, on his mother's honor, to strive mightily to build the road during his first term. This newspaper doesn't give a hoot where the candidate stands on abortion, gun control, or self-flagellation for past political missteps. Oberweis is against the first two, for the third. Our impoverished area needs the big road now if the slide into economic oblivion is to be reversed."

Note #1: Hey Roscoe! Would it not make more sense to widen Route 50 to four lanes all the way to St. Louis, via Salem?

And now, this week, Roscoe writes:

" Relocation into many other large cities of those who lived in lower Ward 9, New Orleans, would be a lighter burden on the national treasury, than to restore the homes they had and waste billions on levees.
Hooray for Evansville Congressman Hostettler. He was not panicked into voting for the administration's $52.8 billion giveaway for Katrina repair. Republicans should stand for fiscal integrity. "

Note #2: Hey Roscoe! Why do you have such a hatred of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast? Has it ever occurred to you that we spend upwards of $2 billion a day in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we didn't want to spend a few billion to improve the levee and pump system in New Orleans so it could have withstood a Category 5 hurricane?

We are the world's wealthiest nation, and richest in a myriad of other ways.

However, with Roscoe's comment "Now the fate of the poor displaced has become the raison d'etre for most churches, and every politician including the President. Perhaps the pendulum of compassionate concern has swung too far. Each must do for himself what he can. Restoration of standard of living must be limited to necessities", it certainly appears we are one of the least compassionate.

I suggest the following:

(1) Close Lawrenceville High School, and transfer the students there to the new school at RHHS;
(2) Convert LHS to a housing complex for Hurricane Katrina evacuees - this will:
(a) Create more jobs in Lawrence County for construction workers and
(b) Revitalize the economy in Lawrence County with respect to retail and goods and services
(c) Bring some additional talent to the "County of Champions" sports teams
(3) With the influx of cheap labor from the "poor" evacuees of New Orleans, organize chain gangs to build, without the use of public funds, those additional two lanes from Lawrenceville to Salem
(4) Maybe, for once, those three properties that show up each week, unsold, on page 1 of the Sumner Press online version, will finally sell so we don't have to see them anymore!

Anyway ... enough on that.