“The 912.5 Percent Solution” (Nursing Homes Have No Business Making Payday Loans) POST-DISPATCH 8/21/09 got my Tommy Hilfinger shorts in a real knot. Imagine employees at nursing homes (or anywhere) earning $10.13/hour being given the opportunity to be exploited for a payday loan to the tune of up to 912.5%. Better yet, imagine our state officials worried they don’t have the legal authority to close down these operations. Let Them Eat Cake! Brother’s Keeper, I’ve Got Mine! Righteo! Why should we consider national health care for the heavy laden when there is a convenient Payday Loan near you?

Actually, I am trying to recall an instance when the Missouri State Legislature impressed me with anything much beyond “special interests,” keeping their assigned seats in Jeff City warm, and morphing into a Lobbyist. Given these thoughts, and the fact we have retired the Age of Aquarius graduating into the Age of Incivility, lets give a Ya’all Come, Open Mic Town Hall Meeting another try and get our collective heads and priorities screwed on right.

Bring your signs, your megaphones, your attitudes, passouts, a box lunch, your lozenges, and your grandfather’s mustache. We can discuss law and law enforcement, and party politics in MO. Let it all hang out! Puppy Mills, Medicaid, Dog Fighting, Meth Labs, Public Service Commissioners Who Cavort with Utility Company Executives, Illegal Immigration and Employers Who Hire Them, Rapid Transit, TIF’s, Imminent Domain, Officials with numerous DWI’s, Gun Laws, Unethical Municipal and School Boards, Sunshine Laws, Erasing Gov’t E-Mail, Drunk Driving, Job Loss, making cars in Mexico, Perks for the Elected, Health, Welfare and Education for those who earn $10.13/hour, Texting while Driving, 2nd Hand Smoke, Red Lights at Intersections, Education, Drunk Driving, and Property Assessment. Equal opportunity protests row by row. A chance to retire all these hanging chads of state ills. This under out belts, we can have a second meeting to focus on the National Health Care Plan, the finished product our National Leaders will undoubtedly have structured in a bi-partisan and amicable manner.

Whatcha want to bet if we staged “912.5 Percent” type Town Halls, no one would come? Right now, the bull’s eye is decidedly on the national scene and more pointedly on the President, the prerogative of his office and his plans for America. Nothing wrong with that. So,who among us wants to debate the delayed report of a dangerous level of e-coli contamination at Lake of the Ozarks NOW? Who believes the hogwash that was published to explain it by the Attorney General no less? What kind of imagination would even consider that the possibility of an e-coli breakout would be less of a threat to tourism than posting the waters until it abates? Who among us would agree, while danders are up, it is time to get Missouri’s house in order?

Carol Casey

Crestwood