Restore funds for Poison Control
When talking about programs on which the State of Illinois gets a great return on investment, one program that comes to mind is the Illinois Poison Center, Illinois' only poison center.
Poisoning is the leading cause of injury-related death or hospitalization for children ages 18 months to 36 months. It is also the No. 2 cause of injury-related death regardless of age in the U.S. The poison center helps protect Illinois families by providing poison control, treatment and information services around the clock. It handles about 100,000 poison-related cases annually -- 52 percent of which involved children 5 and under. Through its outreach efforts, it provides poison prevention education to hundreds of thousands of Illinois residents.
Funding for poison control is a wise and an important investment for the taxpayers of Illinois. About 90 percent of all cases from the public that come to the center are handled safely on-site, where the poisoning occurred, saving families and individuals the time and expense associated with an emergency department visit or use of the local emergency medical services system. The center is one of those unique programs that actually saves Illinois taxpayers more than $50 million a year by helping avoid unnecessary medical costs. It's also a key component in Illinois' disaster and emergency response infrastructure.
I have been a proud supporter of full state funding for Illinois Poison Control in the past, and I continue to be one today. I urge the governor to restore its funding.
State Rep. John Fritchey, (D-Chicago)
News flash to the Sun-Times editorial board. We already know what stimulates the economy, and it is not increases in tax and debt.
Some argue that tax increases do not negatively effect economic activity because taxes are simply a transfer from private spending to public spending. But that does not take into account the undeniable fact that individuals spending their own hard-earned money will always be more productive and effective in their spending than Congress.
The hundreds of billions of dollars in government stimulus planned and already spent has not done much to create jobs or stimulate the economy. Government needs to unleash, not hamper, the private sector.
Phil Adams, Lincolnshire
Your Nov. 3 editorial, "Greed shouldn't slow Internet innovation," is clever, but you do your readers a disservice by absurdly framing net neutrality as a case of greedy corporations exploiting defenseless Internet consumers.
The debate over net neutrality hinges on a simple question: Should individuals making choices in a free market determine Internet policy, or shall bureaucrats micromanage such a complex technical and economic system through ad hoc decisions in Washington?
Your argument for the latter would be on more solid footing if you did not have to set up hypothetical scenarios of Internet service providers harming consumers. Any provider "looking for a way to make another buck" (cue the scary music) would find fewer bucks to be made if it decided to degrade or restrict access to Jon Stewart in favor of "Ugly Betty." The market will punish such noxious business practices without what Sen. John McCain rightly calls a "government takeover of the Internet."
James G. Lakely, co-director, Center on the Digital Economy,
Heartland Institute
Seldom does sanity prevail over demagoguery in Springfield. Gov. Quinn and some Senate Democrats deserve credit, not abuse, for calling the bluff of the CTA and other transit agencies in moves to scrap free rides for seniors. Quinn and others exposed the exaggerated impact of free rides when the transit agencies conceded the savings could not support guarantees of a temporary moratorium on fare increases.
Transit agencies and the news media have been caught in the old "us against them" hysteria using bogus figures and phony examples of riders' abuses.
James Strong, Arlington Heights