Finally, a president who puts people first

President Donald Trump is a businessman dealing in the real world in which hardworking Americans live, not the world of career politicians where every word is polled for its effect on voters. Calling a country a questionable name is harsh not racist. Hollywood celebrities or liberal millionaires aren't vacationing or building mansions in Haiti or El Salvador probably because our government has issued a travel warning for both countries.

Is it mentally stable for Hillary to run on women's rights when she enabled a sexual predator husband for over 40 years and attacked his victims? Or, Pelosi to state that you have to pass the ACA to know what's in it? To have a president lying about keeping your plan & your doctor and premiums would decrease? Gruber stating the American people were too stupid to realize that Obamacare was a tax? Obama laughing at his failed $1 trillion "shovel-ready jobs" project? Obama, who considered himself a citizen of the world and continually enriched the world at our expense including a treaty that allowed other countries to pollute the environment for up to 20 years while America was shackled by regulations just to help spread our wealth globally?

Is it mentally stable for Hillary supporters and congressional Democrats to resist attempts by our president to better America? To yell at the night sky like banshees? To prevent conservative freedom of speech by rioting and destroying property, thereby endangering the lives of our police? To wear hats called by a private part on their heads? To continue these practices for over a year?

He is the most transparent president in history. We now have a president who is proud to be an American citizen and who puts us first, not last like our former citizen of the world.

Gail Rose

Huntley

Lack of basic math skills hurting students

I am a retired high school physics, chemistry and advanced mathematics teacher from the Chicago Public Schools. Over the years, I have found that a large number of high school students, of both majority and minority groups, have not learned their elementary mathematics to adequately perform well in college-level technical subjects such as physics, chemistry, engineering and medical subjects such as laboratory work and even nursing.

Not being competent in basic mathematics may mean not being able to earn a comfortable living in a technical or medical type job which often pays a good wage as opposed to a nontechnical type job which often pays a smaller wage. This weakness in basic math skills may even extend to lower test scores on intelligence tests, and employment tests, for example and may also extend for an entire lifetime of promotions and job opportunities.

Also, I have found a number of high school students, of majority and minority, who get their physics and chemistry wrong not because they do not know how to do the problem correctly, but because they do not know their fractions, decimals and long division properly to obtain the right answer on the other sign of the equal sign. Much potential in our schools is being wasted by our precious students not properly learning their elementary mathematics which is one of the foundations for higher level math and science career courses and a lifetime of adequate employment.

Stewart Brekke

Downers Grove

Trump getting rid of 'Chicago Way'

DACA is shorthand for the Democrat Party "welfare for votes" swindle. Behind the pretense of really caring, the Dems are building a political army of noncitizens (funded on the taxpayer dime). Connect the dots … from the sanctuary cities and states … to the refusals by those lawless warrens to cooperate with ICE and federal vote fraud probes … to pledges to allow illegal voting (thereby cheapening the legal citizen vote). Their cries for children are no purer than a criminal's covetousness about his stash.

This is not your daddy's Democrat Party. The current edition is more like a communist-front organization, a U.S.-hating leftist cabal, engineered during the Obama years to "fundamentally transform" (his words) the United States. Obama & Clinton Inc. brought the "Chicago Way" of self-aggrandizing political corruption to the nation. Witness the deconstruction of the FBI and Justice Department to political arms of the Democrat Party: the pro-Hilary bias of James Comey and Peter Strzok, Uranium One deceptions, the Fusion/Clinton-Campaign/Steele-Trump-Dossier gambit, etc.

The Dems act boldly and without fear of exposure. The so-called mainstream media and the Hollywood/show-biz left purposely preoccupy themselves with Donald Trump vulgarities (real or manufactured), which they quickly mint into allegations of racism (the most mortal of mortal sins in post-Judeo-Christian America). Both (news and entertainment media) join D.C. on the list of swamps needing drains.

Of course, the Hollywoodians never fail to plumb greater depths of depravity with frequent obscene anti-Trump tantrums. They lurch from one fib (Trump conspired with Russia) to another (Trump's insane). It's a political sleight of hand by partisan media (to divert attention away from the Democrat Party cancers and onto Trump's warts).

Hmm! Given the national sway of the "Chicago Way" grown during the Obama years, maybe Mike Madigan can claim godfathership.

Les Lopinot

Oswego

Shop around for best health care prices

Health care pricing is opaque in Chicago and the suburbs. Patients are not aware that preventive screening colonoscopy prices vary by a factor of two to three in several areas. Guroo.com has published price data from Aetna, Humana, United Healthcare and Assurant Health. They have ranges for all medical procedures; however, they do not name the providers' names by price because of legal contracts they have with many hospitals or groups who charge more.

For example, they show that facility services for colonoscopy-preventive screening varies from $1,489 to $3,625 in Illinois and physician services prices vary from $298 to $477. For Chicago, the total costs range from $1,821 to $4,046 compared to $1,787 to $4,102 for the state of Illinois.

Consumers will find three facilities in Geneva, located right across from each other where prices range from $1,700 to $4,500 for colonoscopy. Consumers are advised to shop around and compare the prices and qualifications of gastroenterologists. I am sure they can save a lot and control their future premiums or copays.

Jeanne Pinder of Clear Health Costs has found that to be true by examining thousands of bills submitted to Clear Health for several cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Dallas, New York City. Clear Health Costs is funded by several grants and charities. Jeanne Pinder was a well-known reporter for The New York Times covering health care.

Satinder Mullick

St. Charles

Democrats' hypocrisy a bad example for world

The whole world is watching what is happening in the U.S. right now, and not all of the people are blaming Trump for it. They see how things are playing out, the relentless barrage of anti-Trumpism from the Democrats.

This is the tragic irony of the whole thing, how a party that prides itself on being peacemakers around the world, how are they going to be taken seriously the next time they are in charge, when they try to approach two sparring peoples, such as the Shiites and the Sunnis, to persuade them to bury the hatchet?

They're so fond of saying: "Stop fighting and start listening to one another, find areas where you all agree and build from there to build an amicable relationship." How are they going to be taken seriously? They'll be told: "Don't preach to us, you don't do it in your own country."

What I mean is taking unfair advantage of certain loopholes in our Constitution. I'm not sure loophole is the right word. Maybe "intangible nothings" would be a better way to describe it. The framers of the Constitution didn't write about all possible scenarios of how the meaning of certain points of the Constitution could be circumvented or ignored. The fighting was supposed to take place in the halls of Congress, not in the countryside.

The Founding Fathers' revolution took place in debate, not in mob action, in rioting and mayhem. What the Democrats are doing is use other means than debate.

Steven Robnett

Elgin

Faculty should not discourage debate

Politically, I am decidedly liberal and have a visceral dislike of the views of Steve Bannon and President Donald Trump, but I have to wonder what the heck the faculty at the University of Chicago is thinking. You may think that I'm going to protest the invitation to Steve Bannon to participate in a debate on immigration, but my disappointment is actually with the faculty who are doing the protesting.

The purpose of colleges and universities is to educate, not just the things with which they agree, but the other side as well. We should be encouraging students to sort the wheat from the chaff, not accept what is given to them and are told what is wheat and what is chaff. It's called critical thinking.

Universities should also be encouraging free speech. To steal perhaps my favorite movie lines of all time from "The American President," "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've gotta want it bad, cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, and who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.' "

Faculty at a prestigious university like the University of Chicago shouldn't be discouraging the debate of issues, they should be encouraging it.

Mary Hunter

Carpentersville