In our view: Cheers & Jeers

Saturday, May 10, 2008 Cheers: Local military veterans this week celebrated two good-news stories related to the Vancouver Veterans Affairs Medical Center on East Fourth Plain Boulevard. "read more"

On Monday, the 46-year-old “Lady Bell” Huey helicopter that had been perched for more than a decade atop a 12-foot pole near the Salmon Creek American Legion Post 176 was settled into its more visible and centrally located new home at the medical center. About 150 volunteers, led by Mike Harding and Dan Tarbell, worked on the chopper’s second restoration project prior to the move.

Then, on Tuesday, county and veterans officials announced that $400,000 will be spent on a new bus stop between the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Clark County’s Center for Community Health. The improved access is part of a nationwide round of improvements to VA facilities.

Jeers: Last week brought yet more proof that the Washington Education Association has little to do with education. It’s a union, plain and simple. And to advance its members, the union will even resort to anti-education tactics.

If the WEA were really interested in education, it would have applauded and supported a five-year, $13.2 million grant from the Texas-based National Math and Science Initiative that would have helped seven school districts in the state add Advanced Placement classes in high schools. AP courses help students qualify for early college credits.

Logic leads one to believe the WEA would support more pay for teachers, but because the NMSI grant money would come from an outside source, free from union manipulation, the union effectively killed the program.

Meanwhile, six other states will benefit from the grants awarded in September. WEA union bosses would point out that those are “right-to-work” states with weaker union rules. We would counter: That’s precisely the point, and those six states are also “right-to-better-education” states.

In our state, though, the union wins while students and teachers lose. For sheer accuracy, someone, please, take the “E” out of the WEA.

Cheers: To President Bush, who on Thursday signed a bill to create a 167-square-mile Wild Sky Wilderness northeast of Seattle, in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The bill also creates a national historic site designation on Bainbridge Island where hundreds of Japanese-Americans were taken on their way to internment camps during World War II. Considerable credit for the bill is due Sen. Patty Murray and U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, both Democrats from Washington, for guiding the measure through Congress.

Cheers: When Loy Jimmy Dockery III graduates from Washington State University at 1 p.m. today with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, he is likely to reflect on many conversations he had with his mother years ago. The conversations were neither trite nor typical of talks between a grade-school boy and his mother. They focused on science and math, at great detail.

This afternoon, Dockery’s mind will also return to the future, and as he receives his degree, he’ll look around and see his mother, Tami Galland, also receiving a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from WSUV. What an exciting mother-son adventure they continue to share. And what a great way to celebrate Mother’s Day Eve!

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