Musical chairs no way to run a government
I am getting increasingly worried about the turnover in leaders of our government: The Cabinet and other Cabinet-rank offices. President Trump promised to select the “best and the brightest” for these positions, and to “drain the swamp.”
So far in two years, the president has achieved “the highest turnover rate [for these offices] in recent history.” As a professor who worked in a large institution for several decades, I know it would have made me very nervous if those in charge of the top executive positions like president, provost, dean, chairperson were changing every two years. But I’m talking here about turnovers in charge of the United States of America.
I’ve highlighted Cabinet department heads already “turned-over:” Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Attorney General, (plus other Cabinet-rank officers). I also add the Environmental Protection Agency because I’m worried about the environment.
Some offices have “turned over” more than once. Some changed leaders because of actions which you and I would be ashamed of (Interior, EPA, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services), with several others having significant policy differences with the president (Defense, Attorney General, State, Homeland Security). A couple of others are rumored to be on thin ice.
Why should we worry about this array of musical chair leadership in departments in charge of responsibilities of tremendous significance to the everyday life of all of us? Easy answer —because we will have to live with their mistakes.
And to top it off, I haven’t mentioned all the unfilled offices throughout lower levels of our government and at U.S. embassies around the world —including ambassadors. Who is running the shop?
Don’t you want to have leaders in these departments who are experienced in assuring the best-informed policies? Don’t you want to have leaders who really understand the agencies who carry out their hopefully wise instructions? Don’t you want leaders who are honest and don’t spend the people’s money in personal extravagances? We all do.
— Sophia Peterson
Morgantown
SB 451 would have been a step backward
I would like to thank the state House of Delegates members from Monongalia County for helping to kill the education reform bill SB 451).
When this bill was moved from the House to the Senate, the Senate reinserted amendments that covered education savings accounts (ESAs) and charter schools. An ESA is a mechanism where the state will give parents money to home school their children instead of giving that money to the school where the child would have attended.
Under the new amendment, the ESAs would only apply to special needs students and students who are bullied.
In other words, if a school district does not want to educate a student with a disability, that district can pay off the parents to keep the child at home. This goes back to the days of segregating disabled students from the rest of the student population.
This practice ended in the mid-1970s when federal law required disabled students to be educated in the least restrictive environment and integrated into a regular classroom. These ESAs may violate federal law because they are restricting the child from being educated along with his or her peers.
Additionally, Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-RJefferson, stated that charter schools could be established for only special needs students. This would be a total return to the dark ages of educating disabled students. Prior to the 1970s, disabled students were warehoused into institutions and not integrated into a regular classroom. These charter schools would definitely violate federal law.
The education reform bill would not improve the education of disabled students in West Virginia. It would have only returned our state back to the days of discrimination and institutionalization of disabled students. I was happy SB 451 was killed.
— Michael J. Sharley
Westover
Measure would help solve gender pay gap
I think that men and women should get paid equally. If they are both doing the exact same kind of work, equally well, then why would women get paid less, for the same?
This seems like a medieval concept, treating women as inferior to men, simply because they are women.
Women do not just stay at home and take care of babies anymore, some do, but statistics show that a lot of the time, women are the main bread earners of the family.
So, I think we should pass the Katherine Johnson Fair Pay Act (SB 412), which would help solve the gender pay gap, passed into law. This would help bring West Virginia further into the 21st century, especially in regards to gender equality.
— Elizabeth Alderman
Morgantown
How could a normal person do such a thing?
In New York, its lawmakers passed a law allowing abortion even up to full term, then celebrated by lighting up buildings. In Virginia, the Democrats proposed a bill (which failed) that would allow abortion of a full-term baby, even at the point that the mother had dilated and was giving birth. The procedure was explained by the governor of Virginia (a doctor) who said that when a full-term baby is removed from a woman during an abortion, that the baby would be made “comfortable” while the mother and the doctor or other person conducting the abortion discussed the fate of the child.
“Made comfortable” means that the child would be put aside and left with no attention until it died from lack of care and dehydration. The baby is, in fact, dying of thirst. Is it comfortable to die of thirst?
Ask a person who has survived in a lifeboat at sea how comfortable he was while almost dying of thirst. He was in agony and so is this child.
The child will cry continuously for a long time while undergoing a slow painful death.
This is just depraved and unthinkable. How could normal human beings do such a thing?
— James F. Deal
Beckley
You don’t need to worry about the guns you see
It’s an American freedom to own and carry a gun, but not in certain situations. Carrying guns to class is one of those situations.
The way the government keeps taking away our rights pretty soon we won’t be allowed to own a gun. We will look like Europe if we stand by and do nothing to protect our constitutional rights.
I agree the government needs to do something about gun violence, but don’t take away my guns just because some person has no respect for our police officers and our laws. A lot of these shootings that happen in work places and schools occur because people have been bullied or have a mental problem that is not addressed in the background checks.
The government needs to refine its background checks and maybe some of these people might not slip through the cracks. People who have these problems is why more and more Americans are starting to carry guns for self protection.
I’m pretty sure the guns you see out in public are not the ones you should be worried about. It’s the people who sneak around that are up to no good. The main reason we own guns is to protect our homes from these home invasions where we can be killed in our own homes.
One very young congresswoman, who has spewed some very odd ideas, has no experience and needs to grow up some before she can do that job. That congresswoman is the kind of person who wants to take your guns away. I don’t want her representing me. If America is smart, it wouldn’t either.
— Ralph Correll
Morgantown
