Wows and Scowls
Wow: If only every case could be solved this easily. Add a suspected bank robber in Toledo, Ohio to the file of really stupid criminals. Upset that his getaway driver took off without him, the robber jumped into the next car he saw – an unmarked police car. Since the officer wasn’t in uniform, the robber, now turned carjacker, waved his gun and ordered him to step on it. The police officer jumped in the back seat and took the gun away. —
Scowl: At least the officer mentioned above was agile and quick enough to make his move. Some occupations demand physical fitness, quickness of feet and the ability to scale fences and walls. Police officers in order to protect the public need outstanding physical skills. Someone should tell this to the Erie County Human Relations Commission that wants to eliminate a 6-foot climbing wall from a police recruit obstacle course and to either abolish or change the sequence of when recruits are required to do push-ups. The test, the commission claims, is unfair to female applicants. Granted officers might not ever be called during duty to drop and give ’em 10, but scaling fences and walls are realistic expectations. To lower standards for women leaves the public with the perception that females are indeed the weaker sex and that a woman police officer is not of the same caliber.
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Scowl: Gosh Larry, we had never heard of a sore winner before. Political candidates, especially those who are victorious, generally recoup any manners they lost during the campaign and give a gracious victory speech. Not so for Rep. Larry Roberts. He said the fact that he won showed the “Herald-Standard is so far out of touch with the people of Fayette County” and that he could have said negative things about his opponent, but “Larry Roberts likes to take the high road unlike the Herald-Standard.”
In case Roberts, who continues to have the irksome habit of referring to himself in the third person, is interested his opponent was Terry Janosek not the Herald-Standard. Janosek spent about one-tenth of Roberts’ bankroll and captured a respectable number of votes for a relative unknown running his first campaign.
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Scowl: At least we’re not in Kentucky. The head of a local water board, highly peeved with the hometown newspaper, purchased its name, the Mountain Citizen, when it inadvertently allowed incorporation papers to lapse. Now he’s claiming the name as his own and wants the paper to stop using it. Said the newspaper’s publisher, “This is an attempt to shut us up. We don’t want a political war. We just want clean, reliable water.”
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Wow: To 4-year-old Ryan Laughery for possibly saving the life of a Redstone Township neighbor. Ryan was playing outside when he saw smoke and fire at a nearby house. He did just what the grown-ups taught him to do. He ran inside and told the adults to call 9-1-1. While the child’s father ran to help the elderly neighbor and his dog escape, his stepmother did just as Ryan directed and called 9-1-1. Ryan is being hailed as a lifesaver. That was quick thinking for a little boy, but his actions also started with parents who were wise enough to teach him the drill on what to do in an emergency.
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Scowl: Every report, study and probe into kids and health concludes that more and more American children are becoming obese due in part to lack of physical activity and in part to eating junk food. Yet some policy makers just don’t get it. California lawmakers, bowed to the soft drink and snack machine lobbyists, and refused passage of a bill that would have banned from schools vending machine sales of junk to kids. Here’s the reasoning. Finances are tight and schools get a cut off the machines so this would be taking money away from education. Forget about teaching kids about nutrition and healthy lifestyles. Also, the kids would just leave campus and hit up the nearest convenience store. Whatever happened to rules that require students to stay on campus until the dismissal bell?
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Scowl: Area school boards are adopting tentative budgets with deficits that must be pared in a few short weeks. Some, like Albert Gallatin and Brownsville are looking at double-digit tax increases if expenses can’t be cut further and the state fails to up its contribution. While school board members keep dragging themselves to meetings to hear nothing but gloom and doom, lawmakers who will settle the school funding issue are on holiday until June 3. They seem in no big hurry to trim the state’s anticipated billion dollar deficit, nor are they rushing to give schools within their legislative districts firm numbers of state subsidies.
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Wow: To the state Department of Environmental Protection for continuing a crackdown on waste haulers driving unsafe trucks into the East Huntingdon Township landfill. So far this month six haulers have been arrested, including one man who was charged on May 8 for truck safety violations and spent 10 days in prison. He showed back up at the landfill with the same truck and the same violations. Had the DEP hosted a sporadic rather than continuous enforcement program, this driver would not have been stopped.