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Veterans deserve the best, they should get it

President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs has a LOT of work to do to restore trust in the agency — and to do right by the men and women it serves. President Donald Trump has referred to the federal bureaucracy as “the swamp.” The VA may well qualify as the poster child for that. For decades, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, promises have been made that the VA would be cleaned up. It never seems to happen. Let us be clear: Overwhelmingly, the men and women who work at the VA do their very best to serve veterans of military ...

Et Cetera

Schmeeckle Foundation Thank you to the Schmeeckle Foundation for their donation of $250,000 toward increasing the availability of child care in Martin County. They have partnered with the Prosper Project and other groups to help existing daycare with additional training and support and to recruit and add new providers to the mix to help chip away at the 170 additional child care slots needed in Martin County. Thank you Schmeeckle Foundation for your continued and generous support of Martin County. Martin County publication Once again the Martin County commissioners have not ...

An attack on democracy

President Donald Trump's frustrated and frantic efforts to nullify the results of the 2020 election resulted in a mob scene at the U.S. Capitol Wednesday. Hordes of protestors waving Trump banners along with American flags pushed up to, and into, the Capitol, disrupting Congress as it was trying to do its constitutional duty and verify the votes of the electoral college. Many Republicans in Congress were planning to contest the election results that give Joe Biden the win, but the protestors didn't give them the chance. This was an insurrection, an assault on our democracy, on our ...

Law enforcement, first responders are heroes

Once again, we have been reminded of how courageously many law enforcement personnel react to their protect-and-serve mandate. On Christmas morning, a bomb exploded in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. It had been placed in a recreational vehicle. The perpetrator had placed a loudspeaker in it, from which a few people nearby may have heard a recording warning them of the bomb. Many did not hear that warning. What they did hear was six Nashville police officers who had been alerted to the bomb, rushing from door to door, often in close proximity to the recreational vehicle, telling ...

Cardona must be ready to help students

Miguel Cardona, President-elect Joe Biden’s pick to become secretary of education, would have a full plate even without COVID-19. But the epidemic has been an education catastrophe, and dealing with the fallout from it simply must be Cardona’s top priority, assuming he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Cardona, whose current job is leading public education in Connecticut, no doubt is painfully aware of the challenge. It centers on the fact that millions of children have been out of their classrooms, sometimes for months at a time, because of the epidemic. There is no substitute ...

U.S. Postal Service in need of attention

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has a lot of explaining to do, as some in Washington are saying his removal this fall of mail sorting machines at postal facilities is partly to blame for challenges the U.S. Postal Service faced in getting packages delivered during the Christmas season. Of course, the culprit being blamed by USPS officials is COVID-19. Of course, the men and women of the Postal Service were impacted by the epidemic. Many Christmas gifts that in past years would have been delivered in person had to be entrusted to the mail instead. And many gift purchases that ...