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Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
June 14, 2007     Shelton Mason County Journal
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June 14, 2007
 
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00ournal of Opinion: Grad oration Fellow graduates, parents, families, faculty, dudes watching the streaming video on their computers and friends I'm, like, simultaneously text-messaging as I give this speech: Well, these last 13 years have been a long haul, especially the first seven when we were being left behind, but now we're ready for the next stage of our lives: changing the world for the better. The message I want to leave with you tonight before you start shooting the Silly String is that even though our parents did an incredible job of improving things, such as enlarging our carbon footprint, cultivating our status in the Muslim world and providing us with a tip-top popular culture, we can do even better. We can take the American dream to new heights. So while my mom drives a little Blazer I won't settle for anything less than an Escalade for my wife, and my promise to my daughter will be a brand-new 2024 Hummer when she turns 16. My parents, bless them, built a little 3,200-square-foot crackerbox of a house, but I want at least 4,200. And I plan to live at least 40 miles from work so I can spend quality time in my car talking on my cell phone and listening to my favorite rap and bass beat at 320 decibels. Our generation will build more highways, third and fourth Narrows bridges and affordable housing for 10 million Washingtonians. Yes, we'll grow, and we'll do it by finally making people as important as fish, paving wetlands and farms and claiming the woods from the cougar and bear and stupid owl. I don't know about you, but my education didn't end when I walked out of my last final in woodshop this week. I'll listen to shock jocks and TV to get a feel for the world around me. I'll buy an Enquirer or Star every once in a while to stay informed but not one of those boring newspapers. I'll vote if Tim Eyman has something on the ballot, but who's got time otherwise? The girls of our generation had outstanding role models in Madonna, Courtney Love and Anna Nicole Smith, smart businesswomen who used their brains to advance, but there is so much more potential for our daughters. They will be able to idolize Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, which will make it nice for our red-blooded sons. TV and movies are entering their Golden Era just in time for us to raise our kids on them and the Internet. MySpace hasn't seen anything until the pictures of my gorgeous 14-year-old daughter hit. Interpersonal communication has been improving since the Tech Revolution started, but we can take it to the zenith, spending hours on the Web, dog-piling on someone in a chat room, e-mailing the person in the next cubicle at work, checking our BlackBerrys and cell phones for 20 minutes at parties, signing on-line guest books instead of going to funerals and building more drive-throughs. Our parents had something called civil liberties, which sounds pretty suspicious to me. We can have a better world, one with warrantless searches, wiretapped phones, FBI and Hbmeland Security collection of data on citizens, detention without charges, government regulation of the press, roadblocks for drunk-driving checks, weekly drug tests for schoolchildren and undercover officers working in the schools. Then we'll be safe. Our parents and older brothers and sisters brought regime change and peace to Iraq, but we can bring Pax Halliburtona to so many more - in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and France. Then, after we bring new leadership to one of our worst enemies, we'll stand down when the French stand up. We won't stop until we have completed our parents' mission to outsource every manufacturing and support job in the United States, leaving us all with mice in our hands at work in the Information Age. Americans don't need strong backs; all they need are strong index fingers to double-click. Anything menial that needs to be done here we can have Hispanics do before we arrest them. We won't even need farms. The Chinese will provide all we need to eat, and we'll be able to depend on their spotless food- safety record and our good credit. The Class of 2007 will be the doers. We'll build the Sonics a $500-million arena as a top priority and bring more cage-fighting events to the Tacoma Dome. We'll solve the obesity epidemic with new drugs for diabetes, cholesterol and hypertension. We'll fix our educational system with more tests. We'll build vast new prisons to resolve the crime problem. Weql expand gambling to provide more revenue for the government. We'll develop a better hydrogen bomb to defend ourselves. We'll bring Starbucks to the Third World. We'll restore the right kind of prayer in our schools. We'll pass a constitutional amendment to stop flag-burning, one of the most serious problens this country faces. By the time we finish improving the world, our kids will thank us at their own high-school graduation. In fact, there probably won't be anything left that they can improve. -CG u Shelton-00 at 00lason ourn county usPs 492-800 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Shelton-Mason County Journal, P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584• Published weekly by Shelton Publishing Inc. at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Washington Mailing address: p.o. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584 Telephone (360) 426-4412 * www.masoncounty.com Periodicals postage paid at Shelton. Washington Member of Washington Newspaper Publishers' Association SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $31.00 per year in-county address, $45.00 per year in state of Washington $55.00 per year out of state Charles Gay, editor and publisher. Newsroom: Sean Hanlon, managing editor, Port of Shelton; Steve Patch, sports editor; Jeff Green, general assignment, city government, schools; Rebecca Wells, society editor, county government; Mary Duncan, police, courts. Advertising: Stephen Gay, advertising manager; Dave Pierik and Harvey Morris, ad sales. Front office: Julie Orme, business manager; Kathy Lester, circulation; Donna Kinnaird, bookkeeper; Cricket Carter, mailroom supervisor. Composing room: Diane Riordan, supervisor; Margot Brand, Jan Kaltinen, pagination; Frank Isaac, pagination, photo technician; Koleen Wood, typesetter, computer system manager; Wil- liam Adams, ad builder, computer system manager; Clinton Kendall, proofreader. Pressroom: Kelly Riordan, pressman; Nick Carr, pressman's assistant.  Page 4 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, June 14, 2007 II i00eadeJ's;" 00ournal: School action not disturbing Editor, The Journal." In rebuke of the Hood Canal School Board's recent decision to make administrative changes (June 7 letter, "Hood Canal move disturbing"), Merlyn Flakus al- ludes in spirit to the old bumpkin aphorism, "If it ain't broke don't fix it." Such thinking cautions us to uphold status quo and tempts us to accept things as they are cur- rently operating when they could be made to operate better. In defense of status quo, Flakus discounts the competence of the school board by making puerile jabs at motives, character and in- tentions, which he had to invent on his own since he doesn't know what the real ones are. To the con- trary, I think that the board has made administrative.changes in good faith and with courage and has defended a difficult decision that is in the best interest of the children in our community. Hood Canal, in my view as a parent of two attending students, is not a progressive model of a school. It lacks any sort of arts, music or language programs. It lacks a technology program. Its classroom office equipment is usu- ally outdated. Its sports facilities and" equipment are often inade- quate. The school basically has the look and feel of being underfund- ed. Many residents go out of their way to send their children to grade school or junior high in Shelton in- stead of Hood Canal due to some perceived inadequacy or another. While Hood Canal might be "working" in whatever way Flakus means to suggest, it certainly could work much better. It is the prima- ry job of school boards to hold ad- ministrators to the standards and expectations of the constituency that keeps them at their post, and I believe the Hood Canal School Board or, at least three-fifths of it, is doing just that. Flakus issues a "call to arms" for new board members who I sup- pose, like him, think that chang- ing the status quo is typically bad. Hood Canal needs committed ad- ministrators and board membe • '11 who are continuously seeki g make :hanges and address di" cul sues within the fram ew¢ of enhancing the education  character of our children. Perceived crises in always bring opinion. fusspots like Merlyn FlakuS others who really are not in the education of our flock to board meetings and prattling and conjuring lems in order to have so to criticize. As soon as eve calms down, away they go their bags full of wisdon  i of some new controversy, set foot in the school board again. I urge voters who are in this matter to seek the opinions of the parents and ers of the Hood Canal School trict and to take with a gri. salt the rhetoric of our, ubiquitous rabble-rousers. . Rob Endi H odW The Journal is anti-veteran Editor, The Journal: Kudos to the Forest Festival Committee for its untiring efforts year after year to ensure the citi- zens of Shelton an outstanding parade as well as other extra ac- tivities, It was extra gratifying to see the picture of tii Boy Scout Troop 110. As the adjutant of the Sons of the American Legion Squadron No. 31, we are honored and proud to be their sponsors. Squadron commander Mav Rowley is our representative to the troop. There is a very important is- sue that needs to be addressed, to wit, the absence of any pictures of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and members of the 40 et 8 and the LaFemmes. These four units are very much civic-ori- ented. I have heard many comlnents about this situation. It is very ap- parent to a majority of us that The Journal is anti-veteran. These veterans' organizations donate many hours and funds support of the youth of our c0' munity. We sincerely hope this overs t:h will be corrected in the future. Gordie Rich.°- Life member American Le Veterans of Foreign "% Disabled American VeteW,' Sons of The American be Mr. Bush, tear down that w$00l Montana may revolt" some st may wish to secede.' The prOfi; may take decades to reach eqt it rium, but with reasonabl s Editor, The Journal: Even the casual reader of the daily news can't help but conclude that our Congress is in a hopeless state of confusion. The immigra- tion issue is a perfect example: One hundred senators have so far man- aged to turn the problem into 350 pages of what they probably con- sider "tightly reasoned" rules and regulations to solve the problem but which can only be understood by a bunch of high-priced lawyers who would tell you (if quizzed off the record) that the whole thing is unworkable anyway. We all know what the problem is: Mexicans want to come to the U.S. for a variety of reasons but are denied legal entry by burden- some and lengthy legalities which once were considered reasonable but are no longer adequate for today's problems. So many Mexi- cans now sneak across the border illegally that "experts" estimate their number to be upwards of 12 million. Walking down a street in any Southern California town you would be hard-pressed to know whether you are in the United States or Mexico. Trying to stem the tide of "illegals" is like shovel- ing sand into the wind, which is exactly what Congress is doing. Let us face reality and accept an unpopular solution. It will be called dual citizenship, an open border, free movement of citizens of both countries to pass freely back and forth. We might as well coniler including all the coun- tries of Central America in this plan. Tear down the fence that is now building but save the parts because we will need to erect it again perhaps down near Panama where it can be much shorter and more easily patrolled. The United States of North America! Think of the opportuni- ties for Anglo entrepreneurs! So much development will take place in the Mexican states that their unemployed workers will stay home. Millions of U.S. citizens will move south to live in the sun; ho- tels and casinos will line the Mexi- can coast; inland, manufacturing plants will have jobs that attract workers from north and south. Ah, the possibilities! Concessions will be required on both sides, of course. Bilingualism will be necessary; the respective governments will be adjusted in ways yet to be determined. The Anglo population must insist that Mexico clean up its bad habits concerning public corruption, ex- tortion, bribery, cumshaw, palm greasing, etc., until the practice is, at least, brought up to levels pre- vailing in our country. There are endless problems of course, and monumental details to be worked out, but they can be done. Tranquility will not come at once; great patience will be re- quired. The citizens of Idaho and can be accomplished, ve Congress will be in hog henri working out the details. We€ be so busy here at home there be no need to go off and make chief in other parts of the wor  Look at it this way" If Hera ": Cortez and his fellows had.. Englishmen instead of Spar the whole thing would have ri an accomplished fact o ago. Pete :1 What was that soOg .... o the t'aul simon sang - .,,e Parisians about s LI *'., exits at their most fa Sa° museum? "Fifty Ways to LeaVe Y°ar Louvre." me --mmi 00ournal of Opinion: Grad oration Fellow graduates, parents, families, faculty, dudes watching the streaming video on their computers and friends I'm, like, simultaneously text-messaging as I give this speech: Well, these last 13 years have been a long haul, especially the first seven when we were being left behind, but now we're ready for the next stage of our lives: changing the world for the better. The message I want to leave with you tonight before you start shooting the Silly String is that even though our parents did an incredible job of improving things, such as enlarging our carbon footprint, cultivating our status in the Muslim world and providing us with a tip-top popular culture, we can do even better. We can take the American dream to new heights. So while my mom drives a little Blazer I won't settle for anything less than an Escalade for my wife, and my promise to my daughter will be a brand-new 2024 Hummer when she turns 16. My parents, bless them, built a little 3,200-square-foot crackerbox of a house, but I want at least 4,200. And I plan to live at least 40 miles from work so I can spend quality time in my car talking on my cell phone and listening to my favorite rap and bass beat at 320 decibels. Our generation will build more highways, third and fourth Narrows bridges and affordable housing for 10 million Washingtonians. Yes, we'll grow, and we'll do it by finally making people as important as fish, paving wetlands and farms and claiming the woods from the cougar and bear and stupid owl. I don't know about you, but my education didn't end when I walked out of my last final in woodshop this week. I'll listen to shock jocks and TV to get a feel for the world around me. I'll buy an Enquirer or Star every once in a while to stay informed but not one of those boring newspapers. I'll vote if Tim Eyman has something on the ballot, but who's got time otherwise? The girls of our generation had outstanding role models in Madonna, Courtney Love and Anna Nicole Smith, smart businesswomen who used their brains to advance, but there is so much more potential for our daughters. They will be able to idolize Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, which will make it nice for our red-blooded sons. TV and movies are entering their Golden Era just in time for us to raise our kids on them and the Internet. MySpace hasn't seen anything until the pictures of my gorgeous 14-year-old daughter hit. Interpersonal communication has been improving since the Tech Revolution started, but we can take it to the zenith, spending hours on the Web, dog-piling on someone in a chat room, e-mailing the person in the next cubicle at work, checking our BlackBerrys and cell phones for 20 minutes at parties, signing on-line guest books instead of going to funerals and building more drive-throughs. Our parents had something called civil liberties, which sounds pretty suspicious to me. We can have a better world, one with warrantless searches, wiretapped phones, FBI and Hbmeland Security collection of data on citizens, detention without charges, government regulation of the press, roadblocks for drunk-driving checks, weekly drug tests for schoolchildren and undercover officers working in the schools. Then we'll be safe. Our parents and older brothers and sisters brought regime change and peace to Iraq, but we can bring Pax Halliburtona to so many more - in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and France. Then, after we bring new leadership to one of our worst enemies, we'll stand down when the French stand up. We won't stop until we have completed our parents' mission to outsource every manufacturing and support job in the United States, leaving us all with mice in our hands at work in the Information Age. Americans don't need strong backs; all they need are strong index fingers to double-click. Anything menial that needs to be done here we can have Hispanics do before we arrest them. We won't even need farms. The Chinese will provide all we need to eat, and we'll be able to depend on their spotless food- safety record and our good credit. The Class of 2007 will be the doers. We'll build the Sonics a $500-million arena as a top priority and bring more cage-fighting events to the Tacoma Dome. We'll solve the obesity epidemic with new drugs for diabetes, cholesterol and hypertension. We'll fix our educational system with more tests. We'll build vast new prisons to resolve the crime problem. Weql expand gambling to provide more revenue for the government. We'll develop a better hydrogen bomb to defend ourselves. We'll bring Starbucks to the Third World. We'll restore the right kind of prayer in our schools. We'll pass a constitutional amendment to stop flag-burning, one of the most serious problens this country faces. By the time we finish improving the world, our kids will thank us at their own high-school graduation. In fact, there probably won't be anything left that they can improve. -CG u Shelton-00 at 00lason ourn county usPs 492-800 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Shelton-Mason County Journal, P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584• Published weekly by Shelton Publishing Inc. at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Washington Mailing address: p.o. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584 Telephone (360) 426-4412 * www.masoncounty.com Periodicals postage paid at Shelton. Washington Member of Washington Newspaper Publishers' Association SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $31.00 per year in-county address, $45.00 per year in state of Washington $55.00 per year out of state Charles Gay, editor and publisher. Newsroom: Sean Hanlon, managing editor, Port of Shelton; Steve Patch, sports editor; Jeff Green, general assignment, city government, schools; Rebecca Wells, society editor, county government; Mary Duncan, police, courts. Advertising: Stephen Gay, advertising manager; Dave Pierik and Harvey Morris, ad sales. Front office: Julie Orme, business manager; Kathy Lester, circulation; Donna Kinnaird, bookkeeper; Cricket Carter, mailroom supervisor. Composing room: Diane Riordan, supervisor; Margot Brand, Jan Kaltinen, pagination; Frank Isaac, pagination, photo technician; Koleen Wood, typesetter, computer system manager; Wil- liam Adams, ad builder, computer system manager; Clinton Kendall, proofreader. Pressroom: Kelly Riordan, pressman; Nick Carr, pressman's assistant.  Page 4 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, June 14, 2007 II i00eadeJ's;" 00ournal: School action not disturbing Editor, The Journal." In rebuke of the Hood Canal School Board's recent decision to make administrative changes (June 7 letter, "Hood Canal move disturbing"), Merlyn Flakus al- ludes in spirit to the old bumpkin aphorism, "If it ain't broke don't fix it." Such thinking cautions us to uphold status quo and tempts us to accept things as they are cur- rently operating when they could be made to operate better. In defense of status quo, Flakus discounts the competence of the school board by making puerile jabs at motives, character and in- tentions, which he had to invent on his own since he doesn't know what the real ones are. To the con- trary, I think that the board has made administrative.changes in good faith and with courage and has defended a difficult decision that is in the best interest of the children in our community. Hood Canal, in my view as a parent of two attending students, is not a progressive model of a school. It lacks any sort of arts, music or language programs. It lacks a technology program. Its classroom office equipment is usu- ally outdated. Its sports facilities and" equipment are often inade- quate. The school basically has the look and feel of being underfund- ed. Many residents go out of their way to send their children to grade school or junior high in Shelton in- stead of Hood Canal due to some perceived inadequacy or another. While Hood Canal might be "working" in whatever way Flakus means to suggest, it certainly could work much better. It is the prima- ry job of school boards to hold ad- ministrators to the standards and expectations of the constituency that keeps them at their post, and I believe the Hood Canal School Board or, at least three-fifths of it, is doing just that. Flakus issues a "call to arms" for new board members who I sup- pose, like him, think that chang- ing the status quo is typically bad. Hood Canal needs committed ad- ministrators and board membe • '11 who are continuously seeki g make :hanges and address di" cul sues within the fram ew¢ of enhancing the education  character of our children. Perceived crises in always bring opinion. fusspots like Merlyn FlakuS others who really are not in the education of our flock to board meetings and prattling and conjuring lems in order to have so to criticize. As soon as eve calms down, away they go their bags full of wisdon  i of some new controversy, set foot in the school board again. I urge voters who are in this matter to seek the opinions of the parents and ers of the Hood Canal School trict and to take with a gri. salt the rhetoric of our, ubiquitous rabble-rousers. . Rob Endi H odW The Journal is anti-veteran Editor, The Journal: Kudos to the Forest Festival Committee for its untiring efforts year after year to ensure the citi- zens of Shelton an outstanding parade as well as other extra ac- tivities, It was extra gratifying to see the picture of tii Boy Scout Troop 110. As the adjutant of the Sons of the American Legion Squadron No. 31, we are honored and proud to be their sponsors. Squadron commander Mav Rowley is our representative to the troop. There is a very important is- sue that needs to be addressed, to wit, the absence of any pictures of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and members of the 40 et 8 and the LaFemmes. These four units are very much civic-ori- ented. I have heard many comlnents about this situation. It is very ap- parent to a majority of us that The Journal is anti-veteran. These veterans' organizations donate many hours and funds support of the youth of our c0' munity. We sincerely hope this overs t:h will be corrected in the future. Gordie Rich.°- Life member American Le Veterans of Foreign "% Disabled American VeteW,' Sons of The American be Mr. Bush, tear down that w$00l Montana may revolt" some st may wish to secede.' The prOfi; may take decades to reach eqt it rium, but with reasonabl s Editor, The Journal: Even the casual reader of the daily news can't help but conclude that our Congress is in a hopeless state of confusion. The immigra- tion issue is a perfect example: One hundred senators have so far man- aged to turn the problem into 350 pages of what they probably con- sider "tightly reasoned" rules and regulations to solve the problem but which can only be understood by a bunch of high-priced lawyers who would tell you (if quizzed off the record) that the whole thing is unworkable anyway. We all know what the problem is: Mexicans want to come to the U.S. for a variety of reasons but are denied legal entry by burden- some and lengthy legalities which once were considered reasonable but are no longer adequate for today's problems. So many Mexi- cans now sneak across the border illegally that "experts" estimate their number to be upwards of 12 million. Walking down a street in any Southern California town you would be hard-pressed to know whether you are in the United States or Mexico. Trying to stem the tide of "illegals" is like shovel- ing sand into the wind, which is exactly what Congress is doing. Let us face reality and accept an unpopular solution. It will be called dual citizenship, an open border, free movement of citizens of both countries to pass freely back and forth. We might as well coniler including all the coun- tries of Central America in this plan. Tear down the fence that is now building but save the parts because we will need to erect it again perhaps down near Panama where it can be much shorter and more easily patrolled. The United States of North America! Think of the opportuni- ties for Anglo entrepreneurs! So much development will take place in the Mexican states that their unemployed workers will stay home. Millions of U.S. citizens will move south to live in the sun; ho- tels and casinos will line the Mexi- can coast; inland, manufacturing plants will have jobs that attract workers from north and south. Ah, the possibilities! Concessions will be required on both sides, of course. Bilingualism will be necessary; the respective governments will be adjusted in ways yet to be determined. The Anglo population must insist that Mexico clean up its bad habits concerning public corruption, ex- tortion, bribery, cumshaw, palm greasing, etc., until the practice is, at least, brought up to levels pre- vailing in our country. There are endless problems of course, and monumental details to be worked out, but they can be done. Tranquility will not come at once; great patience will be re- quired. The citizens of Idaho and can be accomplished, ve Congress will be in hog henri working out the details. We€ be so busy here at home there be no need to go off and make chief in other parts of the wor  Look at it this way" If Hera ": Cortez and his fellows had.. Englishmen instead of Spar the whole thing would have ri an accomplished fact o ago. Pete :1 What was that soOg .... o the t'aul simon sang - .,,e Parisians about s LI *'., exits at their most fa Sa° museum? "Fifty Ways to LeaVe Y°ar Louvre." me --mmi