This is Viewpoints for Friday, April 27, 2018

Defending Dublin VA center

Re: the letter to the editor titled, “Jackson Is Wrong For VA.” The writer is way out in left field when he denigrates the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center by using it as a local example of what is wrong with the VA in Washington.

I have been privileged to observe the expansion of this VA medical center here since it was threatened with possible closure in the mid-1980s until the present, which would have been a tragedy for the veterans that live in its coverage area. The outpatient clinic had more than 200,000 visits in 2017. There is a mental health outpatient clinic under construction which will be in service near the end of this year. The some 30 hospital beds are only partially staffed since acute care is provided with the local hospital here and also two in Macon. There are programs that provide services from assisted living to hospice care. There is so much going on here to benefit veterans that cannot be covered in the space allowed for this letter. Come to Dublin any week day and see for yourself what is happening here to take care of our veterans. Critical letters written with insufficient knowledge serve no useful purpose and reflect poorly on the writer. Finally, the Carl Vinson Medical Center is not a hospital, but a facility that provides a wide range of services for the benefit of veterans in this area.

No stamp of approval

Is the U.S. Postal Service deceitful? The following will help you decide.

1. Did you receive a notice with your mail stating that the stamp price will go up the last two times? I didn’t. Was there a sign in the post office stating this? There was none in M’ville nor none in Sparta. I didn’t hear anything on the news or the papers stating this, then again papers aren’t delivered where I live and we don’t have the news on 24 hours a day.

2. There was nothing said from Congress even though I get mail from them.

3. In the past, people were told that if you send a letter in a package you are to pay for that letter “in case the package gets torn then the letter can go on.” How much extra money did the Postal Service get with that one?

4. Years ago, if postage stamps were not used and were stuck on an envelope you could tear them off and use them again. No so anymore. It seems the Postal Service has made that harder to do with some type of special glue.

Fixing Robins parking

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or brain surgeon to see why there is a parking problem at Robins Air Force. One only needs to sit outside the base at one of the four rush hours (coming to work, going to lunch, coming back from lunch, going home) and the problem is obvious. Virtually every vehicle has only one passenger, the driver. Has no one heard of the car pool, or is this the masculinity situation where everyone wants to show off his/her vehicle, and prove that the driver knows how to drive? Many of us has worked at the Pentagon, where four people have to car pool just to have a parking pass. This a solvable problem!

Reason to worry

News that a school district in Middle Georgia may allow some of its staff to carry guns while at work because of the approval of their county school board is scary and reason to worry. The whole idea of this doesn’t make a lot of sense even if the county sheriff’s department will be involved. Arming some school staff with some special police training sounds like a way to do it all on the cheap.

School staff should not be armed in our schools. Professional police should be used on school campuses and school events. This should be the job of the county sheriff’s department and not any specially trained school employees. It all sounds like the school board is trying to solve their security issues on the cheap by using some of their staff instead of sheriff’s deputies.

Warner Robins Mayor Randy Toms, has publicly stated that he would like all citizens armed because of an increase in violent crimes. What we need to do is hire more police officers — not arm city hall staff. We need to let our sheriffs and police chiefs do their professional jobs with more police officers.

Keep workplaces safe

Since passing workplace safety laws more than four decades ago, the United States has made great strides in making workplaces safer and healthier. Because working people and our unions organized, fought and demanded action, fewer men and women are being killed and injured on the job.

However, that hard-won progress is now at risk, as protections from serious safety hazards, toxic chemicals and workplace violence are rolled back. We won’t stand by. Workers will continue to organize through our unions to secure the protections we deserve.

Workers Memorial Day is April 28. On this day we will come together to remember workers killed and injured on the job and renew the call for an end to the outrageous, unnecessary deaths of our brothers and sisters.

Pair safety with rights

Finally someone gets it right, well almost.

Gary Weatherly Jr’s letter that appeared on April 25, “How to make schools safer,” describes a correctly designed “Gun Free Zone.”The only thing missing was the legal and financial penalties for failure in operate and maintain a safe GFZ. Making our schools safe is a great goal in and of itself, but there are many places around this country that ban lawful gun owners from public GFZ’s with little or no security or safety. The law should be if you are going create a GFZ and take away my right to protect myself, you should be held legally and financially for my safety and security. Because those who would harm us don’t care about gun laws. This election season ask your local, state, and federal politicians about regulating GFZ’s and really protect America.

This story was originally published April 26, 2018 at 1:25 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Friday, April 27, 2018."