Mountain Views News          Saturday, November 7, 2015

15

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, November 7, 2015 


OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

DANNY Tyree - Tyrades!

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Rev. James Snyder

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Pat Birdsall (retired)

Make no 
mistake about 
it: every 
civilian who 
does his job 
conscientiously 
and delivers an honest day's work for an 
honest day's pay deserves a pat on the 
back.

But as Veterans Day approaches, I 
would like to pause and elaborate 
on why our active and honorably 
discharged military personnel are 
so special. Grumbling and griping is 
only human, but very few civilian jobs 
offer anything like the kind of stress 
weighing on those who defend our 
country.

Perhaps you are overwhelmed by 
workplace politics and wonder "Who 
can I trust???" Our service people 
know it's a life-or-death situation if 
their buddy is off his game a little when 
combat time arrives. And that foreign 
fighter who is being trained — will he 
be an appreciative ally, or will he shoot 
the American in the back?

Do you feel pressure to measure up 
those who went before you — whether it 
is your grandfather (in a family-owned 
business) or "the award-winning guy 
who had this territory before you"? Our 
service people labor in the shadow of 
those who exhibited brilliant strategy 
and extreme courage, including those 
of whom it can be said "some gave all."

Is your job boring? Do you get tired of 
the same stretches of road, the same 
assembly line, the same cubicle? Think 
of enduring ocean wave after ocean 
wave or sand dune after sand dune 
— with the break in the monotony 
coming, not from a favorite customer 
or a "casual Friday," but from a sudden 
burst of enemy fire.

Do you stress over "the one who got 
away" — the college basketball prospect 
or the wealthy investor whom you just 
couldn't impress enough to get them to 
sign on the dotted line? Sure enough, 
those folks can go on to sign with your 
competitor. On the other hand, when 
someone in the Armed Forces lets an 
enemy get away, that combatant may go 
on to blow up a water purification plant 
or an orphanage.

Do you chafe under your immediate 
supervisor's arbitrary meddling, or the 
nonsensical rules and regulations passed 
down through the corporate hierarchy? 
Our service people have to deal with the 
sometimes incomprehensible decisions 
of the military chain of command — 
but they are also at the mercy of the 
purely political maneuvering of the 
commander-in-chief and Congress. 
Such maneuvering may incite either 
timidity or reckless invasions, just for 
the sake of votes.

Do your sometimes feel that the public 
doesn't properly appreciate the product 
or service you offer? Our service people 
are generally "out of sight, out of mind" 
and are ripe targets for budget cutting.

If you're a stay-at-home mom or dad, 
does it drive you crazy when your 
housekeeping efforts are instantly 
undone by spouse, kids or pets? Think 
about having your hard work destroyed 
by enemy bombs.

Are you tired of being on the road for 
a week at a time or working a shift that 
has your children already asleep when 
you get home? Let's talk a little about 
the hardships of military families...

By all means, take pride in your job and 
try to improve your working conditions. 
But let's keep it in perspective and 
never pass up an opportunity to say 
"Thank you" to a veteran, send cards 
and letters to active military personnel 
and maintain the sort of nation that 
our defenders can truly feel is WORTH 
defending.

Danny welcomes email responses at 
tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his 
Facebook fan page "Tyree's Tyrades". 


OUR NATION’S VETERANS: 
WHY THEY’RE SPECIAL

THE MANY FUNNY 

FACES OF THE SEASON


I do not often get under the weather; 
as tall as I am my head is usually in the 
clouds. My head was stuffed and every 
other breath I took I had a sneezing fit. I 
felt miserable. I looked miserable. I know 
this because The Gracious Mistress of the 
Parsonage said, “You look miserable.”

 I vaguely remember my wife saying 
something to the effect that she was going 
somewhere and to be ready for something 
or other. In my condition, I could not have 
cared less. She could have taken a trip to 
the moon and I would not have cared. All 
I wanted was to be left alone to wallow in 
my ocean of misery.

 Taking refuge in my easy chair, I 
pampered myself with a nice hot cup of 
tea with honey. I had a slight fever and 
my head was thumping like a marching 
band at a football game. Trying to ease my 
pain, I wrap my head in a wet towel. My 
eyes were bulging and watery as if I had 
just swallowed a hot spicy Mexican taco 
in one gulp. To monitor my temperature I 
sucked a thermometer. I must have looked 
a sight but I was not anticipating being a 
contestant at some beauty pageant.

 Suddenly, I was aroused by a terrible 
explosion. It seemed like the noise rocked 
the very foundation of the house.

 As I opened my bleary eyes, there was 
another explosion, louder than before. My 
thoughts lead me to believe some terrorist 
was attacking my house with the ferocity 
of a nuclear bomb.

 It took several moments for me to extract 
myself from my chair and stand up. Once 
up, every step I took reverberated in my 
head like the tom-toms of a thousand war 
drums.

 I painfully shuffled to the front door. 
I slowly opened the door and through 
bleary, watery eyes, I could make out the 
shadowy forms of six miniature aliens. 
As soon as the door was wide open all six 
of them shrieked, dropped their bags and 
ran up the street screaming at the top of 
their lungs, “a monster, a monster.”

 I slammed the door and ran as fast as 
I could to my easy chair. As soon as my 
breathing became somewhat normal, 
I convinced myself that I had a bad 
nightmare.

 Later on, I heard some mumbling 
rumbling sound. It has a familiar ring to 
it but I really could not place it at the time. 
I slowly opened my eyes and there was 
my wife looking at me and saying, “You 
remembered that tonight was trick-or-
treat night for the children?”

 The next morning I felt somewhat 
better and around the breakfast table my 
wife casually mentioned, “Did we have 
any trick-or-treaters last night?”

 I stop to think for a moment and then 
said, “I don’t think anybody came to our 
door last night.”

 “Then,” she asked, “where did these six 
bags of candy come from I found at our 
front door when I come home last night?”

 Things are not always as they seem. 
When the whole picture is not in view it 
is easy to jump to the wrong conclusion. 
The Bible says, “For now we see through 
a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now 
I know in part; but then shall I know even 
as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12 
KJV).

 Things look blurry now but one day we 
have the assurance that we will see things 
clearly and know things perfectly.

 

 The Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the 
Family of God Fellowship, 1471 Pine Road, 
Ocala, FL 34472. He lives with his wife, 
Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him 
at 352-687-4240 or e-mail jamessnyder2@
att.net. The church web site is www.
whatafellowship.com

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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN 

MICHAEL Reagan Making Sense

HOWARD Hays As I See It

CRUEL APPRENTICE WHERE THE BOSS 
IS FIRED - 

It seems Jobs “Rn’t” Theirs at Toys “R” Us. 

Breitbart News uncovered a particularly flagrant example of 
H—1B visa abuse at Toys “R” Us. The story is particularly 
timely in the wake of the exchange between Donald Trump 
and Marco Rubio at the CNBC Inquisition.

Rubio wants to greatly expand usage of the H—1B visa 
program that ostensibly brings in foreign workers to do 
jobs Americans are not qualified to perform. Rubio justifies his support with the 
rationalization that if there are abuses, those companies shouldn’t be allowed to 
participate in the program.

I can only conclude, sadly, that Marco is not among the readers of my column.

Exploiters of the H—1B loophole use foreign workers to fill jobs that Americans 
are fully capable of filling. Even the state of California does it as you can read here.

According to Breitbart, “Other companies that have displaced American workers 
in favor of H-1B visa laborers include Disney in Florida, Southern California 
Edison, Harley Davidson Wisconsin, Cargill in Minnesota, Pfizer in Connecticut, 
and Xerox in New York.” 

And in spite of Rubio’s recycling H—1B supporters’ false claim that we need more 
Americans trained in the IT and STEM fields, the truth is “there are far more U.S. 
graduates with STEM and IT degrees than there are jobs available.”

I will give Toys “R” Us credit for creativity in tossing Americans on to the 
unemployment heap. Where Disney and Southern California Edison subjected its 
employees to the exquisitely cruel assignment of training the people one—on—one 
who would be filling your desk chair before it had time to grow cold, Toys trained 
the trainer.

Employees in the accounting department (American’s can’t do bookkeeping? Who 
knew?) were stalked by employees from the Tata Consultancy Services who watched 
their every move and then produced “intricate manuals” for TCS workers back in 
India who would then perform the work Americans were perfectly willing to do.

As one employee who had worked for Toys for almost 12 years lamented, “Why 
am I sitting here showing this man how to do my job when they are taking it away 
from me and sending it to India?” Once the information extraction was complete 
67 citizens lost their jobs.

Before Marco Rubio comes out in favor of tripling the size of this American 
displacement program again, I suggest he meet individually with laid off employees 
from Disney, Toys, Harley Davidson or Xerox and ask them how well the program 
is working.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author 
of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). Visit his websites at www.reagan.com 
and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @
reaganworld on Twitter.


“When he came 
in the classroom, I 
immediately told my 
classmates, ‘Get your 
phones out, get your 
phones out. I think this 
is going to go downhill.’ 
And it did.”

- Niya Kenny on CNN, 
describing scene prior 
to assault on fellow-
student who refused to 
put down her cellphone

 

 I clicked on the video soon after it 
appeared on Huffington Post. A big guy 
(an “adult”) grabs a teenage girl, slams 
her to the floor and throws her across the 
room. There’s little if anything I’d find more 
disturbing, or would make me angrier. Yes, 
but - one thing that did was the repeated use 
of “Yes, but . . .” in reaction to the incident. 

 For Don Lemon on CNN, it was yes, “it 
does look horrible”, but “this only shows a 
small slice in time.” What the video shows 
is a sixteen-year-old student seated at her 
desk, assaulted by a uniformed “school 
resource officer”.

 That officer’s boss, Sheriff Leon Lott 
of South Carolina’s Richland County, 
acknowledged that yes, “there’s no 
justification for some of his actions”, but 
“If she had not disrupted that school and 
disrupted that class, we would not be 
standing here today.” There would’ve been 
no need for the “muscling techniques”, as 
the officer put it in his report, to get the girl 
out of her desk.

 To David French in National Review, yes, 
“the incident didn’t look good on camera”, 
but that “doesn’t make his actions wrong.”

 To former LAPD officer Mark Fuhrman 
on Fox News, it’s all relative; Yes, “he threw 
her on the ground, he handcuffed her” - but 
“He didn’t kick her. He didn’t hit her. He 
didn’t choke her.”

 Former NYPD detective Harry Houck 
admitted on CNN that yes, the footage 
“looks really bad”, but the officer “can use 
whatever force is necessary” to make the 
arrest. 

 Yes, one of the most common “Yes, 
but”s over the past week was that yes it’s 
disturbing, but police officers can and must 
use “whatever force is necessary” in making 
arrests. But these are kids in school.

 Yes, kids shouldn’t mouth off or 
disobey teachers and administrators. As 
experienced teachers have remarked, in a 
situation like the one at Spring Valley High, 
once the student made clear she wasn’t 
going to put down her phone or leave when 
told to, the class should’ve simply resumed 
with the offending student dealt with after 
the others had left. But in some states such 
behavior risks not just detention, but arrest.

Nineteen states have on their books a 
“disturbing schools” statute, with South 
Carolina’s more broad than most. It can 
be considered a crime “to interfere with or 
to disturb in any way or in any place the 
students or teachers of any school” or “to 
act in an obnoxious manner.”

 Yes, after not giving up her phone, the 
16-year-old got scrapes, bruises and a cast 
on her arm, but she also faces misdemeanor 
charges carrying up to a $1,000 fine and 
90 days in jail – with a criminal record 
coming out of high school. Yes, her 18-year-
old friend Niya Kenny, quoted above, did 
mouth-off at the officer assaulting her 
friend, but for that she was arrested, too – 
and faces the same charge, fine, jail time 
and criminal record.

 Over the past school year, 1,189 students 
in South Carolina were arrested for the 
“disturbing schools” offense and entered 
the Juvenile Justice system, not including 
teens charged as adults. Federal data shows 
black students twice as likely to be charged 
as white students.

 The U.S. Justice Dept. complained two 
years ago that school officials in Jefferson 
Parish, LA have given armed police officers 
“unfettered authority to stop, frisk, detain, 
question, search and arrest schoolchildren 
on and off school grounds.” This past 
summer, officers in Kentucky were sued 
for handcuffing eight and nine-year-olds. 
According to Huffington Post, over the past 
year at least 25 kids, and several faculty 
members, have sought medical attention 
due to school officers’ use of Tasers, pepper 
spray and stun guns.

 Yes, kids are kids all over. But how they’re 
treated largely depends on where they go 
to school; whether in a “disadvantaged” 
(large, highly-centralized) school district, 
or not. In his study last summer, Penn 
State sociologist David Ramey notes that 
although in the late-1990s crime “declined 
massively”, sensational crime headlines 
brought a push for “zero-tolerance” – more 
suspensions, expulsions, and criminal 
referrals. And, he found that “for the same 
minor levels of misbehaviors -- for example, 
classroom disruptions, talking back -- white 
kids tend to get viewed as having ADHD, 
or having some sort of behavioral problem, 
while black kids are viewed as being unruly 
and unwilling to learn”.

Yes, white students are likely to be moved 
into a program for “special needs”; but black 
students are more likely to be kicked out.

 According to the U.S., Dept. of Education, 
black students are three times more likely 
to be suspended and expelled than white 
students. This trend goes back to preschool. 
Yes, it’s bad, but it’s worse for girls – with 
black girls six times more likely to be kicked 
out than white girls.

 Students with multiple suspensions 
before 10th grade are much more likely to 
drop out, and high school drop-outs are 
eight times more likely to end up in the 
criminal justice system.

 Yes, kids should be learning proper 
behavior from parents at home, but it’s 
tough, as President Obama noted last week, 
when one-in-nine black kids have a parent in 
prison. Still, he repeated his determination 
to “disrupt the pipeline from underfunded 
schools to overcrowded jails.”

 Yes, it’s a major issue, but some things 
aren’t so complicated. Yes, as Hillary 
Clinton tweeted last week, “There is 
no excuse for violence inside a school. 
The #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh is 
unacceptable—schools should be safe 
places.” No “but”s about it.


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