Dropouts can bounce back
I want to educate the sponsors of Proposition 1, the “dropout levy.” The voters were not confused or skeptical the stated goals could be met. It is just that the high dropout rate, if there really is one, is not a problem.
Using my family as an example, neither my father, mother, two sisters or brother finished high school. A real family of failures, right? Wrong. My father got a good-paying job in the construction industry. My mother got her GED and worked at various jobs. My older sister got her GED and became a nurse. My younger sister first worked as a waitress, then went on to have a 30-year career as restaurant manager. My brother got a job as an auto parts store delivery driver. He went on to become the store manager, then opened his own business. He is now a parts/service manager at an auto dealership.
High school dropouts are not criminals or unemployed deadbeats. My history shows they get their GED and later go on to have successful careers. Proposition 1 failed for good reasons.
Christine Lette
Spokane
We could pay off the national debt tomorrow if we had a dollar for every indignant citizen who has demanded that our legislators “compromise” and “work together” in a “spirit of cooperation”!
Yet no one would love to do exactly that more than our legislators. They’d quickly pass needed legislation, the public would be happy with both klatches of them, and they could all reconvene at a Capitol Hill bar for a brewski.
The reality is more complicated. Compromise is always sincerely attempted right up to the point where one legislator says to the other: “But, my constituents will boil me in tea bags if I do that!” And the other guy says, “Well, OK, but if I give any more on this issue, my constituents will make me listen to recorded Al Sharpton speeches! I’d rather be boiled!” And the fight is on.
“Working together” can only go so far because we have differing parties for a reason; we have essentially irreconcilable, opposed views about what’s good for America.
However distasteful, thus, there is no substitute for the fight. So let us fight it without all the Pollyannaish rhetoric and hypocritical pretense to some higher moral plane of discourse.
William Slusher
Okanogan