LETTERS: What would Heck do to improve VA?
To the editor:
Regarding the article on the North Las Vegas VA hospital (“Family: ‘This is how we treat our veterans?’,” Wednesday Review-Journal), as a noncombat veteran and health care provider for more than 50 years, I become an explosive, flame-throwing dragon when I hear Rep. Joe Heck use words such as “we.” I’m interested in his using “I” when he states what has to be done to correct VA operations.
What specifically will Rep. Heck do (with date-specific timelines), and what exactly will he correct? How many people did he interview, and where and how were they interviewed? Was it at one of his re-election gatherings? Has he ever gone to the VA hospital in anonymous dress and actually observed the operation?
As a touted emergency room physician, what priority would Rep. Heck give to the 91-year-old patient pictured on the front page the Review-Journal? The answer should be “priority one,” regardless of what prompted that visit.
So what should he (not we) do about all this? Rep. Heck should go to the VA emergency room and ask for the logs, so that he can personally interview the people in charge. If the answers don’t compute, those responsible are immediately put on notice that they will be fired unless immediate corrective action is taken. To do otherwise is creating another Eric Shinseki bureaucrat — a person who looks great on paper but draws a zero for the mission.
LEN KREISLER
LAS VEGAS
Supporting Sherm
To the editor:
So Stephanie Wilson thinks the Review-Journal should fire Sherman Frederick because he attacks President Barack Obama (“Scrap Sherm,” Wednesday Review-Journal letters). Well, I look forward to the Sunday paper and reading Mr. Frederick’s opinion on how the administration is circumventing the Constitution, bypassing Congress, ignoring the separation of powers and distorting the truth to the American public.
Ever since President Obama set foot in the Oval Office, most in the news media have given him a pass and rarely ask the probing questions they did of previous presidents. Mr. Frederick has a unique way of writing that cuts through the garbage and lays out the facts, and also gives us his opinion. We have enough writers who only carry Obama’s water bucket.
I have an idea for Ms. Wilson: Don’t read Mr. Frederick’s column. Then you will be able to have an enjoyable day without the negativity. Let’s not fire anyone, though I agree with Ms. Wilson in that I would like to see Jane Ann Morrison again writing her opinion columns, rather than street reporting. She is very funny and informative.
MICHAEL O. KREPS
LAS VEGAS
Common Core
To the editor:
I am an 80-year-old man with five great-grandchildren of school age. As I see what is happening in our public schools now, I am so grateful for the school system and the wonderful teachers I had while growing up in Indiana in the 1940s.
The Common Core was implemented by our federal government by bribing the governors of 45 states to force an incomprehensible mess on our public school children, with many affected not knowing what the curriculum contained. The math problems look as though they were devised by people in an asylum. Common Core developers are changing history in the school books and indoctrinating rather than teaching. They are data-mining personal information of students and their families.
People such as Microsoft chief Bill Gates and the owners of Pearson Education Publishing, who helped finance Common Core, stand to benefit immensely from an unproven teaching method that could take years to discover if it works. Meanwhile, our children are becoming indoctrinated so that they can become good little Marxists.
Our kids deserve better. Let’s get rid of Common Core and go back to the good old three R’s.
CHARLES “BILL” GREER
LAS VEGAS
