SPEAKOUT

Call 471-6636

Why is this one business man thinking just young people? Why isn't he going after the retired or semi-retired? Or how about the man with a family who has never been in trouble before. Why is he just looking for young people? Does he just want throw-away work, or what? Let's start looking at some of these older people who are trying to get back into the workforce. That's where the mainstay of Sikeston would be if these people would think about it.

I'm a concerned citizen here in Sikeston and was wondering if they give random drug tests to the Sikeston Department of Public Safety.

We contacted DPS Chief Drew Juden with your question. "Any city employee who operates a motor vehicle is randomly tested for drugs and alcohol and has been for about the last 10 years."

As a parent, you always worry about your kids. So when you take them to a daycare, you put a lot of trust in the owner and the establishment. I put my child in a local daycare and noticed neglect and abuse. Who should I trust? When I come and see the owner in a bad mood with a short temper, what should I think? We need better daycares.

Has George W. Bush ever been in the military service? If so, what branch and so forth. I have never heard anything as to whether he was or not.

Excerpts from an article published in the Washington Post on July 28, 1999, will answer your questions. Two weeks before he was to graduate from Yale, George Walker Bush stepped into the offices of the Texas Air National Guard at Ellington Field outside Houston and announced that he wanted to sign up for pilot training. It was May 27, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. Bush was 12 days away from losing his student deferment from the draft at a time when Americans were dying in combat at the rate of 350 a week. The unit Bush wanted to join offered him the chance to fulfill his military commitment at a base in Texas. It was seen as an escape route from Vietnam by many men his age, and usually had a long waiting list. Bush was sworn in as an airman the same day he applied. Vietnam was clearly a crucible for Bush, as it was for Bill Clinton, Al Gore and most other men who left college in the late 1960s. Bush maintains that he joined the National Guard not to avoid service in Vietnam but because he wanted to be a fighter pilot. Rather than be drafted and serve in the infantry -- an assignment Bush has acknowledged he did not want -- he agreed to spend almost two years in flight training and another four years in part-time service. Bush struggled with his own feelings about Vietnam and the turmoil he saw around him in America. Over time, he now says, he became disillusioned with the war, even as he believed that he should support the government that waged it.