THUMBS UP to animal welfare advocates and to the Senate Judiciary Committee members who are supporting a measure to outlaw pigeon shoots and other target events that use live animals. The Judiciary Committee voted 11-3 for a measure that would ban using live animals or birds as targets at events like trap shoots. Violating the ban would constitute a summary offense under Pennsylvania's animal cruelty laws. It's about time. Reeled targets or the clay targets used in skeet shoots imitate the motion of game animals or birds in flight. Here's hoping the full Senate passes the bill.
THUMBS DOWN to Pennsylvania's higher education Chancellor John Cavanaugh for defending average 3 percent merit raises for university administrators, arguing that they hadn't had a raise in more than two years. Plenty of people in the private sector haven't had raises, either, and they are not pulling down multi-hundred-thousand-dollar salaries like some education officials. While Pennsylvania is struggling to resolve a $4 billion-plus budget deficit on the backs of taxpayers, Cavanaugh and his minions show a real tin ear.
THUMBS UP to passing motorists Monica Cunningham and Mattew Boden, who stopped in their tracks when they spotted flames coming from a Stroud Township home, called 911 and then started banging on the house door. They finally roused the family. The two just may have saved the lives of the father and two daughters, who were asleep, and despite the smoke were unaware that the house was burning.
THUMBS DOWN to air traffic controllers who have napped and one who even watched a movie recently while ostensibly on duty protecting air passengers. New rules are welcome if they address the human tendency to doze off in this vital job.
THUMBS UP to the many, though not all, municipalities that offer their residents a spring cleanup service at an affordable cost. By periodically accepting discarded large appliances, broken lawn chairs and even pickup truckloads of items too large for the typical garbage can, they are helping residents keep their properties clean and reducing the temptation to dump things illegally, a still-common practice, alas, that costs everyone for cleanup.
Source: Pocono Record
