I never met Marine Corps Lance Corporal Victor Dew, but I feel that I have gotten to know him since the day he came home to Granite Bay to be laid to rest in a hero's grave, in the midst of his family, his friends and neighbors, his community and his comrades in arms.
Yesterday in Auburn, the community dedicated a street in honor of local resident Col. Bud Anderson. Col. Anderson is 90-going-on-51. He flew 116 fighter combat missions against the Luftwaffe during World War II -- including in support of the D-Day Invasion -- shooting down more than 16 German aircraft, saving countless bomber crews and contributing mightily to the destruction of what Churchill called "the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny in the history of the human race." One and a half million of our World War II veterans are still alive today, and they still have much to teach us
The Blue Star Memorial Highway Project began in the days after World War II, when almost every family had a Blue Star hung in their window awaiting the return of a loved one, and many families had replaced it with a Gold Star signifying that their loved one would not return.
An old forester in my district summed up the problem we are here to assess when he said, "The excess timber is going to come out of the forest one way or another. Either it will be carried out or it will be burned out. But it will come out." A generation ago, we carried it out and the result was a thriving economy and a healthy forest. But in the last twenty years, a radical and retrograde ideology has replaced sound forest management practices with what I can only describe as a policy of benign neglect.
The good news about our economy is that it hasn't been struck down by some mysterious act of God. Acts of Government plague our nation -- and acts of Government are entirely within our power to change.
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