Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/149061
6A Daily News – Thursday, August 8, 2013 Opinion DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes letters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submitted will be considered for publication. Letters will be edited. Letters are published at the discretion of the editor. Mission Statement We believe that a strong community newspaper is essential to a strong community, creating citizens who are better informed and more involved. The Daily News will be the indispensible guide to life and living in Tehama County. We will be the premier provider of local news, information and advertising through our daily newspaper, online edition and other print and Internet vehicles. The Daily News will reflect and support the unique identities of Tehama County and its cities; record the history of its communities and their people and make a positive difference in the quality of life for the residents and businesses of Tehama County. How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 Marijuana ordinances Editor: The Tehama County Marijuana Ordinances are null and void in ag land, farm land we have our own zoning ordinances and it is not something the Board of Supervisors can change, only legislature can. State laws prevail on changing existing ordinances in different areas, especially ag and farm land which are sole purposes to grow crops and any conflicting ordinances of state law is void. Cohen vs. Board of Supervisors. The legislature can amend a state statute but County Board of Supervisors have no such power whether or not the statute was enacted by initiative. The right to preserve the agricultural land use as well as the rights to farm act. This was not considered when they applied new ordinances that contradict, or enter an area fully occupied by general law by the legislation. Local legislation in conflict with general law is void. From the Governor's office of Planning and research review guidelines. Write your local representative and let him know the effects and illegality of this ordinance. You make the laws and pay the entities to do their jobs. Tehama County is known for creating their own laws and getting away with it. They are paid and working for the citizens of this community if you don't say anything nothing will change. Adapt to the future, we are stuck in the '60s, get on board and make this community respect the rights and privacy of others. Whatever happened to the good neighbor. When was the last time you did something nice for someone or said something nice. Too much negativity and cut throating in this community. When laws are ignored or made up ones that don't exist is not a group of individuals I respect. Everyone deserves to be heard in a respectful way and in determining the law, don't add your own. Of Northern California, 75 percent is agricultural and farm land. You have rights to grow crops freely on your own property. Marijuana is not an illegal controlled substance if you have a recommendation and state law allows you to grow and use without prosecution. Jeannette Turner, Red Bluff ing works in this country anymore. Editor: Obama's silly speech on the Doesn't anyone in Congress economy was pathetic. Only look down the road passed more talk to fool those dumb tomorrow? Appears not. So enough to believe him. Now many ideas, what California will spend happens tomorrow? $300 million advertisDarryl Issa is ing Obamacare. Your proposing eliminating I also heard somedoor-to-door mail thing about mapping deliveries. Our leadneighborhoods to ers waste so much racially balance them. money, the only place to go is Until they are balanced, no the middle working class. funds will be spent on those What happens when there's not neighborhoods. Where's more enough working to support the information on this brilliant high-life style of elected offi- plan? Sounds like more concials, welfare people, those trols to me. who really need a helping hand If illegal immigrants are and those too lazy to get off legalized, where are all the their behinds. Factor in payoffs jobs? If our soldiers come and corruption all over the home, there's no jobs for them, place, no wonder we have a and companies are still build$17 trillion debt. ing factories overseas and in As I expected, Benghazi, Mexico. Does this worry anyNSA scandal, IRS scandal and one? This is really a sad time all the others are slowly going for our country. away. Then you have the One last thing, if I want to George Zimmerman case, the clutch my purse in an elevator African-American radicals filled with nuns, I sure as hell demanded a trial, got one, don't will. It's my purse, my right. like the verdict. Jodi Arias They'll probably call me a case. Convicted of a brutal racist. I've had two bad situamurder, jury can't decide on the tions that taught me to be careverdict, will spend another mil- ful, I learned it well. lion for a new trial. The judge Bernice Cressy, can't make the decision? NothCottonwood Control freaks Turn Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 1550 Humboldt Road, Ste. 4, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR — Jim Nielsen, 2635 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico, CA 95928, (530) 879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate.ca.gov GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 5583160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-2253076. U.S. SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 3930710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary The one who would reinvent Detroit DETROIT — This city is the broken tooth in Michigan's smile. Nevertheless, the preternaturally optimistic governor, from whom never is heard a discouraging word, cheerfully describes his recent foray with a crew cleaning up a park in a particularly, well, challenging neighborhood: The weeds, says Gov. Rick Snyder, were so tall you could not see the sidewalks, or even the playground equipment. Concealed in the underbrush were some old tires. And a boat. And, he notes with an accountant's punctiliousness about presenting a complete record, they also found "a body." Never mind. Now another block of an almost cadaverous city has been reclaimed. Snyder, who has called himself "one tough nerd," began life after the University of Michigan as an accountant and is tough enough to have strengthened the relevant law and then wielded it to put Detroit under the governance of an emergency manager, an appointed autocrat. Detroit is the sixth Michigan city, together with three school districts, to have earned its loss of autonomy. Snyder is neither surprised nor dismayed by the Obama administration's prompt refusal to consider bailing out the city: "I had made it clear I wasn't going to ask them" for a bailout. One example of Wash- ington's previous costly caring is Detroit's "People Mover," the ghost train that circulates mostly empty. Snyder dismisses this slab of someone else's pork as "part of the 60 years of failure." He has largely forsworn attracting businesses to the city by offering tax credits, which he calls "the heroin drip of government." He speaks not of "fixing" but of "reinventing" Detroit, by which he means a new "culture of how to behave and act." He correctly stresses the cultural prerequisites for prosperity. And for popular sovereignty. Detroit under the emergency manager is enduring a democracy deficit because self-government requires collective self-control -- the restraint of appetites by realism about their costs. But fixing an urban culture is more complex than filling potholes. The 1994 bankruptcy of California's Orange County, which includes fabulously wealthy beach communities, and the 2011 bankruptcy of Alabama's Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham, resulted from bad investment decisions. Detroit, however, has suffered not just economic setbacks but a cultural collapse that precludes a rapid recovery. Despite some people's facile talk about "rebooting" Detroit, as though it is a balky gadget, this is a place where dangerous packs of feral dogs roam. No city can succeed without a large middle class, and in spite of that also makes bicycles and cheery talk about a downtown other things. About the vacant land opened up as the sprinkling of "hippopulation has consters and artisans," a tracted Snyder says: significant minority "Hops." This grain is of Detroit's residents used to make beer, and are functionally illitmicrobreweries make, erate and only 12 peror at least often accomcent have college pany, urban gentrificadegrees (in Seattle, tion. And those hun56 percent do). Famidreds of millions of lies are the primary public funds for a new transmitters of social hockey arena? He capital, and 79 pergamely explains it as a cent of children here of life" magare born to unmarried George F. "qualitythe gentrifiers. net for women. What midWith that, Snyder dle-class family will shifts, as a governor send children into a should, into Michigan school system where 3 percent of fourth-graders chauvinism: With its lakes and meet national math standards? "micro-climates," Michigan has, Detroit has Michigan's highest he says, the nation's secondincome tax, and highest proper- most diverse climate, so just ty tax among its large cities, but about anything can be grown, with an average income of even Detroit. Here -- he bounces $15,000, high rates raise little. back to urban reinvention mode There are 78,000 abandoned -- "the middle class was creatstructures, not counting Mitt ed," beginning with Henry Romney's boyhood home, Ford's 1914 decision to pay which has already been demol- workers an astonishing $5 a day. Snyder, who is up for reished in a once upscale neighborhood. The business tax dou- election in 2014, is not worried bled last year and white flight about Detroit voters punishing long ago was followed by black him because of astringent life flight -- the entrepreneurial act under an unelected emergency of self-preservation and self- manager. Snyder notes, smilimprovement by the motivated ing, that in 2010 he got more than twice the percentage of and talented. Against this litany of woes, Detroit's vote that Romney Snyder happily illustrates the received in 2012. Romney won city's revival by brandishing his 2.08 percent. shiny new wristwatch. It is a George Will's email address Shinola, manufactured here from Swiss parts, by a startup is georgewill@washpost.com. Will