Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/376789
Could it be that the "elephant in the room" is literally an elephant in the room? Yes, most of us try not to think too hard about the precious resources used by our precious four-legged companions; but a "community discussion" in the "Salon" on- line magazine recently posed the provoca- tive question "Pets may not be good for the environment, so can we justify keeping them?" Suchqueriesthreatento tear apart the "green" move- ment. No longer able to unite around "safe" issues such as meat production and cow flat- ulence, members must priori- tize their conflicting loyalties to their planet and their own pets. ("I'm hugging that tree — but not if your hound tinkles on it.") It's as if the embattled movement thinks "Everyone is a planet-destroying narcissist except me and thee, and some- times I'm not too sure about thee." For the sake of full disclo- sure, I "own" three cats and work for a farmers cooperative which sells quite a bit of pet food and accessories. For the sake of fuller disclosure, if do- gooders keep harping about the "sustainability" of Fluffy and Fido, I'm going to see how long I can sustain a scream. To be sure, there are some things we should be able to agree on: (1) Consumers should pressure industry to use the most efficient manu- facturing and packaging pos- sible. (2) Responsible pet own- ers should continue spaying and neutering. (3) We should try our best to neutralize the toxicity of pet waste. Beyond that, we should re- sist the wackos who think that American progress means transitioning from year-long covered wagon trips to year- long guilt trips. True, as one participant in the online discussion re- assured, no one is planning to kick the door in today and haul off all your pets for ex- termination. (Good thing, too. Know how people and their pets start to look alike af- ter a while? Some dude is lia- ble to be screaming at the dog catcher, "No, not me. I'm a hu- man. The dog collar is a fash- ion statement! A fashion state- ment!") But get ready for enough taxes, fees, zoning ordinances and heavy-handed propaganda campaigns ("Second-hand cat apathy: what are we doing to our children?") to make you whimper. The anti-pet forces give a grudging nod to the intangible mental, emotional and physi- cal benefits of having a house- hold companion. But don't say too much how that rabbit helps grandma's blood pres- sure. ("Hmm. This grandma — just how productive has she been lately? And how much coal-powered electricity does she consume watching 'Wheel of Fortune'?") If we make too big a deal out of the ability of pets to shape the climate, pets may get delusions of grandeur. ("Forget about soiling the car- pet! I'm going to raise the sea level! Bwahahahaha!") Pet haters will cut us a lit- tle slack — as long as we make horses wear Birkenstocks in- stead of metal shoes. And channel government funding into the development of wind- mill-powered poodles. Yes, they'll magnanimously announce, "Every dog has its day. Spike, Tuesday is your day to eat, poop and breathe..." Let us be wary of those who are dead set on preserving the earth just so future genera- tions can be miserable without pets. They may be barking up the wrong tree, but their faith is unshakable. "A guy can dream, can't he? Oh, wait—how much of a car- bon footprint does R.E.M. sleep leave? Studies! Fetch me some studies!" DannyTyreewelcomes reader e-mail responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page Tyree's Tyrades. DannyTyree Carbon pawprint — banning pets? Everyone is a planet- destroying narcissist except me and thee, and sometimes I'm not too sure about thee. StateofJefferson declarations Thursday, a group of people supporting the State of Jeffer- son went to the State Capitol in Sacramento to have two decla- rations — Siskiyou County and Modoc County's — handed to the Secretary of State to enter them into a parliamentary doc- ument. This is the first time in his- tory a county in the United States has use a declaration to separate from a state. We are doing this to have equal representation in our leg- islature and less government. — June Cooper, Red Bluff City must be flush to hand out raises Even though I do not live in the city limits of Red Bluff, I try to shop as local as possible and support the Frontier Village Farmers Market, which is lo- cated within city limits. I keep abreast on the happen- ings of what is playing out with the local city government and businesses within, as it does determine my decisions about who to give my support to. Interesting enough and with much drama, I have found it amusing that the City Coun- cil and the Red Bluff-Tehama County Chamber of Commerce have had their disagreements, each using various scare tactics and bribes to persuade others to their point of view, yet in the end, due to the surge in sales tax, all ends well and they can play nice again. Thank good- ness. Now there is no need to in- crease sales tax to make more revenue, as there is even enough to give all the city man- agers and supervisors 4.5 per- cent raises instead of 3 percent. Now let's see them do some- thing about the decreasing wa- ter. — Sandy Burkett, Los Molinos New tax should be locked in The city is asking the voters to pass a quarter cent tax in- crease which will be on the No- vember ballot. This tax, they claim, will go to our police de- partment, fire department and to the parks and recreation de- partment. The monies generated from this tax will go into the gen- eral fund, which in actuality, could be used for any depart- ment that falls short of its allot- ted amount or any other issues that might arise. This year I've taken more of an interest in the City Coun- cil meetings because of an is- sue I'm involved in. Almost ev- ery meeting there are agenda items where someone is asking to move monies from one de- partment to another. Some of these monies come from a voter approved tax raise to help a certain department achieve something we all need or want. Once the money starts coming in the council starts moving it around to other ar- eas. In turn we don't accom- plish what the money was in- tended to do. The transportation depart- ment just lost $60,000, $41,000 is to go to NCE Engineers to put part of the old city dump into state compliance — it has been out of compliance for years. Of course this is a normal oc- currence. Just like Proposition 1, which is also on the ballot for an increase in taxes. If that tax increase wins we will not reap any of the benefits, it will all go elsewhere. Read your ballot book or the newspaper. I'm 100 percent for this tax. Our police department, fire de- partment and parks and recre- ation need this money desper- ately. We need to rebuild our police department back up to where it once was to help ensure our safety caused by AB 109. So let's make sure the money created by this tax goes only to these departments. My suggestion is to have the City Attorney write up a trust that states the taxes collected from this special increase of a quarter cent goes into an al- ready set up account only to be used by these departments along with their normal allot- ted yearly budget which will in- clude a normal yearly increase, which cannot be reduced be- cause of this extra allocated revenue and signed by the mayor and all council members. If they aren't willing to do this you will know they already have plans to spend it else- where. In that case vote no. Maybe we can control how some of our tax dollars are spent. — Kathy Nelson, Red Bluff Supes should hold off on filling positions The Tehema County Board of Supervisors has approved a 13.44 percent budget increase from the previous fiscal year, including hiring 9.5 more em- ployees. This is an era of de- clining family income since the 2007 start of the recession, con- tinued high private sector un- employment and an official 2.5 percent inflation. The board had to borrow from reserves for this excess budget increase. The county should be cutting employment to maintain un- changed pay, benefits and pen- sion funding, as all civilian re- tirees must do. It is quite nor- mal for non government retirees to halve spending to adapt to higher retirement inflation in- cluding higher health care costs, food, housing, and energy. The first step should be to cut county employee vacation days to a maximum of three weeks, holidays to 9 days and 3 annual paid sick days, to match civil- ian benefits. Retirement pen- sions should be delayed to age 65 and never inflation adjusted to match civilian sector retire- ment. This would allow fewer government employees. — Joseph Neff, Corning Your opinions Cartoonist's take As my husband, Bill, and I watched the 2014 Little League World Series on TV this past week, we started to reminisce about a family vacation we took with our son and 13 other boys along with some of their par- ents. This was the summer of 1974. We started in July at Happy Camp and won 2 games. The next weekend we were at home in Red Bluff and won 2 more games. The next 3 games they won were in Chico. Then in August we were in San Lorenzo and they won 2 more games. By this time we had a feeling this was going pretty good for those kids from "Cowtown Red Bluff." We then flew to San Berna- dino in southern California. They played and beat New Mex- ico, Washington, Utah and San Ri, the team from San Berna- dino who were the favorites. We were told some of the par- ents from San Ri had already bought their plane tickets to go to Williamsport, Penn. Can you believe that these kids from "Cowtown Red Bluff" were now champions of the Western Hemisphere and would represent the west at the Little League World Series. They had defeated 13 teams in single elimination games. This was a dream come true for any Little League ball player. The next step was to fly to the home of the Little League World Series in Williamsport. We were able to fly with the boys along with some parents. It was such an honor and a thrill to see those boys in their green and yellow uniforms rep- resenting the west at the World Series. They defeated Canada and Venzuela and would face Taiwan for the World Championship. Even though they lost to Taiwan they were still our Champions of the west. This year we celebrate 40 years since the summer of 1974. We have lost 4 members of the team — Mark Keluche, Ken Benefield, Jerry Baer and our son, Boyd Hedden. There used to be signs at the north and south end of town that welcomed people to the "Home of the 1974 Little League World Series team." Those signs were removed and never replaced, so now after 40 years there is nothing to let visitors to our town know what those 14 boys and their coach and manager did during the summer of 1974. Seems like we could find some way or something to honor our Little League heroes. We thank those 14 boys: Mark Keluche, Scott Hat- field, Boyd Hedden, Paul Ad- ams, Mark Cox, Rocky Ponci- ano, Don Howard, Greg Schoff, Cevin Dietz, Jerry Baer, Jeff Gleason, Scott Diehl, Ken Bene- field and Gale Gilbert and Don Howard, coach, with Jack Glea- son, manager, who put Red Bluff on the map. Nancy Hedden The heroes of the summer of 1974 recalled GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIAL BOARD How to have your say: 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 no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Assemblyman Dan Logue, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico 95928, 530 895- 4217 Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, sena- tor.nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sac- ramento 95814, 916 445- 2841, fax 916 558-3160, gov- ernor@governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa, 507 Cannon House Office Building, Washing- ton D.C. 20515, 202 225- 3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393-0707, fax 415 393- 0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Francisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 Contact your officials Seems like we could find some way or something to honor our Little League heroes. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, September 6, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4