Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/736788
Wearefacedwithtwobal- lot propositions regarding the death penalty in California and one which would lessen prison time. These are: Prop- osition 62 which would eliminate the death pen- alty and replace it with life in prison without possibility of parole, and Prop- osition 66 which would speed up the process of imposing the death penalty. The measure re- ceiving the most votes would make the other proposition null even if it also passed. The other measure, Proposition 57 would reduce prison time for non-violent offenders. Proposition 62 has garnered relatively less money to sup- port or reject it than some oth- ers on the ballot; about a total of $8.8 million has been raised to either support or reject it, the supporters have raised about $1 million more than those against the measure. Those against the measure in- clude a significant number of District Attorneys and law en- forcement organizations. Proposition 66 is a little pricier. About $9.2 million has been raised to support or de- feat this measure, with those opposed having raised about $1.4 million more than the supporters. The list of support- ers includes many of those op- posing Proposition 62. The argument on both sides is that the current death pen- alty system is flawed. Cur- rently someone can reside on death row for a long time be- fore he/she is actually exe- cuted. The Los Angeles Times comments, "How dysfunc- tional is the system? Since vot- ers reinstated the death pen- alty nearly 40 years ago, 1,039 convicted murderers have re- ceived death sentences, but the state has executed only 13, in part because death penalty appeals take about 25 years, according to experts. Dur- ing the same period, 104 con- demned inmates died of nat- ural causes, suicides or other non-execution means — and the system has cost taxpayers about $5 billion. Something clearly has to be changed." Depending on whom you talk to, the death penalty can be a deterrent to murder/ho- micide, or it really does not matter to the killer, particu- larly in extreme emotional sit- uations where the perpetra- tor simply does not stop and think. Some claim it provides closure for victims; I am not sure you can replace those who have gone, however, but executing the killer may help those left behind carry on. As far as I am concerned our state legislators are com- mitting a crime of negligence by not addressing this issue; it is currently expensive and wasteful, and possible cruel and unusual punishment the way we implement the death penalty. The alternate to de- leting the penalty in Propo- sition 66 will be more timely but also expensive and require new rules and regulations. So, like good politicians ev- erywhere the legislators pass the buck to us so they will not have to take credit or get blame for whatever happens. Just as the legislature "solved" the prison and jail crowding problem by early re- leases and sending prisoners to crowded county jails, they have also continued to avoid the difficult decisions needed to deal with our inadequate prison and jail facilities. Un- fortunately, we cannot simply pass a proposition to require them to actually do their jobs. I am inclined to do away with the death penalty and approve Proposition 62 and hope we can develop a maxi- mum security, hard labor set- ting for those guilty of causing other people's deaths. Given our poor record of implement- ing existing death penalty laws and procedures, that may be a pipe dream, and we have not solved our prison and jail crowding problem. As another example of this issue is Proposition 57. The ballot title is: "Crimi- nal Sentences. Juvenile Crimi- nal Proceedings and Sentenc- ing. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute." That is pretty vague. You have to sort through the verbiage of the actual proposal and the ar- guments for and against to learn anything. What I learned was that this may be another attempt to lessen the overcrowding in our prisons, that it has to do with "non-violent" criminals, and that it may have some unin- tended consequences if enacted, much as AB 109 did. "Non-vio- lent" is not defined and accord- ing to some subject to wide in- terpretation. Domestic violence is "non-violent" believe it or not! I will vote against it. I am not sure why our state legislators have not been able to address the issues in this pro- posal and why we have to vote on such a complicated matter. JoeHarropisaretired educator with more than 30 years of service to the North State. He can be reached at DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net. JoeHarrop Life and death put to the vote, Props 57, 62, 66 StatementfromtheBoard of Supervisors chairman Editor: There have been recent state- ments made on social media that "certain Tehama County Elected Officials recently re- ceived salary raises around $26,000 each ... to offset the out of pocket cost of the incum- bent candidates' re-election ex- penses." The purpose of my comments is to dispel these ru- mors, and provide accurate in- formation on this subject. On March 1, the Board of Su- pervisors approved a new com- pensation package for the follow- ing six county employees: Dave Hencratt, Sheriff; Gregg Cohen, District Attorney; Dana Hollmer, Treasurer-Tax Collector; Dale Stroud, Assessor; LeRoy Ander- son, Auditor-Controller and Jen- nifer Vise, Clerk-Recorder. This action did not involve or affect the compensation paid to members of the Board of Supervisors. Prior to this action, these em- ployees had not received any raise since 2010. The new com- pensation package required these employees to start pay- ing their own retirement con- tributions, and provided for a net salary increase of 10% for most of these employees, imple- mented gradually through 2018. In other words, a 10% increase in salary over a 9-year period. As explained on the public re- cord during the March 1 board meeting, this new package was approved for several reasons, including increased cost of liv- ing since 2010, need for an eq- uity adjustment to offset bene- fits available to the non-elected management employees and salary compaction with subor- dinates in some departments. During the public meeting, there was approximately two minutes of discussion between board members and represen- tatives of the employees regard- ing some of the unique personal expenses elected officials of- ten incur — including the cost of attending community events, which is not reimbursed by the county, and the costs of run- ning for office. No supervisor stated that this was a decid- ing factor in approving the new compensation package, and there was never any suggestion that the board was intending to reimburse the elected officials for election costs. The allegation that this was "an effort to take the power from the people and prevent regular citizens from winning elections" and "to help protect incumbents from losing their offices" is simply false. Anyone interested in further factual information regarding this matter is encouraged to re- view the staff report and docu- mentation, and to listen to the audiotape of the Board of Su- pervisors deliberations on the subject, both of which are avail- able on line at http://tehama- countvca.igm2.com. — Bob Williams, Corning No on $26M high school bond measure Editor: While attending a recent Red Bluff High School board meet- ing, I pointed out that a pri- vate firm hired by the school to do a study designated $18M of the $26M bond money for boys sports facilities upgrades and repairs — over half of the bond money for sports? The superintendent stated that this designation was "not necessarily representative of Red Bluff High School." So the point of the study would be what then? Did you also know that if the bond passes that the five school board members have the final say on how the bond money is spent? And, finally, should it pass did you know that you will pay for it for more than 30 years? No on the bond measure. — Jenny Alexander, Red Bluff One dime a day is not all you'll pay Editor: Contrary to columnist Joe Harrop's article in the Sept. 10 Daily News, a dime a day is not all you'll pay for the latest of many series of tax increases. Public schools now cost tax- payers $12,000 per year per stu- dent, because of the yearly educa- tion tax increase by federal, state, county and city tax increasers. No matter how much income is received by the taxing politicians, that will never be enough, and another layer is added. It would be fairer if selec- tive public school discrimina- tion ended, and every school choice parent received equal distribution of their now de- nied education taxes. Politicians forget that retir- ees do not receive inflationary adjustments to their pensions, for the minority that receive pensions, nor have they re- ceived a Social Security adjust- ment for the 6 percent inflation rate experienced in 2016. Politicians ignore the fact that retirees can no longer do the property and home mainte- nance that they performed dur- ing their younger days. They must hire service providers. It is rare for private sector employees to receive continued health insurance subsidies upon retirement, hence the need to devote one-third of retirement income to out of pocket health care including self paid insur- ance for Medicare, supplemen- tal, prescription and long term care, plus costs of optics, den- tal and most prescription costs, even with insurance. An optimum, and fair, solu- tion would be for California to end, at age 65, the 50 percent of property, sales and income taxes collected for K-12 education. Age 65 retirees who enrolled their children in public schools, have long repaid the K-12 school debt of their children. — Joseph Neff, Corning Your opinions Cartoonist's take An estimated 84,000,000 Americans tuned into the 1st Presidential Debate at New York's Hofstra University last week, but Don- ald Trump did not seem to be among them. Mentally he had checked out, maybe to seek ad- mission to Dr. Snuffleupagus's clinic to score some surplus Claritin. A consensus of post debate polls revealed 54 percent of re- spondents thought Hillary Clin- ton won, 24 percent considered Trump the winner while the other 22 percent either had no opinion or looked at the questioner like they were crazy for even asking. The month of September wit- nessed a Trump surge that thrust the real estate mogul into a dead heat, so these numbers indi- cate half his supporters thought he lost. His own spin-doctors were ecstatic he managed to pro- nounce his own name correctly. And for that they should thank grandpa for changing it from Drumpf. , Many people said that whoever watched that debacle and still plans to vote for Donald Trump, hates America. Trump embarked on a post-de- bate oblivion tour to tell whoever would listen (Fox News) how ev- erybody was telling him he had totally won the debate by a wide margin. Presumably these are the same delusionals who so often re- mark on his terrific temperament. Not just a great tempera- ment, the best temperament in the history of presidential pol- itics. Its amazing, his temper- ament. Ask anybody. Ask Sean Hannity. Trump gets so worked up talking about his tremen- dous temperament, the only ex- planation is he's confused about the definition of the word. "My temperament is much bet- ter than perfect. I have a note from Sean Hannity and Doctor Oz about my incredibly beautiful temperament. Both have seen re- cent calculations by my gastroen- terologist that measure my tem- perament as 98.7 degrees." The major debate knock against Hillary Clinton is that she was too scripted and resem- bled an escaped animatron from Disney's Hall of Presidents whose face had frozen halfway between amazement and condescension. That's how low we've come; accu- sations are flying that someone was too well prepared. But that's more Team Trump sniping, jealous that the former Secretary of State was able to string words together into ac- tual sentences with subjects and predicates and points and stuff. You know. In a presidential sort of manner. Trump predicted he would mop the floor with her and came prepared wearing one on his head. The thrice married reality TV star started strong, but soon wound down like a cheap watch, which has to be especially gall- ing for a guy who claims his op- ponent is not qualified because of her lack of stamina. Wrong. Apparently the real estate mo- gul thought he could earn extra credit based on time of posses- sion, because he interrupted and rambled and muttered, finding time to malign Rosie O'Donnell and sputtering something about how the DNC was hacked by some 400 pound guy on a bed. Then the tax- avoiding tycoon complained there was a problem with his microphone. And he's right. It was turned on. The orange developer com- pounded the disaster by engaging in a Twitter fight with a former Miss Universe who says he called her disgusting names. He claimed to be using sarcasm as a motiva- tional tool after she bloated up like a poisoned toad. And that news held serve for three days. But don't despair: there are two more debates to come. Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comedian and former Pizza Hut assistant manager. For sample videos and a calendar of personal appearances including his new one- man show, Elect to Laugh: 2016, appearing every Tuesday at the San Francisco Marsh, go to willdurst.com. Will Durst Donald Trump still thinks that he won the debate 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@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Joe Harrop Will Durst OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, October 8, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4