Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/789474
ChipThompson, Editor 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: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS To best understand the Republican mental- ity on Capitol Hill — specifically, their dis- graceful refusal to probe the Trump-Russia national security scandal with even a scin- tilla of the energy they devoted to Benghazi — you need only read what Senator Rand Paul said Tuesday on Fox News Radio. "Ijustdon'tthinkit'suseful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party," Paul said. "We'll never even get started with do- ing the things we need to do like repealing Obamacare if we're spending our whole time having Republicans investi- gate Republicans." There you have it, folks. Per- mit me to translate: "If we fully probe deeply for anti- American treason, we won't have time to strip Americans of their health care." Remember when Republi- cans wrapped themselves in the flag and fancied them- selves to be our truest patri- ots? That was their brand for decades. But these days, the Trump armband is wound so tight that it's cutting off oxy- gen to their brains. Republicans have their pri- orities. The party, and its dream of shredding the safety net, totally comes first. The country, despite ever-mount- ing evidence that Team Trump was in bed with a foreign ad- versary, decidedly comes sec- ond. The latest news — and I know, it's tough to keep up — is that Trump campaign of- ficials and Trump associ- ates had "repeated contacts" with Russia in 2016, during the same time frame that Rus- sia was actively working to get Trump elected. There's no evidence in this new report that Trump's people partici- pated in the anti-Hillary hack- ing or that they were apprised of Putin's cyber-invasion. But it's suspicious that in Decem- ber, on the same day Presi- dent Obama punished Russia with sanctions, Michael Flynn called Russia five times in an attempt to undermine Ameri- ca's sanctions. Was he sending Russia a thank-you note for the election help? Is it ratio- nal to believe that he called so many times on his own, with- out a directive from Trump or other higher-ups? All this smoke — wait, here's even more — suggests a seri- ous Trumpster fire. All these unconnected dots are clearly sufficient impetus for a thor- ough independent probe. But somehow (and I know this is hard to believe), Republi- cans have lost the investigative zeal they exuded during the Obama era. Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman who helms the House Oversight Committee, was all geared up last year to deep-dive into Hillary Clin- ton's private server — vowing to soldier on even if she be- came president. He churned out more than 70 letters and subpoenas about that alleg- edly dire threat to national se- curity. But when asked yester- day about Trump and Russia, Chaffetz took refuge in Mi- chael Flynn's resignation: "I think the situation has taken care of itself." Right. As if that's the end of the story. Those of us who lived through Watergate know that the scandal didn't end when Jeb Magruder and John Mitchell quit their jobs. Congressional Republi- cans probably know this, but they're willing to indulge Trump's tumultuous idiocy in exchange for his signature on long-sought right-wing legis- lation. And there's another big reason for their refusal to pro- vide oversight: Many are ter- rified of being primaried in 2018 by Trumpy challengers. In fact, the Republican base remains inexplicably in thrall to Trump. According to a late-Janu- ary Qunnipiac poll, 62 per- cent of Americans — includ- ing 66 percent of independents — want Congress to "investi- gate potential links between Trump's campaign advisers and the Russian government." Probe support among grass- roots Republicans is a mere 28 percent. This helps explain why we have such a zeal imbalance. This is why Republicans (with a few rare exceptions) are zon- ing out on Trump-Russia, in contrast to their passion for nailing Hillary on Benghazi — which inspired futile inves- tigations by the House Com- mittee on Oversight and Gov- ernment Reform, the Senate Committee on Homeland and Governmental Affairs, the Sen- ate Select Committee on In- telligence, the House Com- mittee on Foreign Affairs, the House Committee on the Ju- diciary, the House Committee on Armed Services, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Select Committee on Beng- hazi. Somehow it feels like the Russian cyber-invasion — and what Trump and his peo- ple might've known and when they knew it — rates at least a fraction of all that investiga- tory attention. Lindsey Gra- ham, at least, is willing to openly state the obvious: "If there's contacts between the Trump campaign and Rus- sian intelligence officials out- side the norm, that's not only big-league bad, that's a game changer." And I'll put it in Trump lan- guage: Congress needs to ex- treme-vet this regime until we can figure out what the hell is going on. DickPolmanisthenational political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. DickPolman GOP has lost its appetite to investigate Cartoonist's take Regarding the Oroville dam disaster, it's been noted that three environmental groups called for rein- forcing, or "ar- moring," the area below the con- crete lip of the emergency spill- way about 12 years ago. Their concern for the now evident ero- sion of earthen hillside was correct. Others have pointed to re- luctance by state agencies, con- tracted users and owners of the reservoir to authorize what would have been relatively in- expensive fixes at the time. En- gineers in and out of govern- ment certainly had the exper- tise to raise red flags about the apparently minor flaws in the main spillway; said flaws then spiraled out of control under the inundation of massive— but hardly unprecedented—re- leases. Less well covered have been some larger issues of fiscal in- competence and ideological blindness, beyond the short- sighted denial of needed main- tenance. It's a stark reminder that when the political class— almost entirely Democratic in this case—all hold their hands and proclaim that human- cause, global warming-induced drought conditions are with us for the foreseeable future, na- ture may have the temerity to disagree. Why fix unneeded spillways? When environmentally in- clined leaders, also all Dem- ocrats, give lip service to the blindingly obvious need for more water storage, and drag their budgetary feet to the point that no-brainer projects like Sites reservoir seem un- achievable, you know you are witnessing massive self-de- lusion. Only ideological arro- gance can explain how Gov. Jerry Brown—son of Gov. Pat Brown who saw the need and built such common sense infra- structure as the Oroville dam and numerous other projects, highways, bridges and canals— never put Oroville dam mainte- nance into any requests for in- frastructure spending. Not when Jerry Brown ran for governor; not when he sub- mitted requests to the Trump administration for spending projects (He did ask for un- needed funds for Folsom dam); and certainly not while charg- ing ahead on the nearly-$100 billion fool's errand of a high- speed train, while a reported $25 billion is spent every year on illegal immigrants' welfare, health care and schooling. Ra- tional, long-term priorities for a growing, prosperous state like California (if only a desire to grow and prosper) would seem to obviously include maintain- ing and expanding transporta- tion, power and water storage projects. However, the "less is more," "small is beautiful" earth-wor- shiping fanatics running Sac- ramento—many of whom live in secure enclaves in the elite, wealthy coastal corridor—have deluded themselves that their only obligation is to maintain the tax structure that fills the trough of funds to redistribute to needy, favored groups. Think of immigrants and poor urban- dwellers whose votes then se- cure the cycle of political domi- nance for the Democrats. John Schroeder, who posts at HughHewitt.com, pointed to the complexity of "the pleth- ora of agencies and authorities, bureaus, boards and districts that have battled each other for more than a century now. It is about to get much worse… the finger pointing is now be- ginning in earnest…Ron Stork, policy director of Friends of the River, said state water offi- cials told him privately at the time that the Metropolitan Wa- ter District of Southern Califor- nia and other water contractors that buy Oroville's water did not want to pay the additional costs." Finger pointed. "This last election was, for the rest of the nation, a 'throw the bums out' election. So fed up has the nation been…that they just decided to throw a bomb in the mess and clean up. California, for whatever cocka- mamie reason decided to stay the course. Hillary's much bal- lyhooed 'popular vote win,' came virtually entirely from the Golden State—which should probably be called the 'Mud State.'" Other notable items: The Democrat/media party faithful have worked themselves into a froth over innocuous contacts, such as they were, between Trump's now-resigned intell chief, Mike Flynn, and the Rus- sian ambassador. Their short, hypocritical memories must have forgotten such infamous events as citizen John Kerry contacting our North Vietnam- ese enemies in Paris prior to the cessation of hostilities in that war. That would be the same John Kerry who later lied to Congress and all of America about phony atrocities commit- ted by our soldiers in combat. In "When The Democrats Do It, That Means That It's Not Il- legal," Kate of smalldeadani- mals.com posted a memo from Soviet archives, dated Decem- ber 1, 1976. It noted favorably that Jimmy Carter's represen- tative, Averill Harriman, hav- ing met with Carter in Plains, GA, conveyed messages to am- bassador A.F. Dobrynin, who received them on behalf of So- viet leader L.I. Brezhnev. "The 'President-elect' (Carter's cur- rent title) has authorized Har- riman to convey the follow- ing answer for transmission to L.I. Brezhnev (the text of which he held)…" You can read about Carter's secret 1976 USSR con- tacts at http://digitalarchive. wilsoncenter.org/ Then-Senator "Ted Kennedy Secretly Asked The Soviets To Intervene In The 1984 Elec- tions" (Sean Davis, 3/10/2015, TheFederalist.com). Two years ago, outraged liberals called it treasonous for Congressio- nal Republicans to "inform the leaders of Iran that any nuclear deal with the United States that failed Senate approval" was dead in 2017. "If these pro- gressives want to know what actual treason looks like, they should consult liberal lion Ted Kennedy, who not only alleg- edly sent secret messages to the Soviets in the midst of the cold war, he also begged them to intervene in a U.S. presiden- tial election in order to unseat President Ronald Reagan." In "Obama's Secret Commu- nications With Mullahs Under- mined American Foreign Pol- icy," J. Hinderaker describes the despicable way Obama con- spired with Iran's leaders to undercut President Bush's nu- clear negotiations with Iran. I dare call that "treason." Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it Priorities of 'Mud State' elite Republicans have their priorities. The party, and its dream of shredding the safety net, totally comes first. The country, despite ever- mounting evidence that Team Trump was in bed with a foreign adversary, decidedly comes second. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. So sad, please no one take the risk. I know it's hard to be displaced from your home, but nothing is worth your life. Thoughts with the family, truly heart breaking. Samantha Mccarty-Macias: On a drowning while attempting to reach a flooded home I just love Jean Barton and her flair for writing and sharing life. D'Lorah Hurton: On Jean Barton's column regarding social media Don Polson Dick Polman OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, February 21, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6