Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/802119
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 Thisweekmycolumnhasgonetothedogs. I can take or leave (mostly leave) cats, but I have pretty much loved dogs from day one. WhenIwasasmallchild, we somehow acquired a mon- grel mutt named Boy. In those days leash laws didn't exist for dogs, or for chil- dren for that matter. So the mutt named Boy and I both wan- dered the streets of Red Bluff do- ing our thing, while making sure we were home by supper. Boy was my dog from the time I could walk until I headed off to college. He died after being hit by a car. At that time Boy was about 176 years old in dog years. • • • Billie and I were married in 1968 and immediately did what childless newlyweds are required to do: We got a dog. We purchased the most beautiful St. Bernard puppy you ever saw and named him Bandit. At the time Billie was the proud owner of a beautiful fire engine red 1965 Ford Mus- tang, and before long Bandit took up more than the entire back seat. Much to Billie's chagrin, we traded the Mustang to Dick Moran for a larger Pontiac Le- mans so Bandit might better stretch his legs. Sadly, a short time later Bandit somehow es- caped our yard, only to drown in a backyard swimming pool several blocks away. Owning a dog is not for sissies. • • • Before we realized how it happened, we were parents of two children, Cabe and Cori. Being the good parents that we are, we provided them with the dog experience throughout their growing-up years while living on our half-acre spread on Paynes Creek Road. Our first dog as parents was a female springer spaniel by the name of Missy. Missy was a good pet but unfortunately, like her owners, Missy liked to eat more than she liked to ex- ercise. Also like her owners, it showed, as she mostly wad- dled around the house looking for a place to take a nap. After Missy met her reward, we purchased a full-blooded cocker spaniel that we named Taffy. At least we thought she was full blooded. Turns out Taffy's daddy was more likely related to my first dog Boy than a purebred spaniel, as it soon became obvious that Taffy had at least a bit of mutt in her. That's OK, though, as it is kind of like hoping for a girl baby only to be blessed with a boy baby. As soon as your boy is born, you would not trade him the cutest little girl in the world. That's the way it was with Taffy. After Taffy met her reward, we purchased a real full- blooded cocker pup that we named Bailey. A blonde, Bai- ley was the sweetest dog I ever owned. I adored her, and she adored me. Bailey often jumped up onto my easy chair to sit on my lap as I watched sports on tele- vision or completed my daily New York Times crossword puzzle. Then, just when things were perfect for my pup and me,it happened. We had a problem with go- phers on our property so I was always buying the latest trap or the most potent poison I could find in an attempt to eradicate them from our lawn. While I do not recall catching or killing a gopher by either method, the poison worked all too well when it fell off a shelf in the garage and unbe- knownst to me was eaten by sweet innocent Bailey. When I found her she was hanging on for dear life, so I rushed her to the vet in Corn- ing, as he was on call. He told me he would try to save her, but when I returned home I was greeted with a call from the vet telling me that she had not survived. Damn, some- times I can be the biggest id- iot. • • • Daughter Cori is the biggest dog lover in the family. Almost immediately after graduating high school, Cori got herself a Rottweiler pup she named Gunther. For the next decade or so Cori and Gunther were best friends, but there were complications. Cori spent a half dozen years attending a couple of colleges while obtaining bach- elor's and master's degrees. She then worked in at least a couple of different coun- ties, and as young people do, moved from apartments to houses, back to apartments and — you get the picture. The result of her productive but chaotic lifestyle was that Gunther often bunked at our house. While Gunther was not mean by Rottweiler standards, he could sometimes be a grump, and stubborn was his middle name. He pretty much marched to his own drummer, and did what he did when he wanted to do it. As often happens with large dog breeds, Gunther developed hip issues and in order to keep him going, Cori spent a small fortune for medication to keep him pain-free. Gunther grumped around for another three or four years before I got a call from Cori in tears one evening, saying it was time to put old Gunther down, and asking if we could bury him in the back yard of our Antelope home. I still re- member that I dug fast and I dug deep. That's just what fa- thers do. • • • Being good parents them- selves, son Cabe, daughter Cori and their spouses are pro- viding their own children the dog experience as well. Cori is a shelter person. Her boys Wyatt and Tait currently en- joy the company of a laid back lab/pit bull/Shetland pony cross called Tug, as well as an absolutely ugly little rat look- ing dog-called Brando. Cabe's daughter's Sam and Alix are able to frolic with guide dog dropout, golden re- triever Sonata, whose only weakness is her need to lick everyone in sight. • • • There is currently no dog living at my house. My wife says it would tie us down. All I know is, if (Heaven for- bid) she goes before I do, I am not getting a girlfriend. I am gonna get me a dog. Bill Cornelius is a lifelong resident of Red Bluff, a retired chief probation officer, a champion of the State Theatre and an exceptional athlete. He can be reached at bill. cornelius@sbcglobal.net. WilliamTells Lovefordogs started early, will never end Cartoonist's take To understand the primary problem with the American health care system — cost and massive ineffi- ciency are two ma- jor causes — it's helpful to revisit a 1958 essay, "I, Pen- cil," by Leonard Read. A pencil appears to be a very simple, inexpensive tool. Read, however, explains that its production is incredibly complex. The standard pencil begins when a cedar tree is cut down. Ropes and gear tug it onto the bed of a truck or a rail car. But lots of people and skills are needed to mine ore and re- fine steel to produce the saws, axes and motors that fell that ce- dar tree. Lots of people are needed to grow hemp, then transform it, through various stages, into the strong rope that pulls the tree onto a truck. The logs are shipped to a mill and cut into slats. The slats are kiln-dried, tinted, waxed, then kiln-dried again. How many skills were needed to produce the tint and the kilns, Read wondered. What about the electric power? What about the belts, motors and other parts at the mill? The cedar slats are shipped to a factory. A complex machine cuts a groove into each. A sec- ond lays the lead into every other slat's groove. Glue is applied. Two slats are sealed together as one, then cut into lengths that form pencils. The lead alone is incredibly complex. To produce it, graphite is mined in Ceylon. The graph- ite is packed and shipped, then mixed with clay from Missis- sippi. It is treated with a wetting agent — such as sulfonated tal- low, which is formed when an- imal fats chemically react with sulfuric acid. The pencil receives six coats of lacquer. Lacquer has numerous ingredients, including castor oil. Think of all the chemists needed to create the lacquer — and all the castor-bean growers needed to produce the oil that's refined and shipped. The brass end that holds the eraser in place is a marvel. Miners need to first extract zinc and cop- per from the Earth. Experts trans- form those materials into sheet brass, which is then cut, stamped and affixed to the pencil. The eraser is made from "fac- tice," writes Read, a rubber-like product that is produced when rapeseed oil from the Dutch East Indies reacts with sulfur chloride. An awe-inspiring amount of work goes into producing a pen- cil. Millions of people collaborate to produce it — millions ply their unique trades and skills — yet they have no idea they are collab- orating. The pencil, explains Read, is a triumph of human freedom — a triumph of creative human ener- gies spontaneously responding to human necessity and desire. Its efficient production is the polar opposite of the American health care system. Now that the government plays such a heavy role in health care — ObamaCare requires that each insurance policy cover 10 essential health benefits — it dic- tates what private insurers can and cannot do. Massive rules and regulations inhibit competition, which is the mother's milk of effi- ciency and cost savings. Our health care system's third- party payment system — private insurers or the government fund almost all health care activities — detach consumers from the cost of the care they consume. Since consumers do not pay di- rectly for most health care ser- vices, few know or care what those services cost. Read concludes his essay with this advice: The best thing our government can do is leave our "creative energies uninhibited" — remove the obstacles that prevent human creativity and innovation from flowing freely. By removing such obstacles from our health care system — by infusing free-market reforms — we could dramatically impact the cost and inefficiency prob- lems and free up funds to pro- vide care for the needy. But any attempt to introduce free-market principles is met with cries that politicians are try- ing to hurt the sick and the poor. Thus, solving the health care mess is not going to be easy. I'm just thankful that our gov- ernment hasn't mandated "free" pencils for all. Pencils would cost a fortune. Tom Purcell is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated by Cagle Cartoons. Tom Purcell Sharpening health care? Good luck Missy was a good pet but unfortunately, like her owners, Missy liked to eat more than she liked to exercise. Bill Cornelius Tom Purcell This Thursday, the House of Representatives will vote on a Republican bill that supposedly repeals Obamacare. However, the bill retains Obamacare's most destructive features. That is not to say this legis- lation is entirely without merit. For example, the bill expands the amount individuals can con- tribute to a health savings ac- count (HSA). HSAs allow indi- viduals to save money tax-free to pay for routine medical ex- penses. By restoring individu- als' control over health care dol- lars, HSAs remove the distor- tions introduced in the health care market by government pol- icies encouraging over-reliance on third-party payers. The legislation also contains other positive tax changes, such a provision allowing individuals to use health care tax credits to purchase a "catastrophic-only" insurance policy. Ideally, health insurance should only cover ma- jor or catastrophic health events. No one expects their auto in- surance to cover routine oil changes, so why should they ex- pect health insurance to cover routine checkups? Unfortunately the bill's posi- tive aspects are more than out- weighed by its failure to repeal Obamacare's regulations and price controls. Like all price con- trols, Obamacare distorts the signals that a freely functioning marketplace sends to consum- ers and producers, thus guaran- teeing chaos in the marketplace. The result of this chaos is higher prices, reduced supply, and low- ered quality. Two particularly insidious Obamacare regulations are guaranteed issue and commu- nity ratings. As the name sug- gests, guaranteed issue forces health insurance companies to issue a health insurance policy to anyone who applies for cover- age. Community ratings forces health insurance companies to charge an obese couch potato and a physically-fit jogger sim- ilar premiums. This forces the jogger to subsidize the couch po- tato's unhealthy lifestyle. Obamacare's individual man- date was put in place to ensure that guaranteed issue and com- munity ratings would not drive health insurance companies out of business. Rather than repeal- ing guaranteed issue and com- munity ratings, the House Re- publicans' plan forces those who go longer than two months without health insurance to pay a penalty to health insurance companies when they purchase new policies. It is hard to feel sympathy for the insurance companies since they supported Obamacare. These companies were eager to accept government regulations in exchange for a mandate that individuals buy their product. But we should feel sympathy for Americans who are struggling to afford, or even obtain, health care because of Obamacare and who will obtain little or no relief from Obamacare 2.0. The underlying problem with the Republican proposal is philosophical. The plan put forth by the alleged pro-free- market Republicans implicitly accepts the premise that health care is a right that must be provided by government. But rights are inalienable aspects of our humanity, not gifts from government. Ron Paul is a former congressman and presidential candidate. He can be reached at RonPaulInstitute.org. Ron Paul Obamacare repeal or Obamacare 2.0? OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, March 22, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4