Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/112302
6A Daily News ��� Thursday, February 28, 2013 Opinion Graffiti 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 Editor: I would like to comment on the graffiti that was done on Walnut Street in Friday night, these people who did this disrespects the people who live in Red Bluff. They want to have their territory by disrespecting others. They are not worthy of any respect from any one, and should be prosecuted to the fullest. This only shows how little they respect they have of themselves. I have lived here almost all of my life and only lately have I seen this type of behavior. Frank McCaughey, Red Bluff Letter questioned Editor: Regarding Joseph Neff���s letter in the paper dated Feb. 14, first off, where does Mr. Neff come up with the figure of 55 million terminated lives of babies? There is no way he can say this as fact. They���re terminated by their mother���s choice not to have them. An again, he is way off track when he says most taxpayers don���t have cats or dogs. What is he smoking? He says something is very wrong with out society, and he is living proof there is something wrong with our society. Caring people don���t write letters like his. Why doesn���t he give up writing so many stupid letters? Has he ever thought of getting a hobby? Patricia Hale, Gerber Race to the bottom Editor: The airwaves and press should be brimming with information regarding the ongoing decline of our living standard and deterioration of the social infrastructure in this country, once the envy of the world, but now inexorably on its way to the lower rung of the socio-economic ladder in the western industrialized world. Instead, we are constantly bombarded with faux posi- million a year, not counting tives, such as the re-emergence lavish perks and stock options, of a vibrant Stock Market, cre- and have since 2006 provided ation of millions of new jobs approximately 175 billion in etc...all highly promoted as a dividends to shareholders, sign and harbinger of emerg- while their workers are eligible for food stamps and Medicaid, ing positive economic trends. Maybe the following infor- which equates to even more mation will help put these corporate subsidies financed by us tax payers! things in perspective: Roughly 60% of Over 46 million of Your highly touted newly our working citizens, created jobs since the and counting, now 2008 Wall Street collive in poverty with lapse, happen to fall an annual income of within the minimum less than $11,700 per individual, or $23,000 for a wage category, which is hardly family of four. A broader and a cause for glee or celebration! Professing to be a Christian even more realistic definition of the working poor, would nation begs the question: What include 146 million, whose happened to the least of our income is insufficient to cover brothers and sisters, or the bibbasic needs, such as housing, lical admonition of loving food, clothing, transportation, one's neighbor? All down the child care, health care etc.... profit greased corporate sink barely separated from financial hole? I got mine, see how you disaster by a mere paycheck or get yours? As of March 1st, a new two. A large number of these cit- movie titled "A place at the izens and actual profit cre- table", which I highly recomators, is employed at 50 of our mend, is in national distribuhighly successful national tion, and might just help open retail and fast food chains, the eyes of those among us, which routinely pay their top who stubbornly refuse to see. Joe Bahlke, Red Bluff executives an average of $10 Turn Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN ��� Dan Logue, 1550 Humboldt Road, Ste. 4, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR ��� Jim Nielsen, 280 Hemsted Dr., Ste. 110, Redding, CA 96002, 530223-6300, Fax: 530-223-6737, 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 left's science deniers If this column appeared under the headline, "Massive defeat for the anti-science forces," you would naturally assume I'm talking about some kind of setback for conservative Republicans, right? And you would be completely wrong. The losers in this case are the luddite shock troops of progressivism like Greenpeace. And the winners are the children of the Philippines, thousands of whom will not go blind or die because the antiscience wing of modern liberalism finally is getting some pushback. The Filipino government has finally approved the planting of genetically modified rice that contains vitamin A. "Golden rice," as the stuff is called, probably won't make a splash in the United States, but in the Third World, it will be a godsend. Between a quartermillion and a half-million children go blind each year from vitamin A deficiency, the United Nations says, and half of them die within 12 months. Some studies put the figure even higher. As many as 300 million of the people at high risk for vitamin A deficiency live in countries where the staple food is rice. For them, golden rice will provide a quick, easy and cheap fix: eating just two ounces a day will provide 60 percent of the recommended daily dose of Vitamin A. But that hasn't stopped Greenpeace and other ludditeleft activists from fighting a scorched-earth war to stop golden rice. For more than a dozen years ��� or, if you prefer to keep score in the lives of children, 8 million dead ��� they've kept golden rice off the market by calling it Frankenfood and insisting that it will wreck the environment and spread dependence on Western capitalism. What role does science play in the left-wing opposition to golden rice and other genetically modified crops? None. Study after study has shown no detectable deleterious effects on human health from genetically altered foods. And two studies published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition have shown that golden rice is an even better vehicle for delivery of vitamin A than spinach, the wonder vegetable. Every time some lone Republican nut from Hooterville makes a jackass statement about rape or evolution, it's immediately ascribed as a doctrinal belief of the entire GOP and conservatives in general. But liberal resistance to science is far more organized, far more destructive and far less covered in the media: ��� Millions of American parents refused to have their children vaccinated for diseases like whooping cough and measles after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published an error-ridden tirade in Rolling Stone and the left-wing website Salon in 2005 linking vaccines to autism and other neurological disturbances. Six years later, Salon never been detected in human retracted the article, yet many beings, "even in thoroughly parents remain convinced of studied irradiated populations the linkage to this day ��� one such as those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." of whom now sits in There may be good the White House. reasons for opposing "We've seen just a nuclear power ��� skyrocketing autism mainly, that the rate," Barack Obama industry is a bloated said during his 2008 corporate welfare campaign. "Some peotick that cannot surple are suspicious that vive without massive it's connected to the government subsidy vaccines. This person ��� but science isn't included." Obama's one of them, which spurious worries is why a 2009 Pew about vaccines led to Research Center surmanufacturing Glenn vey showed 70 perchanges that caused a cent of scientists shortage of flu vacsupport it. cine in the winter of But scientific 2009. ��� Virtually no nuclear- consensus, invoked like clockpower plants have been built work whenever lefty activists in the United States during the and their journalist friends talk past four decades, the result of about global warming, is myscontinuous left-wing scare sto- teriously irrelevant when ries. Australian physician they're discussing nuclear Helen Caldicott has become a power or genetically enhanced folk hero ��� 21 honorary crops. In 2005, the Internadegrees and a nomination for tional Council for Science ��� a the Nobel Peace Prize ��� for coalition of 140 scientific ��� reviewed her anti-nuke campaign, the organizations centerpiece of which is that more than 50 studies and the explosion at the Soviet declared flatly: "Currently Union's Chernobyl nuclear available genetically modified reactor led to nearly a billion foods are safe to eat." There are a few million deaths and countless hideous dead Third World kids who birth defects. Actual death toll, according wish that somebody had listhe U.N.'s scientific committee tened. on nuclear radiation: less than Glenn Garvin is a columnist 100. Actual birth defects: zero. The U.S. National Acad- for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald emy of Sciences says that the Plaza, Miami, Fla. 33132. chances of radiation-induced Readers may write to him via at changes in human sperm and email eggs are so low that it has ggarvin@miamiherald.com. Garvin