Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/115694
8A Daily News – Saturday, March 16, 2013 Opinion No walk in park 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. Editor: A walk in the park. Not. I was born and raised in Red Bluff, and have lived here the majority of my life. Sometimes in the afternoon I like to buy a cup of coffee or a soda and go to the city park and sometimes I even take a book. I sit in my car, doors locked, windows rolled up. I relax and enjoy looking at the river and the other scenery. The last four times I was there I was asked for money. I was afraid to get out of my car and walk around on the walking path. So the walking path is not available to some of us. I called the P.D. and the person I talked to I'm sure was concerned for my safety. Advised me not to go to the park, because it has been a problem. We all need to work on trying to solve this issue. I feel like I am not able to enjoy something that is a very big part of Red Bluff. Sometimes it feels as though we are prisoners in our own town. When I have to double lock myself in my home. We have a great place here and I love it. Visitors might not be very happy if they must contend with this problem. Irene Hoffman, Red Bluff Corruption Editor: I believe our nation's economy, freedom and system of government is on the verge of collapse. I further feel that I'm a canary in the proverbial coal mine whose own collapse should alert the proverbial miners that they better get out lest they suffer the same. After all, I'm an intelligent, moral, hard-working, clean-living per- permeated every level of government, they'd be organizing and son. emboldening their own If a drunken career forces, not those of the criminal can randomly Your enemy. inflict on me $500,000 I have sent literally in injuries and subject hundreds of letters and me to seven years of emails I've written begever-increasing finanging the government cial devastation and stripping of my civil liberties by for relief from its own malpracthe insurance industry, state and tice. Typically, the emails garlocal government and the courts, nered not a single response. For the sake of your readers every other American citizen is most certainly at risk of enduring and of the country as a whole, I pray you will start publishing the same. As our nation prepares to more pieces that explore our entrust our government to compe- country's thinly-veiled governtently administer a historic expan- ment corruption and ineptitude so sion of taxation and power via that the citizenry may be armed national healthcare, I feel like I'm with the conviction to resist it. watching a train wreck about to Such is precisely why our forefahappen. If only every innocent thers bestowed us freedom of the soul in America had the same press. Nathan Esplanade, experience as me with the corrupRancho Tehama tion and incompetence that has 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. 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 Commentary Predictions and predilections Sometimes I find these lyrics echoing through the vast empty spaces between my ears: I can see clearly now, the rain is gone, I can see all obstacles in my way Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day. Those lyrics are optimistic and portend a better future for the singer. For science fiction writers in the early 1950s, however, seeing clearly was not very easy. Most recently I have been enjoying making my way through the Library of America's new volumes of American Science Fiction from the 1950s, and I was surprised to find how inaccurately they forecasted our future and how pessimistic those writers were. While we may be a little like Chicken Little waiting for the sky to fall from the great sequester in Washington DC, those science fiction writers from the early 50's also had grave concerns about our future. Their vision is far from the upbeat romps of Star Wars or Star Trek; it was a dark vision filled with gloom. The Space Merchants, a pulp science fiction novel by Pohl and Kornbluth, chronicles the story of an advertising man in a distant future, at a time when the colonization of Venus is being planned. The book opens with, "As I dressed that morning I ran over in my mind the long list of statistics, evasions, and exaggerations that they would expect in my report." My first reaction to that sentence was the writer was right on target, but then I remembered we have some rules about how a company can advertize certain products; advertisements for medicines, for example, include paragraphs of very small print to cover the full page of warnings about the possible side effects of taking those medications, including death; of course you can't forget the superhuman person who reads those same warnings on the air in no time at all, without taking a breath, at the end of the television ad that usually features a good looking couple smiling. There are probably very few rules regarding truth in politics. That sentence from chapter one may have more applicability to today's politics where facts are cherry picked to arrange them to make a point. We do have lots of fact checkers who hope we really want to know the truth, but they often get drowned out by the roar of our leaders. Statistics are used in many bizarre ways. We even had a local columnist who claimed, after questionable extrapolation, that we were saving 300,000 Iraqi lives per year because George W. Bush insisted on our invasion to stop the alleged stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. Throughout The Space Merchants there are mentions of fabricated foods, created from pond scum and primitive organisms. There are other artificial food products for coffee, soft drinks and other items, and "real" food is an expensive treat available only to the elite. Widely available products are manufactured to create addiction and maintain a reliable consumer base. We all remember that at one time Coca Cola contained cocaine, but now it seems to merely rely on sugar to be addictive. Today the FDA tries to make sure we are not consuming addictive substances. Although the current concern about obesity and Type II diabetes may indicate we are not sure just what an addiction is. Today, of course, you also almost need a medical dictionary to understand the various ingredients on food products. We have a resurgence of healthy foods, a rise in organic products, and, for many, an appreciation of seasonal fruits and vegetables. In the fictional future debt is used to essentially enslave most of the underclass; the world is need. While the disparity between run much as a company town, with everyone in debt to the top earners and the "average Joe" may be spreading in the company store. In the novel, the ecology has wake of recent economic events been violated, soot plugs are here in the real world, there is an actual struggle in our required for your nose country to assure when you actually go equality for all before outside of the climate the law, if not before controlled buildings, the cash register. The and cigarettes are comrecent systematic and mon place. There are concerted effort to diseven wide swaths of courage voting in the ocean bordered by some parts of the nets and floats for country may run whale farming. The counter to this, but my stairwells of large guess is those who buildings are opened plotted voter dissuaup for people classified Joe sion will be neither as "consumers" to sleep forgotten nor forgiven. in at night. We continue to make In reality, today we this a more inclusive are working on restorsociety. ing our environment, Most likely the pessimism of cleaning our air, cutting down on smoking, and actually saving that '50s science fiction novel whales. We are all becoming had to do with the Cold War and more aware of our carbon foot- the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation. Currently we worry print. In another part of the novel about climate change, lessening the protagonist states, "Our rep- our dependence on carbon based resentative government now is energy, and conservation. Our perhaps more representative concern about a global nuclear than it has ever been before in holocaust is less than it was in history. It is not necessarily rep- the early '50s, although that resentative per capita, but it is petty little dictator in North representative ad valorem." In Korea does get our attention. other words, the well-to-do con- While we are not clearly on top of the long run problems of burtrol the government. Whether that musing is true geoning populations, deteriorattoday is subject to political ing ecologies, and energy prodebate, but it has been a concern duction, I do think we are at least for generations. In the novel, giving some concern to the long the major advertising companies run, a long run the science fiction actually own politicians, and the writers of early 1950s thought supreme authority is the Cham- not to be possible. I also know ber of Commerce. Our own bat- that the 1950s were not the tle against pork barrel politics is "Good Old Days." I was once told that the definnever ending. In the book there is a clear ition of a pessimist is a man who separation between the elite and shaves before he weights him"consumers"; the consumers are self. While unsure about my treated like the lower class; they weight, I am encouraged about are uneducated, assigned to a our future. So I guess I am an dull existence with little input optimist. about their lives, and plagued Joe Harrop is a retired with perpetual debt. The elite educator with more than 30 create the market system that preys upon the consumers, years of service to the North egging them on to buy more and State. He can be reached at more "stuff" they really don't DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net. Harrop