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6A Daily News – Tuesday, May 7, 2013 Opinion Tilting at windmills in Tehama County 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 Tilting at windmills is an English idiom which means attacking imaginary enemies where the word "tilt", in this context, comes from jousting. The phrase is sometimes used to describe confrontations where adversaries are incorrectly perceived, or to courses of action that are based on misinterpreted or misapplied heroic, romantic, or idealistic justifications. Today I present four areas where this idiom seems to apply well to local events. The strong winds blowing through our valley of late are making lots of electricity for my business on Highway 99E, but I can't yet say that for the corporate giant on Highway 99W. Last October Walmart commissioned a GE SLE 1.0 megawatt wind capable of producing power at winds of 5.6 mph in a pilot project to help achieve the corporate goal of powering its facilities with only renewable energy. Unfortunately, until late May at the earliest, their behemoth produces power only between the hours of 8 and 10 am for PG&E to install components needed to feed excess power back into the grid. According to a company spokesperson, Walmart has 180 renewable energy projects in operation or under development, and is continuing to test solar, fuel cells, micro wind, off-site wind projects and combining wind energy with battery storage. Let's hope their other projects get up to speed before Joseph Neff and others tilt even further to condemn such efforts. The Tehama County supervisors recently failed to allow the construction of solar electric arrays in rural areas of the county citing concerns regarding their compatibility with agricultural land use, and consistency with the Williamson Act requirements. However it is not much of a stretch to appreciate that the harvesting and harnessing of solar energy is an allowable use of agricultural land since electrical power is needed for the processing, refrigeration, and marketing of agricultural products. Neighbors that complain about the aesthetics of such arrays would be well served with tall oleanders and better things to gripe about than the construction of clean, silent, and maintenance free solar power supplies. In the supervisors defense however it would seem we have lots of parking lots that could be covered with such panels to provide shade for our vehicles while powering adjacent businesses, such as Walmart, Raleys, Tractor Supply, and the Dollar Store. I've seen a number of vehicles with stickers saying "NO TO GMOs," and urging that products using genetically modified organisms be labeled as such. While I perceive much of this concern akin to tilting at windmills with scant son purchasing and possessing a weapon is to ensure that evidence of adverse it does not fall into the health consequences, I hands of children, crimiget their point. However nals, and the mentally I hope that they get my infirm. The only way to solution – rather than be sure this to be the force foods benefitting case it to have buyers from genetic modificaregister their weapons at tions to be labeled, why the time of sale or transnot simply label foods fer so should a weapon that are natural instead. be used for illegal purThe onus of regulating, poses the culpability can tracking, and labeling is in then shifted to those that Richard be placed accordinglyTo the lap of the owner. perceive a benefit – so claim a right and neglect they alone can justify the responsibility to the added costs to promake sure it does not duce goods in the manviolently affect others is ner they desire. Think the height of arrogance about it for a minute, if and callousness. Stop a market exists for nonhiding behind the secGMO foods, then let the providers and consumers meet it ond amendment and man-up to without forcing everyone else to your responsibilities as a gun change their practices and impose owner to be accountable for your onerous GMO tracking, labeling actions or lack thereof. Otherwise and regulatory requirements on just continue your tilting at windthose that don't share such con- mills in Tehama County. cerns. Richard Mazzucchi is a retired And last I address a sacred cow of my colleague whose writings research engineer specializing in appear below – gun control, back- energy efficiency and renewable ground checks, and heaven for energy. He has travelled fend – registration. Most rights extensively and now makes his carry with them commensurate home in Los Molinos, where he is responsibilities, such as being hon- striving to manifest a sustainable est when exercising your right to and spiritual lifestyle and operate free speech to avoid libeling or a barbecue equipment and slandering others. It seems to me supply business. He can be that a clear responsibility of a per- reached at living-green@att.net. Mazzucchi Positive Point Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 1550 Humboldt Road, Ste. 4, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR — Jim Nielsen, 2635 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico, CA 95928, (530) 879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate.ca.gov GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 558-3160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-225-3076. U.S. SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 393-0710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary The good, bad, truly ugly in gun battle As the National Rifle Associa- multiple prongs the left has doggedly pursued tion's annual convention against guns has been to in Houston closed, with wage "law-fare" against attendance exceeding gun manufacturers; 70,000 (average attenPorter's fight on the dance prior to President judicial battleground Obama's election was makes him a hero in my around 50,000; since book. 2009, up to 80,000), conIt has little to do with servatives, gun owners reasonable-sounding and all citizens who care universal background deeply about the checks, which serve supremacy and inviolazero purpose while the bility of our 2nd Amendexisting National ment—take heart. The Don Instant Criminal Backmotto of the gathering was "Stand and Fight"; Polson ground Check System (NICS) continues to the organizational attiThe way lack referrals of the tude is to give not one mentally unstable and iota on our God-given I see it dangerous among us. rights and freedoms; and Even the ACLU, no the new president, James Porter, is "a hard-line culture war- pro-gun shill, has concerns; look rior who has worked for decades to up "ACLU says Reid's gun legislamake the NRA a more aggressive tion could threaten privacy rights, political force. The election of civil liberties" (DailyCaller.com, James Porter … is one of many 4/04/2013). This is a personal grudge match defiant signals to come out of the [meeting, together with a vow] to for Obama, infuriated that an ideocontinue to fight any compromise logical opponent won't be beaten on gun-control legislation …" into submission. The (Saul) Alinsky-ite in him compels a Captain (USA TODAY, 5/06) "Porter said, 'Revenge is Ahab-like obsession over, in this what's motivating the president's case, the great white whale of resunrelenting attacks on gun owners olute gun owners and their unintoday. Millions of Americans are timidated organizations. He knows becoming first-time gun owners. darn well that nothing in proposed The media calls it fear. That's not legislation or executive actions will it. It's a sense of natural outrage solve the core causes of violence, that's been building for quite some let alone gun violence—that being time.' Porter, a lawyer from Birm- cultural decline and degradation ingham, Ala., who defends gun found in entertainment, public edumanufacturers, has been building cation and single-parent housethat outrage his whole life." NRA holds resulting from licentious membership has grown to a record moral relativism. I condemn no single mother 5 million, which includes my personal, and proud, extended mem- doing her best while lacking a bership. By the way, one of the father that's abandoned her and her child; he is equally responsible for a child's moral direction. It's a fact that the worst gun/gang violence plagues urban cesspools with fatherless, welfare-dependant homes and abysmal schools. The late Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan raised warnings in the 1960s over 30 percent illegitimacy in minority communities; it's now over 70 percent. With Obama, a nation full of leftist Democrats, and the branches of state and federal government under their sway, it is all about grinding down their political enemies with just one compromise to slowly break their will. When that or another measure inevitably fails to prevent the next atrocity, just repeat the cycle until the ultimate goal is achieved: disarming Americans. These political thugs are nothing if not patient; they kept coming back for more of their redistributionist, collectivist master plan, including nationalized health care, for a century. The ugliest side of the debate was clinched on April 25 by Dave Perry, Aurora (CO) Sentinel editor, in a column, "We Can Only Save Ourselves From Kidnappers at the NRA—I'm talking about the real terrorist threat here in America: the National Rifle Association." He cited editorial opinions in Dallas, Orlando and Kansas City condemning the defeat of any "antigun" (Harry Reid's words) bills or amendments in the U.S. Senate. Perry then mounted the greatest moral horse he could find, exuded the highest dudgeon imaginable and provided his readers with his erudite prognosis for dealing with those pesky gun nuts (cue the diatribe, not the debate): "[It's] fruitless to give the benefit of the doubt to people who are so obviously corrupt, so clearly malevolent, so bent on hurting innocent people for their own sick gain. No more due process in the clear-cut case of insidious terrorism. When the facts are so clearly before all Americans … why bother with this country's odious and cumbersome system of justice? Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in their own mental squalor. No, no, no. Not the wannabe sick kid who blew up the Boston marathon … I'm talking about the real terrorist threat here in America: the National Rifle Association." Readers, this is not a parody by some phony Internet blogger; nor is it a right wing talk host engaged in a sick caricature of leftist journalism. An editor of a major urban newspaper is so far into virtualfoaming-mouth, wild-gesticulating, Occupy-crowd-cheering over his unfiltered desire for his fellow citizens to be involuntarily consigned to punishment and reeducation camps—it's simply abhorrent and unimaginably violates all journalistic principles and tenets. If the object of his ire were, say, urban gang members, Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers, shariah law proponents, or homosexual men that have sex with boys, somebody else would pack his box and leave it at the curb. Perry, however, is probably getting emailed, texted or tweeted "Attaboys" from other socalled journalists. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@yahoo.com.