Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/140999
4A Daily News – Saturday, June 29, 2013 Opinion Banking 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. 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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: The main problem with our economy today is the fact that one percent of our population has forced the rest of us to play a game called heads I win tails you lose. One example is fractional banking. Fractural banking doesn't mean banks are allowed to lend out a fraction or a percentage of their deposits. They are permitted to lend so many times what they actually have at whatever interest rate they want plus charge whatever extra fees they can dream up. Even with a sweetheart monetary system like that our banks demand the rest of us bail them out. And we did! Pure capitalism is indeed beneficial but when profits are privatized and losses socialized you have something entirely different. Our problem is not too many lazy people, it's too many conniving people getting away with their crimes. When the general population is well informed about their government you have a democracy. When that situation is reversed it is called despotism. How many of us know what was in the latest farm bill or any bill Congress is or has considered for the past umpteen years? Why can politicians hide their past sins by having them marked as Top Secret? Why are whistle blowers persecuted for revealing governmental crimes today instead of being honored or at least listened to? And why is a country so large and diverse as ours struck with just a two party system? Actually we have many more political parties in this country, unfortunately Democrats and Republicans are the only ones recognized by the "liberal press." Orval Strong, Gerber Simplifying global air travel Editor: Don't make a big deal out of packing for global air travel. My wife and I consistently travel on three to four week trips with a 25 pound backpack for me and the same weight roller equipped carryon for my wife. Together we have made 15 global trips to Africa, Eastern and Western Europe, Ireland, Scotland and the UK, Turkey, and Greece, the Caribbean, Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand. For business, I've made about 75 global trips including Europe, UK, India, China, Japan, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, Iran, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, always with minimal carryon baggage, and only one occasion of checked color, and shape of each med. Otherwise there would be a cubic foot baggage since 1960. The checked baggage occasion of packaging. We each also carry was a photo safari to Kenya and an up to date prescription for each Tanzania, with a mandated duffel med. We have never been asked to bag to carry the added self help identify the mixed meds on several medications and public school hundred trips through security. On only two trips have gifts. That was the only did we have to have time my baggage was lost Your special shots for local for three days, arriving by diseases and insects bus with goats and people including malaria and in Arusha Tanzania. No cholera. In India and matter where you go there Africa we didn't drink will be a laundry to wash your clothes. To save weight I carry the water or eat uncooked vegetafive precharged batteries for the bles, and have never had intestinal digital camera and two lenses plus problems. I carry two Epipens and a spare small camera. Quick dry Prednisone in the event I accidenclothing is recommended. I have tally eat shellfish or walnuts that dropped my diabetes test meter in a causes a life threatening reaction. I water filled sink and had to buy a carry a card identifying my pacereplacement kit in Paris. We each maker and a necklace with my carry spare eye and sun glasses and medical issues. We both carry a half dozen a photo copy of our passport and paper back books and I will always credit card. On all domestic and global trips have a dozen magazines which I we carry five extra days of meds in leave on the aircraft or at the hotels. a small pocket bottle in the event of Too many make global travel a another 9/11 shut down of all air- hassle with huge checked bags that lines. We each carry typed copies need to be transferred to airplanes, of each others meds list. Since my trains, buses, and walking occameds list is long at 13 including sions. You will never see fellow three types of glaucoma eye drops, travelers again so don't worry about I mix all of the meds in two large wearing the clean clothes in rotabottles and I rubber band to the out- tion. Joseph J. Neff, Corning side of those bottles the names, Turn 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) 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 Weasel words, parody, and obfuscation Even as a young child I was an avid reader. If the newspaper had not been delivered before breakfast, I would read the back of the cereal boxes. These days I still grab what is available to read; recently I grabbed the USA Weekend supplement to the Record Searchlight because I had done the Sudoku's in both of the papers we receive, read the news, and still had coffee in my cup. I chuckled as I read the following paragraph in an article about how we seniors can improve and maintain our health: "Drink black tea. It may help protect against type 2 diabetes. More research is needed to confirm the link, but a recent international study showed rates of type 2 were lower in countries that consumed lots of black tea. (Ireland tops the list at more than 4.4 pounds of black tea per person.) Drinking it with no milk or sugar also seems to reduce the risk factors for heart disease, including lowering blood sugar numbers and triglycerides and increasing antioxidant levels, another study suggests. Need more reasons? Black tea helps keep you alert, and there's some evidence it may reduce risk of Parkinson's, kidney stones….." This "news" blurb reminded me of an open letter to the citizens of Red Bluff printed in the Red Bluff Daily News in October 2006; the writer was a Mr. Farmer, CEO of In En Tech, a company that seemed to think it could pull the wool over our eyes by placing a facility using untested technology to evaporate contaminated medical waste just south of Red Bluff. Farmer used words like "may", "could" and "might" to proclaim how Red Bluff likely could be on the cutting edge of waste disposal. The passage also brought to mind recent items on these pages alleging vague conspiracy theories. I chuckled because the passage from the USA Weekend was more a test of the reader's mental acuity than real advice about maintaining healthy bodies. It is a clear demonstration that even journalists believe they do not have to worry about the pabulum they feed us, and that they do believe they can continue to underestimate our intelligence, just like many politicians do. (Or, perhaps, the magazine's editors just needed something inane to fill in space on the page.) The first clue to the inane vacuity of the passage is the word "may", related to "maybe" of course. "May" indicates possibility or probability, not certainty. By using the word "may" the magazine can avoid definitive statements like "does cause" and avoid any liability for actually giving medical advice to us unsuspecting seniors. "May" is a weasel word; weasel words are "equivocating words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim or even a refutation has been communicated." The term dates back to 1900 when Stewart Chaplin wrote "'Why, weasel words are words that suck all the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks an egg and leaves the shell. If you heft the egg afterward it's as light as a feather, and not very filling when you're hungry, but a basketful of them would make quite a show, and would bamboozle the unwary. . . ." Like much of what passes for news, the USA item above does not I am pretty sure they mean for us to tell us anything about other vari- take them seriously. Perhaps it is the same way with ables relating to the lower rates of politicians. I think of Type 2 diabetes. There was our new Congressional no mention of diseases representative who more common in populasounded serious when tions that consume larger he made remarks about amounts of black tea. the incidence of breast There was also no hint cancer and abortion. about what could be the Maybe he was joking chemistry behind the corand his straight face relation between black tea misled us. consumption and lower Obfuscation, howrates. Other dietary variever, should not be ables were not explored. confused with weasel Nevertheless, I feel certain Joe wording or parody. that USA would like us to Obfuscation is clearly take its words seriously. intended to make There are times when things unclear. Take we don't want our words this excerpt from a taken seriously. When I legal document outlinwas an undergraduate I took a public speaking course in ing the criteria for using a drone my freshman year; we were attack, one which might result in required to support or attack the the killing of a citizen: "Certain continuation of above ground aspects of this legal framework nuclear testing. I thought I was require additional explication. First, clever, and hit upon a theme that the condition that an operational used false correlation. I did a leader present an "imminent" threat tongue in cheek analysis of the of violent attack against the United recent rise in background radiation States does not require the United rates and the rapid advances that States to have clear evidence that a were being made in science in the specific attack on U.S. persons will late 1950's. My point was that take place in the immediate future." Obfuscation can be as clear as adding to the background radiation had a good impact on humanity and mud and cover the ground, and its progress, so all countries should given all the other issues of governcontinue nuclear bomb testing, the mental trustworthiness, I am sure "clear" guidelines above will need more the merrier. My professor told me I had a some rationalization, or explanagood speech, but that I was at least tion so the common citizen can 40 years too young to try to deliver understand them. it. It was hard to tell I was not seriJoe Harrop is a retired educator ous about what I was saying. With the media it should be clearer, how- with more than 30 years of service ever; I know when I am reading the to the North State. He can be at Onion I am reading farce, parody, reached and satire. With the USA Weekend DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net. Harrop