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6A Daily News – Thursday, July 25, 2013 Opinion DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF Arresting the messenger not good policy 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. There's a battle of wills taking place in Willits, where Caltrans has begun construction on a highway bypass around this small Mendocino County town. The bypass — diverting Highway 101 around the town — has its supporters and its detractors, but it also has a small group of dedicated protesters who have made it their mission to disrupt the construction at every opportunity. On Tuesday, the protesters had snuck onto the construction site early in the morning once again, but the only person arrested was the photographer for The Willits News, the twice-weekly longtime local newspaper, who had gone to the site to document the latest protest. The protesters cite the environmental damage they believe the construction is wreaking on the valley, its wetlands and natural beauty. They also say the $200 million project has too high a price tag for the relatively small amount of traffic that will be diverted from Willits' main drag. Caltrans has been planning this bypass for two decades and cites the need to relieve the overload on Willits streets from Highway 101 traffic, traffic which keeps downtown Willits backed up so badly that locals all generally acknowledge it's a serious problem. 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 resiWASHINGTON -- Presidents dents and businesses of are judged not only by the things Tehama County. they do but also by how successful they are in influencing the actions of the presidents who follow. Leaders who want their How to reach us achievements to endure know Main office: 527-2151 their task includes changing the Classified: 527-2151 terms of the national debate and leaving behind an intellectual Circulation: 527-2151 legacy that shapes how future News tips: 527-2153 generations see the country and Sports: 527-2153 its possibilities. Franklin D. Roosevelt Obituaries: 527-2151 accomplished this. So did Photo: 527-2153 Ronald Reagan. President Obama traveled Wednesday to Knox College in Illinois to give On the Web the speech that launched his www.redbluffdailynews.com effort to join them. It was where, in 2005, he originally laid out his philosophy of government. Fax Obama is making this bid in the face of a political culture that Newsroom: 527-9251 is far more cynical than it was in Classified: 527-5774 the days of FDR or the Gipper. Retail Adv.: 527-5774 He confronts adversaries determined to move the country in Legal Adv.: 527-5774 exactly the opposite direction Business Office: 527-3719 from the one he would have it choose. And up to now, the president has been foiled or distractAddress ed whenever he has tried to 545 Diamond Ave. focus the public conversation on reversing rising inequality and Red Bluff, CA 96080, or restoring social mobility. P.O. Box 220 So why should his latest effort be any different? Here are Red Bluff, CA 96080 three reasons. First, Obama and his advisers have learned from past failures. The project got fully under way in February, but the protests began in January in an effort to stop the initial tree clearing. The protests have included tree sitters, crane sitters, blocked roads and people chaining themselves to construction equipment. A few have been arrested, and others have been willing to disperse when told to, but they always come back. The California Highway Patrol has spent at least $1 million in labor trying to keep protesters off the Willits bypass construction site. They have failed miserably. So, the CHP has apparently decided that the best strategy for keeping protesters at bay is arresting or harassing members of the media who show up to cover the protests. Steve Eberhard, a longtime freelance photographer for the Willits News, was arrested early Tuesday morning as he approached the area where some protesters had already chained themselves to construction equipment, and where other protesters stood supporting the effort. None of the protesters had been arrested, but as soon as Eberhard approached the area he was cuffed and led away, and his camera equipment was taken from him. The media has been told that metro area print photographers unless they have a Caltrans are rare. Eberhard has now been cited employee escort with them, they are trespassing any time they for trespassing. We are glad to come on the construction site to hear the district attorney will not be filing charges. A document the protests. provision of the tresBut Caltrans only provides escorts during Editorial pass law exempts peo"regular business What do ple who in are "are engaging activities hours" and sometimes not even then — espe- you think? protected by the California or United States cially if there's something worth pho- Let us know Constitution," which Eberhard clearly was tographing going on. as a journalist covering The CHP, meanwhile has told protesters when a a protest. The protests are going to conjournalist shows up that the first arrest will be the media, presum- tinue. Trying to keep the media ably so that their efforts will go away from them is a pointless undocumented. As if anyone and self-defeating exercise. If you can't secure the conwith a phone isn't a photographer these days. The CHP has also struction site — it looks like the harassed journalists even when CHP certainly can't, and Caltrans they have a Caltrans escort. And doesn't seem able to figure out even when the media is standing who can — then make sure the in a public right of way near the media covering it get a chance to show what's really going on, for site. And just for the record, Eber- better or worse. The normally professional hard is a senior citizen, a retiree and a veteran. He is not a wild- CHP has lost all sense of direceyed pseudo-journalist. He has tion on this one. Arresting the press credentials, including one messenger is the worst imaginfrom the Mendocino County able policy and both Caltrans and Sheriff's Office. And because the CHP need to come up with a Willits is in a rural and isolated better one. area, Eberhard is just about the This editorial was orignially only visual journalist chronicling the ongoing project. published by the Ukiah Daily Appearances by TV crews or Journal. 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 Obama goes big Earlier speeches along these lines came and went, barely causing a ripple in the public's consciousness. This time, the president is embarking on an eight-week campaign to keep his themes at the center of the debate. He wants to bend the news cycle rather than bow to it. By giving a series of addresses that include specific proposals -- some old, some new -- he hopes to grab the public's attention, and the media's. His grassroots operation will mobilize supporters to talk up these themes with their neighbors. Whatever else it is, this campaign is not a one-off. Second, he will be speaking to a country that's fed up with the mean, narrow and pessimistic tone emanating from a capital locked in what Obama called "short-term thinking and stale debates." The president's critics have said over and over that he needs to "go big" and push the system beyond itself. Even his friends have been frustrated at his difficulty in seizing the initiative and confronting obstructionist opponents. He appears to have listened. But the most important reason this offensive has a chance is that it goes to the heart of why Obama got elected in the first place and then won re-election. A substantial American majority just doesn't buy the ideas that Obama forcefully rejected: that "inequality is both inevitable insisted, "businesses have fewer consumers. When and just" and that "an wealth concentrates unfettered free market at the very top, it can without any restraints inflate unstable bubinevitably produces the bles that threaten the best outcomes, regardeconomy." less of the pain and In the long history uncertainty imposed on of the country, conordinary families." centrations of wealth In describing his priand income always orities, Obama's lanhave perverse effects. guage was plain but Broadening our direct: "Good jobs. A nation's winners' cirbetter bargain for the E.J. cle, on the other middle class and the hand, has always folks who are working been the best strategy to get into the middle for sustainable class. An economy that grows from the middle out. ... growth. We need to acknowlThat's where I'll focus my ener- edge this once again. There is more Obama needs gies -- not just for the next few months, but for the remainder of to do to make his case for the specific steps Washington can my presidency." "Middle out" is the key con- take to restore shared, robust cept. Since the Reagan era, con- prosperity. He will have to beat servatives have enjoyed enor- back the forces that would conmous success in making supply- tinue to shrink government side economics -- the belief that through a sequester that is makwealth flows to everyone else ing the recovery slower than it from the economy's command- should be. But this time, he cannot let ing heights -- a powerful, underground default position. A himself be sidetracked. With corollary: Government can do 1,276 days left in his presidency, little to make the nation richer he chose to draw a clear line and other than cut taxes and reduce start a big argument. His place in history will hang in large part its own reach. The alternative view is, as on whether he can win it. Obama put it, that "growing E.J. Dionne is a regular inequality" is "not just morally colunist for the Washington wrong; it's bad economics." "When middle-class families Post. His email address is have less to spend," Obama ejdionne@washpost.com. Dionne Jr.