Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/156651
6A Daily News – Thursday, August 22, 2013 Opinion 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 Thank you Editor: The Red Bluff Community Center Auxiliary Officers and Board Members would like to thank all the community businesses, volunteers, sponsors and participants who helped to make our 30th Anniversary Celebration on Aug. 2 a huge success. It took a lot of team work and hard work from the Auxiliary members, local businesses, during the seven months to accomplish the celebration. Again, thank you to one and all who supported us. Betty Dale-Martin, Red Bluff Rifle raffle Editor: The American Legion Mount Lassen Post 167 would like to extend their congratulations to Paul Shennum, winner of the Rifle Raffle. The prize was an 08 Savage 7mm Long Rifle with scope. The drawing was held at the Red Bluff Veterans Memorial Hall. The proceeds earned will go to support future events to help veterans and children and youth activities in the community. The American Legion thanks all who participated for their support. Nate England, Los Molinos Artists thanked Editor: The Auxiliary Volunteers of St. Elizabeth Community Hospital would like to express our thanks and appreciation to Holbrook's Stoneware and the Tehama County Photo Club for their generous contribution to the recent beautification project of the hospital foyer. We appreciate your community spirit in loaning us your beautiful artwork for display. Linda Ezzat, Red Bluff Four years of destruction Editor: Is the acceleration in the last four plus years of the destruction of this once great country by design or ignorance? We have a president whose only experience is that of a community organizer. What is a community organizer? You can find the answer to that looking up "Rules for Radicals" by Saul D. Alinsky published in 1971, on Wikipedia, the free encyclope- Communists and radical Musdia. "Rules for Radicals" is a lims Obama has associated with how-to-guide for community and encircled himself with, as organizers, Obama, to organize cabinet members and advisors, and unite the low-income and to understand what his goals are. Our open borders allow illenon-producing communities to gal immigrants to gain social, political flood our country that and economic power include radical Musat the expense of the Your lims as well those producing taxpayers. who come from MexIncluded in the ico. The Mexicans are guide is how to take now getting refugee over ethics, education, communication, and symbol status by claiming they are construction to nonviolence and threatened by the Mexican drug political philosophy to mention cartel. This status gives instant a few. Does Common Core ring access to all the social benefits, welfare, medical, housing and a bell? Then there's political whatever else goes with it. In activists Richard Cloward and the meantime our wounded Frances Fox Piven. Their strate- warriors that come back from gy was to overload and break combat have to wait and go the U.S. Welfare system to cre- through a lot more red tape than ate a crisis that would replace anyone should have to go the welfare system with a through let alone anyone who national system that guaranteed served this country in combat. an annual income that would Who do the leaders of this end poverty, "The Great Soci- country care the most for illegal immigrants or the men and ety." Saul Alinsky, Richard women who risk it all for our Cloward and Frances Fox Piven freedom? God bless our wounded warwere all about the redistribution of wealth. Did Obama design riors. To the President and the his presidency after their philos- leaders of the House and Senophy? Frances Fox Piven was a ate, both parties, should hang their heads and hide their faces mentor to Obama. One only has to look up how in shame. Les Wolfe, Red Bluff many radical liberals, socialists, 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 A court's order: Obey the law WASHINGTON -- Nowadays the federal government leavens its usual quotient of incompetence with large dollops of illegality. This is eliciting robust judicial rebukes, as when, last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia instructed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop "flouting the law." Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said: "It is no overstatement to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case." For six decades the nation has been studying the challenge of safely storing nuclear waste from weapons production, Navy vessels and civilian power plants. So far, more than $15 billion has been spent developing a waste repository system (in the 1980s, a Nevada senator misnamed it a waste "suppository") deep within Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 says the NRC "shall consider" the Yucca Mountain application to become a repository, and "shall" approve or disapprove the application within three years of its submission. "Shall" means "must." The application, submitted in June 2008, has not been acted upon, and the court says: "By its own admission, the commission has no current intention of complying with the law." Judge A. Raymond Randolph's concurring opinion said: "Former (NRC) Chairman Gregory Jaczko orchestrated a systematic campaign of noncompliance. Jaczko unilaterally ordered commission staff to terminate the review process in October 2010; instructed staff to remove key findings from reports evaluating the Yucca Mountain site; and ignored the will of his fellow commissioners." Jaczko resigned last year, leaving the NRC in demoralized disarray. The New York Times reported "charges of mismanagement and verbal abuse of subordinates" and that all four of his fellow commissioners, two from each party, complained about Jaczko to the White House and told a congressional committee that (the Times reported) he "unprofessionally berated the agency's professional staff and reduced female employees to tears with his comments." To be fair to him, he was put there to disrupt. He was put there by Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid, on whose staff he had served. Reid seems uninterested in the metallurgy of waste containment vessels or the geology of the mountain's 40 miles of storage tunnels where the waste would be stored 1,000 feet underground on 1,000 feet of rock. Rather, Reid, like almost all Nevadans, regards the repos- a major and unwarranted expanitory as a threat to Las Vegas, a sion of the executive's power at the expense of Congamblers' destination gress." that lives off tourists The NRC said who are demonstrably small appropriations irrational about probaindicate Congress' bilities. Reid prefers desire to stop the the status quo -- more licensing process. The than 160 million court responded that Americans living with"Congress speaks in 75 miles of one or through the laws it more of the 121 locaenacts" and "courts tions where over generally should not 70,000 tons of nuclear infer that Congress waste are kept. implicitly The court, which George F. has repealed or suspended was concerned only statutory mandates with the law, not the based simply on the mountain, said "the president must follow statutory amount of money Congress has mandates so long as there is appropriated." The court noted appropriated money available that, "as a policy matter," the and the president has no consti- NRC may want to block the tutional objection to the statute." Yucca project but "Congress He has none, and Reid has not sets the policy, not the commisyet quite succeeded in starving sion." And the court said there the NRC of funding for the is no permissible executive discretion to disregard "statutory Yucca licensing process. The NRC said Congress has obligations that apply to the not yet appropriated the full executive branch." This episode is a snapshot of amount required to complete the process. The court said Con- contemporary Washington -gress often appropriates "on a small, devious people putting step-by-step basis." The NRC their lawlessness in the service speculated that Congress may of their parochialism, and recknot finish appropriating the lessly sacrificing public safety sums necessary. The court said and constitutional propriety. that allowing agencies to ignore One can only marvel at the meastatutory mandates based on sured patience with which the "speculation" about future con- court has tried to teach the obvigressional decisions "would ous to the willfully obtuse. gravely upset the balance of George Will's email address powers between the (government's) branches and represent is georgewill@washpost.com. Will