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6A Daily News – Thursday, January 23, 2014 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. 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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 Thanks to drivers Editor: I would like to thank the automobile drivers who are following the new law when passing a bicyclist sharing the road. It has made for a safer and more enjoyable bicycle ride. For those drivers who are not aware of the new law, it basically requires automobiles to provide a three-foot clearance when passing a bicyclist and in the case where that is not possible, slow down to allow oncoming traffic to pass before passing the cyclist. David Stickney, Red Bluff Our new America Editor: Poor Governor Christy. All this flap about something that was very inconvenient to many, he was lied to, has taken responsibility and fired the one responsible but still one nut even suggested impeaching him. No one died. Remember Benghazi? Four died. The NSA and IRS scandal? Fast and Furious? Two died. Those responsible either retired, was promoted or moved to a dif- ferent position, Eric Holder kept his job, but no one has been fired. President Obama makes a speech, you forget what point he's making by the time it's over and he hasn't said a thing or taken any responsibility but you're so confused and tired of his bull you don't even realize this until you think more on it. Now they have another plan to fight poverty which will fail like they all do. Maybe if we made people work for their welfare, including prisoners, make them pay their way, get them used to supporting themselves. I had an employee that made $7,000 a year, my workmen's comp went to $2,000 a year so I let her go. Another problem. Everything is too expensive because of many factors. Corruption, padding expenses, fraud, bribes, etc. Our prisons are overcrowded for a reason. Make everybody responsible to some degree. If they can't do physical work, do something less physical. Welfare mothers could do childcare for those who work. Childcare is so expensive, a low-paying job isn't enough to make it worthwhile. Obama took the work requirement away from welfare which was stupid. But he had his reasons of course. Votes. He speaks of responsibility and does the opposite. He's a great speaker, just words, no content. Fifty years ago President Johnson had a plan to help those in Editor: poverty. Just like our wars, not Managing anaphylactic reacmuch has happened. Of course poverty doesn't kill as many as tions to foods is long term manthose who go to war, give their ageable without forcing others lives, lose limbs, etc. We diddle to avoid peanut and tree-nut, or around and take one step forward, allergic fruits and seafood's. If a private sector preschool owner two steps back. chooses that route, Our world has so that is their choice, but many people and so Your that should not be a many problems. I don't public school option. mean to sound like it's For the past 30 easy to do anything but years, I've managed a we could start by makprogressive series of ing people responsible and work. Unemployment is great becoming anaphylactic reactive for those who draw it but it's very to penicillin, strawberries, any generous today. If it wasn't maybe crustacean such as shrimp, lobit would promote people to find ster, crab, clams, or mussels, but jobs, any job so they'd have more not fish, and walnuts but no money. That's the way it worked in other tree or root nut. An allergic child requires the my world growing up. If I wanted something better, I had to work for parent and teacher to have the it. Childcare, workmen's compen- necessary medication to counter sation, benefits, perks, some attack accidental ingestion withsalaries are too generous, we've out a crisis. As adults the soluspoiled too many and it's hard to tion is to always carry a supply bring it back into line with what is of Benadryl and an anaphylactic injection kit, and a current Predreasonable and sensible. Problem is getting anybody to nisone prescription. Accidents are inevitable as agree on anything these days. We need term limits, voter ID and any restaurants in US cities and elected person found guilty of any- other countries lace salads or thing serious loses their pension. pastas with anaphylactic foods. Make it a law with a one-year The solution is easy with pregrace period and then enforce it. scriptions just as with the many diseases that occur with age. Will never happen. Joseph Neff, Corning Bernice Cressy, Cottonwood Allergies Turn Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, 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 For judges: Throw the flag WASHINGTON -- Disabusing the Republican Party of a cherished dogma, thereby requiring it to forgo a favorite rhetorical trope, will not win Clark M. Neily III the gratitude of conservatives who relish denouncing "judicial activism." He, however, and his colleagues at the libertarian Institute for Justice believe America would be more just if judges were less deferential to legislatures. In "Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution's Promise of Limited Government," Neily says America is not "a fundamentally majoritarian nation in which the ability to impose one's will on others through law is a sacred right that courts should take great pains not to impede." America's defining value is not majority rule but individual liberty. Many judges, however, practicing what conservatives have unwisely celebrated as "judicial restraint," have subordinated liberty to majority rule. Today, a perverse conservative populism panders to two dubious notions -- that majorities should enjoy a largely untrammeled right to make rules for everyone, and that most things legislatures do reflect the will of a majority. Conservatives' advocacy of judicial restraint serves liberalism by leaving government's growth unrestrained. This leaves people such as Sandy Meadows at the mercy of government acting as protector of the strong. She was a Baton Rouge widow with little education and no resources but was skillful at creating flower arrangements, which a grocery store hired her to do. Then Louisiana's Horticulture Commission pounced. It threatened to close the store as punishment for hiring an unlicensed flower arranger. Meadows failed to get a license, which required a written test and the making of four flower arrangements in four hours, arrangements judged by licensed florists functioning as gatekeepers to their own profession, restricting the entry of competitors. Meadows, denied re-entry into the profession from which the government had expelled her, died in poverty, but Louisianans were protected by their government from the menace of unlicensed flower arrangers. What Louisiana does, and all states do in conferring favors through regulations that violate individuals' rights, is obviously unjust and would be declared unconstitutional if courts would do their duty. Their duty is to protect individual liberty, including the right to earn a living, against special-interest legislation. Instead, since judicial abdication became normal during the New Deal, courts almost invariably defer to legislatures' economic regulations, which frequently are rent-seeking by private factions. Courts justify dereliction of judicial duty as genuflection at the altar of majority rule, as lack the acumen to recognize long as the court can discern, or corruption, self-interest, or even imagine, a "rational basis" arbitrariness in the economic realm -- or deferring for any regulation -to the majoritarian even if the legislature imperative," which never articulated it. means "the absence of Never mind the absurany check on the dity of the fiction that group interests that all a majority of too often control the Louisianans know democratic process." about, let alone care This process, Neily about, licensing rightly insists, is not flower arrangers. self-legitimizing, Conservatives which is why judicial clamoring for judicial passivity is inconsisrestraint, meaning deference to legislatures, George F. tent with constitutional government. are waving a banner Between 1954 and unfurled a century ago 2002, the Supreme by progressives eager to emancipate government, Court invalidated 103 of the freeing it to pursue whatever 15,817 laws that Congress collective endeavors it fancies, passed -- 0.65 percent. It struck sacrificing individual rights to a down about 0.5 percent of federal regulations and less than spurious majoritarian ethic. The beginning of wisdom is 0.05 percent of state laws. recognizing the implications of Neily says, "In light of history, this fact: Government is almost experience, and common sense, never disinterested. Today's it is implausible to suppose the administrative state is a con- federal government hits the geries of interests, each of constitutional strike zone 99.5 which has a metabolic urge to percent of the time." Neily argues that to say that enlarge its dominion and that of the private-sector faction with judicial invalidations of legislawhich it collaborates. As Neily tive acts should be rare is no says, "Much of modern consti- more sensible than saying NFL tutional law depends on deny- referees should rarely penalize ing -- or at least ignoring -- the players for holding. Conserrealities of the political vatism's task, politically hazprocess." Judge Janice Rogers ardous but constitutionally Brown of the D.C. Circuit essential, is to urge courts to Court of Appeals says of "ratio- throw as many flags as there are nal basis" jurisprudence: "The infractions. judiciary justifies its reluctance George Will's email address to intervene by claiming incomis georgewill@washpost.com. petence -- apparently, judges Will