Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/256072
6A Daily News – Thursday, February 6, 2014 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 let- ters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All let- ters must be signed and pro- vide the writer's home street address and home phone num- ber. 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 submit- ted will be considered for publi- cation. 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 Opinion CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Because it is this year's first fed- eral election, attention must be paid to the March 11 voting to fill the congressional seat vacat- ed by the death in October of Florida Republican C.W. "Bill" Young, who served in Congress 43 years. If Democrat Alex Sink wins, the significance will be minimal because she enjoys multiple advantages. Hence if Republican David Jolly prevails, Republicans will construe this as evidence that Barack Obama has become an anvil in the sad- dle of every Democratic candi- date. Matters are, however, murky. Tip O'Neill's axiom that "all pol- itics is local" has been rendered anachronistic by the national government that liberals such as O'Neill created. Today's admin- istrative state touches everyone everywhere, so all politics is partly national. Politics in Flori- da's 13th Congressional District today concerns the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Obama carried this Gulf Coast district, a one-county con- stituency near Tampa, by 8.2 points in 2008 and 5.6 in 2012. Although Sink never lived in the district until very recently, she has almost 100 percent name recognition here because she has run statewide, almost winning the governorship in 2010 when she carried the county by 5.7 points. Between 2007 and 2011, she was Florida's chief financial officer. After Young died, the nation- al and state Democratic parties moved with more dispatch than seemliness. With a robust disre- gard for traditional niceties, they moved Sink into the 13th Dis- trict. Her real home in another county is, Jolly says -- he exag- gerates -- closer to Disney World than to this district's beaches. They also prevented a primary challenge from anyone who really lives here, thereby allowing Jolly to say national Democrats decided no local Democrat was qualified to rep- resent the locals. While she rented an apart- ment and began raising money, Jolly fought a nine-week prima- ry race, from which he emerged on Jan. 14 financially depleted. He worked for Young for many years, which helps his resume, but then became a Washington lobbyist, which does not. He thinks it should, saying mor- dantly that politics "is the one industry in which experience and qualifications count against you." He notes that whoever wins next month will have to run again in November and if he is running then, the Republican House leadership will want to give him some plums beneficial to his district -- perhaps assign- ment to committees to protect seniors and veterans. This is a purple but not a polarized district, with 37 per- cent Democrat and 36 percent Republican. Although the dis- trict gave the world the first Hooters restaurant, the district is unusually elderly, white and disapproving of Obamacare. It also is smoldering about the flood insurance pro- gram. The NFIP is yet another entitlement pro- gram that is proving to be more durable, and more emblematic of modern America, than Mount Rushmore. The federal government has long subsidized insur- ance for homeowners who live in coastal areas or flood plains. This entitlement, covering about 5.5 million of America's 122 million housing units, is necessary because otherwise people would be required to pay the costs of the risks they choose to run for living where they are pleased to live. The NFIP enables the dis- proportionately wealthy people who own beach properties to socialize their storm losses while keeping private the plea- sures of their real estate. The NFIP is another illustration of the entitlement state's upward distribution of benefits. Recent attempts to reform the NFIP -- to end subsidized rates for 1.1 million properties and to change rates based on improved risk assessments -- threaten to raise by thousands of dollars the annual insurance costs of some property owners here. Both Sink and Jolly are competitively indignant. But the U.S. Senate, an unsleeping defender of entitle- ments benefiting the privileged (witness the new farm bill), has recently derailed reform. Sink will benefit from the national trend allowing early voting to obliterate Election Day. Any Floridian who has ever requested an absentee ballot henceforth gets one automatically. Seven- ty-seven percent of the Republican primary votes here were cast by mail in the Jan. 14 primary, and absentee ballots will be mailed on Feb. 7. Furthermore, early voting at polling places begins March 1, so many -- perhaps most -- votes will be cast before Jolly has raised much of the money neces- sary to communicate his mes- sage. Instead of a community deliberation culminating in a shared day of decision, an elec- tion like the one here is diffuse and inferior. If Sink wins, Republicans nationally can shrug; if Jolly wins, Democrats should tremble. But no matter who wins, the district loses because it has lost Election Day. George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com. The stakes of a special election Commentary N EWS D AILY RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U N T Y S I N C E 1 8 8 5 George F. Will 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@sen- ate.ca.gov GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 558- 3160; E-mail: governor@gov- ernor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Wash- ington, 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. Your officials Able to focus, just a second Editor: I take exception to your col- umn of Friday, Jan. 31. I think Americans are uniquely quali- fied at multi-tasking and there- fore have the ability to avoid Mah Jonging themselves into moral and civil corruption. Even now, I am writing this as I watch the news and use Farmville, well able to keep focus. Hold on a minute — one of my crops has withered, darn it. What was I saying? Oh yeah, Walmart. They need to save all the oak tress in Red Bluff. I don't know who started chop- ping down trees to build houses and schools, it needs to stop and Walmart is the only one who can help the oaks. Wait just a sec — I need to send a word in my Words with Friends game. Where was I? The library, right. The library needs to be downtown so people can walk to it, but not close enough for the homeless. We don't need the homeless reading newspapers, that way lies madness. To restate, Americans are well able to multi-task and keep focused on the changing world. All of this farming and trying to think of words with x's and n's has tired me out. Excuse me while I take a nap. Susan Messler, Red Bluff Lacking in common sense Editor: I've had a Christian upbringing and an eighth grade education and there ain't no reason for Mr. Merhoff treating me this a-way. He (like so many other lib- erals) just can't resist touting his higher-than-thou education as he did in the first paragraph. Doesn't he realize us working- folk have to look up these fancy words like colloquy? Then again, maybe he doesn't really want us common-work- ing-folk to know what he real- ly thinks about us, or he is just talking to the alumni of the institutions of higher learning. The G.I. Bill is a great thing and many who have served in the military have benefited from this. I have never criti- cized benefits for veterans, only the abuse of them. If Mr. Merhoff wants to be more unsophisticated and poorer than me, I'll give him that. However, I may have had to walk farther through the rain, sleet and snow to get to school. There he goes again "per- plexed" we understand con- fused and that's what I am. I chose Justin Raimondo and Joshua Frank because they were liberal and I knew Mr. Merhoff would- n't accept the opin- ion of Rush Lim- baugh or Glenn Beck. As for fa c t c h e c k . o rg / 2 0 1 3 / 0 6 / s e n - feinsteins-husband-the-postal- service/, it only proves my point. The husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein chairs a com- pany that is the exclusive bro- ker for the sale of USPS facili- ties. Most of which are located on prime land in towns and cities across the country. The sale of these properties is worth billions. A regular real estate commission of as much as 6% will be paid to the com- pany that Feinstein's husband chairs, the company that has the exclusive listing for han- dling the sales. It's not a coin- cidence they (Feinstein/Blum) have different last names. Most voters and many of the people in government don't make the connection. Feinstein (D) and her husband Richard Blum have amassed a fortune unbe- lievable from this and other government contracts, war profiteering, and her retire- ment and all the benefits that go with that. Wow, wouldn't some of that go a long way helping our wounded warriors with the help they need. After all, didn't they pay the price for the profits Feinstein and Blum made on defense contracts? Blum has investments tied to just about every corporation that has contracts with all the defense and homeland security deals. Celia Wexler, research director for Common Cause in Washington, D.C., says all the defense and homeland security deals involving Blum-connect- ed companies raise concern of political hanky-panky. Why is it that so many high- ly educated people, not all but mostly with a capital D, can't do simple math and see what excessive spending of other people's money has done to California and this country as a whole. It just goes to show you that a diploma from an institu- tion of higher learning often helps, however it doesn't guar- antee common sense or the capacity for rational thinking. Les Wolfe, Red Bluff Your Turn