Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/261964
6A Daily News – Tuesday, February 18, 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 Tehama County District Attor- ney Greg Cohen will be the guest speaker at the Tea Party Patriots meeting tonight at the Westside Grange, 6 p.m. From my stack of items previ- ously unremarked upon: Bizarre, logic-and-common-sense defying utterances issued from party mouthpieces in the nearly-seam- less, knee jerk response by Democ- rats to the nonpartisan CBO (Con- gressional Budget Office) report on Obamacare. It concluded that Obamacare's financial and behav- ioral incentives, through subsidy cutoffs, would reduce the future workforce by the equivalent of about 2.5 million jobs. Liberal apologists insisted—in their best Orwellian imitation of "slavery=freedom" newspeak— that it would be a good and laud- able thing for people to work less. Much hilarity ensued on the right when some professor of "leisure studies" wrote "Why Do Republi- cans Want Us to Work All the Time?" These same loons once touted the benefits of "(f)unem- ployment" and consider rising wel- fare, food stamp, disability, EITC and housing subsidies to be "progress." Folks, a blind squirrel could deduce that when insurance rates skyrocket 40 to 90 percent due to a laundry list of mandated coverage for all policies, and when the bene- fit-handout-overlords' solution to such exorbitant rates is yet another income means-tested subsidy— people will make logical choices to limit their income, or even reduce it, to get said subsidies. There's even a disincentive for some cou- ples remaining married when they could, as individual income-earn- ers, qualify for government, or other people's, money. Unintended consequences? From a comment thread some- where, an unidentified writer stated that if you "want to be compas- sionate to people" just "Get them jobs. That means hard-nosed Washington budget decisions and tax cuts … That's how you care about people. Jobs are 70% of everything. Public health, suicide, crime, the list goes on. Employed people have better outcomes on all of these measures than unem- ployed people. Want to help some- one? Get him a job. Leftie-mind- blowing conclusion? Tax cuts are the best public health measure." A related topic showed up in my email inbox: Joe Legal vs. Jose Illegal's income stream. "Joe Legal works in construction, has a Social Security Number and makes $25.00 an hour. Jose Illegal also works in construction, has NO Social Security Number and gets paid $15.00/hour cash 'under the table.'" Joe Legal's $52,000 per year is reduced by taxes, medical, dental and auto insurance, and rent, while his income disallows food stamps, housing, income or school lunch subsidies. Jose Illegal pays no taxes on his $31,200 cash income, shows up at clinics for free health care, can work the system for food stamps, rent and school lunch sub- sidies or even welfare, and carries no insurance, period. Mr. Legal ends up with about $7,200 to cover utilities, gasoline, etc. Mr. Illegal still has his $31,200 to cover those same expenses and however much he chooses to send out of the coun- try to support relatives. Joe Legal works overtime and gets an extra job on weekends; Jose Illegal has nights and weekends off to enjoy with his family. Until a double fence with an all-season road covers every traversable mile of border on the south; until biometric tracking can catch those over-staying their visas; and until all law enforce- ment personnel are authorized to verify legal status in every contact with the public—no one should be talking about legalizing those already here. Let Americans be assured there will be no further waves of millions of illegal border-hoppers and visa violators, and our immigration laws enforced without favor to some groups, and Ameri- cans will feel magnanimous and generous towards those already here. From a surprising source, the Internet Movie Data Base (imdb.com for all things movie related) comes a summary of Mex- ico's history of soft-despotism (in biographical notes for famous Mexican actor, Emilio Fernandez). Ruling party (PRM/PRI) presi- dents "maintained political control of Mexico by granting favors and concessions to their constituencies inside the corporatist party struc- ture in exchange for worker and campesino organizations deliver- ing votes and suppressing discon- tent among their constituencies." Citizens had access, through a rul- ing party organizational structure, to governmental agencies to seek redress, favors, etc., but non-con- nected citizens never realized a sat- isfactory outcome from the maze of layers of bureaucracy. "The ingenious if disingenuous system worked as it gave them input, just no guaran- teed output. By frustrat- ing them within an institutional structure, federal and state gov- ernments took the fight out of them." I suspect that Democrats, under Obama, see an upside to importing Mexican immigrants whose atti- tudes toward authoritar- ian power has been so shaped. Dems like that style. In another emailed item, Col. Phil "Hands" Handley, USAF (Ret.) refuted the contention that help was unavail- able for the besieged Americans in Benghazi. Two F- 16Cs could have been scrambled and left Aviano Air Base in Italy, refueled in NAS Signorelli and arrived with the lethal intimidation of 500 20 MM rounds each, well before mortars killed Woods and Doherty while defending the CIA annex. Low passes with afterburn- ers, even strafing runs, would have saved their lives. Hillary Clinton's failure to protect those Americans and our Ambassador, her failure to react to defend them and her lies about it afterward are, however, an apparent resume enhancement to the Democrats. Legal scholar Jonathon Turley was misidentified as fellow legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin in a previ- ous column. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@yahoo.com. Hypocrisy over jobs, immigrants, Benghazi 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 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) 558-3160; E-mail: gover- nor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, 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 Mont- gomery St., Suite 240, San Francis- co, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Your officials Don Polson The way I see it Hello again Tehama County – I'm back from a restful and refreshing vacation to the calmer and kinder climes of Washington state where there is generally less animosity among the electorate and more balanced representation than the extremely conservative climate here. Like many of you I tire of my colleague below's con- tinuous diatribes against all things union, liberal, Obama, environ- mental stewardship, and toler- ance. Because his supporters don't hesitate to condemn and vil- ify everyone who speaks to the contrary their harangues give me pause to speak my peace. When I told editor Chip Thompson years ago that I should get paid for such abuse he wisely said to me, "The abuse is your pay." Indeed the worst things for a columnist are to be ignored or to dignify such abuse with silence. It seems our county supervi- sors are digging themselves into a self-serving hole by the items they are placing on the next ballot. First and foremost in these times of economic struggle they want us to more than double their salaries for their part time efforts, supposedly on our behalf. While this may be fine to those of you that are well off it is a slap in the face to middle income and low income members of our community that struggle to get public services they require from the county. If some addition- al compensation is in order to attract higher quality public ser- vants I submit the raises should be implemented if and when new county supervisors are seated rather than reward those who sought office with the existing salary and benefits. Next is the totally unnecessary advisory vote to help them decide whether to support the preposter- ous proposal to divide the Golden State by creating a new state of Jefferson. Not only is there insuf- ficient factual information on the economic and political impacts for the electorate to make any kind of informed judgment, there is no way in hell that such a move will garner support from a majority of the state voters nor other states necessary for it to succeed. A sim- ple examination of census data and comparison of county taxes with levels of state provided sup- port reveals that the northern counties have inadequate finances, employment levels, wealth, and non-state provided resources to sustain themselves, much less improve their lot. It appears to me that the supervisors are only throwing the droves of frustrated ultra-conservatives that oppose all things environmental and tolerant a political bone by wasting precious county resources to put this non-sense to a vote. Finally to complete their coupe they want us to allow them to fill vacancies on the board with their cronies by deciding for themselves who might best serve us. It seems the gover- nor did a fine job the last time this happened. They say they want to empower themselves for the sake of expedi- ency, but it is just a power grab to pave the way to put persons in office to jump aboard the bandwagon and dam the torpedoes. Per- haps this is all well and good to the majority, but heaven for fend you ever find yourselves in the minority. Alas I come to my least favorite representative Mr. LaMalfa. After voting to ensure that he continues to receive mil- lions in crop subsidies and insur- ance from the federal government at the expense of food assistance to the needy he continues to hold the most anti-immigrant voting record in the nation. Rather than fulfilling his campaign promise to address the issue it is clear that he only cares about keeping things as they are so he and his fellow land barons can profit at the expense of those that tend their lands. He has voted no on every measure to mit- igate farm worker abuse despite being consistently defeated by his peers. Here is the list of bills passed while he votes nay: Authorizes Driver's Licenses for Certain Individuals Ineligible for a Social Security Number, Prohibits Excessive Detention of Undocumented Immi- grants, Prohibits Requirement of Elec- tronic Employment Ver- ification, Authorizes Student Financial Aid for Undocumented Immigrants, Extending Student Financial Aid Eligibility, Prohibiting E-verify, Endorsing Federal Amendments to Immigra- tion Law. 'Nuff said about ballot buffoonery and anti-immigrant insolence. Richard Mazzucchi is a retired research engineer specializing in energy efficiency and renewable energy. He has travelled extensively and now makes his home in Los Molinos, where he is striving to manifest a sustainable and spiritual lifestyle and operate a barbecue equipment and supply business. He can be reached at living-green@att.net. Richard Mazzucchi Positive Point Ballot buffoonery and anti-immigrant insolence