Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/295740
Unfortunate incidents with canines have oc- curred in the north state of late so I review them with you to help prevent recurrences. Most of them could have been prevented had dog own- ers exercised more control and others could have been miti- gated had affected parties ex- ercised better judgment, but this often comes into bet- ter perspective only after the throes of a threat. Sept. 26, 2013 – a goat and lamb to be shown at the Te - hama District Fair are found dead in an apparent stray dog attack in Los Molinos. "There were two strange dogs in the yard, they were a little bit bloody, and both 4-H animals were dead," said Tim Drury, the owner of the animals. A Great Dane and a pit bull broke into a secure pen and apparently had at it with the farm animals. While Tim could not prove the dogs killed his animals and they ar e c on si de re d b y s om e t o b e "well-mannered," this is non - sense to me considering that at best the dogs were trespass- ing and should have been con- tained. Jan. 14, 2014 – my golden re- triever is poisoned needing emergency care including inoc- ulation of rat-poison antidote (Vitamin K) and a blood trans- fusion. This occurred shortly after a pest control contrac- tor in Chico installed two ro- dent bait stations on my prop- erty. As I retrieved the stations to put the suspected sources of the poison out of harm's way the lid opened on one of them to reveal several missing blocks of bait. When I told the manager what happened he insisted that they weren't responsible for my $1,040 vet bill because it had been tampered with. Short of accepting his preposterous tale of phantom tamperers I can only chalk this incident up to contractor negligence and ir - responsible customer service nonsense. Feb. 7, 2014 - A Tehama County boy reports his moth - er's bulldog puppies shot af- ter being let outside onto their 8-acre property in the Jelly's Ferry area. He raced to the place where gun shots rang out to find a man on a cell phone and the two puppies dead on the ground. The man was an off-duty Highway Patrol officer jogging near the property that had fired six shots into the pup- pies while fearing for his safety. Seems like nonsense that a brave fleet-footed man wouldn't just run away from the pups but then officers are trained to use deadly force when threatened. April 5, 2014 - Norma Ro - driquez told Corning police that her neighbor's pit bull got onto her property and was growl- ing at her and her children. She quickly sent the kids in- side while trying to shoo the dog away but when she turned her back the canine bit her leg, causing four deep puncture wounds. The dog's owner was not home at the time and was pur - posely left loose in his yard while away from home for sev- eral days. When officers tried to quarantine the dog it made advances. Officers used pepper spray to subdue the animal but the dog aggressively lunged at officers and was shot to death. Had the owner secured his dog prop - erly both it and the neighbor would not have been harmed and he would not now be facing charges. April 10, 2014 – An 8-month old puppy is shot and killed on the 25300 block of 3rd Street in Los Molinos after straying onto a rural property with horses. When asked why, the shooter states that he will kill any ani - mals that come onto his prop- erty. While California law says he has the right to kill dogs that harass livestock I wonder if such drastic action is always necessary and justified. Per - haps it would make more sense to call on neighbors to retrieve a wayward puppy and to im- prove fences than to discharge firearms in proximity to homes. But now a once clueless puppy and distraught neighbors re - alize the consequences of tres- pass. What we learn from these incidents is abundantly clear, make sure pets are contained, be careful who you hire to deal with rodent problems, don't ex - pect dogs to survive encounters with armed law enforcement of- ficers, don't turn your back on a threatening pit bull and don't expect owners of livestock to go out of their way to spare your dog. Like it or not, such is the reality of local dog protection sense and nonsense. Richard Mazzucchi is a retired re - search engineer specializing in en- ergy efficiency and renewable en- ergy. He has travelled extensively and now makes his home in Los Molinos, where he is striving to manifest a sustainable and spir - itual lifestyle and operate a bar- becue equipment and supply busi- ness. He can be reached at living- green@att.net. Richard Mazzucchi The sense and nonsense of dog protection Cartoonist's take With the April 15 tax day upon us, we have the recent 4-year anniver- sary of President Obama signing the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare (to mock Nancy Pelosi mind - lessly repeating "Affordable, af- fordable, affordable"). Tax day itself is a reminder that men- tally robotic Democrats were in full spin mode trying to refute the idea that the now-Orwellian- phrased "Shared Responsibility Fee" was a tax. Remember Obama's "Well, George (Stephenopoulos), the fact that you had to use a diction - ary …" in a shameless attempt to dispute that a penalty/fine writ- ten into the tax code and en- forced by the IRS is a diction- ary-defined "tax." To paraphrase the standard liars line: "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying dictionary." Irony and hypocrisy oozed over the Supreme Court ultimately calling it a "tax" in or - der to bestow their judicial bless- ing, when it was never called a "tax" in the 2,000+ pages of the Obamacare bill. Witness the lemming-like way Democrats turned on a rhetorical dime to embrace the full weight of the tax code and the IRS to adver - tise, promote, threaten and guilt- trip young people into a program that undermines their own finan- cial best interests. What's worse is that it inculcates the idea that when the government imposes a burden on you against your free will choices, but you can ac - cess other taxpayers' money to ease the burden, it's all ok. Just "spreading the wealth around," no harm done. Free money, hooray! Let's recall that the over - whelming weight of public opin- ion has opposed Obamacare, from its legislative inception and passage, to its pathetic implemen- tation, to current phony trium- phalism. Don't take my word for it—go to RealClearPolitics.com and click on "Polls" tab. Click on "Health Care Law" on the far right to display 10 or so recent surveys of "Pub - lic Approval of Health Care Law." Not only is the current RCP average (as of 4/12) a dismal 12.5 per - cent Against/Oppose (39.8 For/52.3 Against), but also that gap has been in double dig- its almost continuously since No- vember 2009. Individual polls present argu- able results—4+ years worth of polling shows an irrefutable, unde- niable negative public opinion. The leftist ideologues believe that Re- publicans saying bad things about Obamacare causes unpopularity. Their attitude: "People don't know how good it is for them so we need to enforce Obamacare; eventually people will accept either the wis - dom of their overlords, or politi- cal 'quiet desperation.'" That and "Just shut up!" It's their all-pur- pose dialogue-stopper on any is- sue where they claim the final word. You're being disagreeable, so…just shut up. Regarding Obamacare polling, the "for/against" results are not changing (Rasmussen poll, 4/7: 58% of voters view it unfavor - ably; just 39% favorably). Some media pollsters have taken the approach that "it's the law so it's irrelevant that most Americans oppose it." They're now shifting opinion questions to "repeal or not," "leave as is, fix or repeal," and so on. To them, it's inevita - ble that another massive, redis- tributionist benefit program will end up as permanent and popu- lar as Social Security or Medi- care (Never mind that there are too few workers and taxes to sustain either program). So, when the New York Times found 50 percent choos - ing "change the law" and only 42 percent for "repeal," Democrats crowed about apparently declin- ing "repeal" sentiment. However, just 6 percent want to "leave it as written;" only 1 in 20 thinks it was a good law. Remember, everything about Obamacare, from the endless lies, misrepresentations and bro- ken promises, to the corrupt deal-making by Democrats to get votes, to the 20,000 pages of reg- ulations (Obamacare: "the Sec- retary shall write rules"), to the disastrous web site rollout, to conscience-violating rules forc- ing Christian business-owners to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, to the fudged, phony, numbers touted by Obama as he and his media sycophants proclaim a "victory lap"—it is a failing Dem - ocrat program for which no Re- publican ever voted. Surrounded by this kind of self-created "train wreck," there is no business that would tell the same folks who made the disas - ter to fix it. Obsolete failures dis- appear. Remember Edsel, DeLo- rean, New Coke, Pepsi Crystal, 8-tracks, Betamax, floppy disks or Coors Spring Water? How about that senior program, the "Medicare Catastrophic Cover - age Act of 1988" with new taxes on Medicare recipients? It was passed, signed and implemented with great Democrat hubris un - til angry silver haired protest- ers started pounding on the cars carrying Democrats like Dan Ro- stenkowski—that turkey got re- pealed in full the very next year. Etched in stone? More like Ex- hibit A in the "Epic Fail" wing of the Big Gov Museum. Media bias note: AP reporter Juliet Williams connected Dem - ocrat dots in "Scandals plague California capital, Dems suc- cumb to 'dirty dealings" (3/28 DN). However, the party ID of state Sen. Leland Yee, "Demo- crat," was not in either Mercury News writer Howard Mintz's ("Yee pleads not guilty to gun trafficking, corruption charges," 4/9 DN), or AP reporter Paul Elias' ("Yee's lawyer questions FBI probe," 4/1 DN) story; cer - tainly not the fact that an anti- gun Democrat was arrested for attempted gun trafficking. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@yahoo.com. Don Polson Looking at Obama's health care law at its four-year anniversary Had the owner secured his dog properly both it and the neighbor would not have been harmed and he would not now be facing charges. Greg Stevens, Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDitoRial BoaRD How to have your say: 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 no more than two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151 ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FaCEbook.CoM/ rbdailynEwS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @rEdbluFFnEwS Don Polson Another privacy bomb was dropped on Silicon Val- ley last week with Bloom- berg's revelation about the Heartbleed software bug, dealing yet another blow to the U.S. technology indus - try's reputation and its abil- ity to compete abroad. It's hard to say what's more stunning: That Bloomberg reports that the NSA knew about the bug two years ago but didn't tell anyone, leaving American consumers at the mercy of hackers -- including, some believe, the NSA itself? Or that Washington's tech geeks seem to be ahead of the Valley at every turn? When did government outdo Silicon Valley in its awareness of sophisticated technology? Some tech leaders think tighter regu - lation of the NSA is the an- swer. Some rules may be needed -- but since when has government regulation been the preferred means of securing the Valley's fu - ture? Industry needs to pro- duce secure technologies so consumers know their in- formation is safe from gov- ernment eavesdropping, predatory marketers and other intrusions on privacy. The NSA has thrown down the gauntlet. President Barack Obama and NSA Director Keith Al - exander believe protect- ing Americans from terror- ists is more important than protecting them from inva- sions of privacy. As to Con- gress -- suggest some rules today and in two or three years they may pass some- thing, which by then will be years out of date. The next era of Silicon Valley history is unfolding, and to paraphrase Bill Clin- ton's campaign theme, it's privacy, stupid. The next Larry Ellison, Mark Zuck- erberg or Steve Jobs will be the engineer-entrepre- neur who figures out how to protect online activity from China and the NSA's crack hackers. For online industry to thrive, consumers have to trust that their smart - phones today and whatever cool things displace them tomorrow are private. Pe- riod. The technology that accomplishes this will be snapped up by consumers around the world. To fail at this is to ad - mit that the real tech ge- niuses these days reside in government cubicles in Washington. Asian and Eu- ropean companies will be- come more dominant, since American technology will be suspect. Consumers need the right to know how their personal information is being used by the com - panies themselves, which is something the tech giants have resisted. This may re- quire regulation unless the industry decides to put on the white hat and fight for consumer privacy in all contexts, government and private. Without quite realizing it, we have become engaged in a new war, over privacy. Silicon Valley needs to face up to the challenge. We're getting tired of changing our passwords. This editorial was originally published by the San Jose Mercury News. Editorial On privacy, Silicon Valley needs to put on the white hat and fight OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com tuesday, april 15, 2014 » MORE AT FaCEbook.CoM/rbdailynEwS AND TwiTTEr.CoM/rEdbluFFnEwS a6