Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/306519
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD 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 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 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 HIT NationalDayofPrayer. It is refreshing to see that the National Day of Prayer, cele- brated here and nationwide Thursday, has thrived. We were happy to see so many turn out to express their faith as a community and for the community. MISS Tribal woes. A rift in the Paskenta Band of the Nomlaki Indians came to light this week and it doesn't look good. The tribal chair- man has accused some of em- bezzlement. The remaining four members of the coun- cil, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, dispute this claim and resent being forced off tribal property. This story is just beginning, but we hope cooler heads will prevail. Rolling Hills Casino and the tribe's health clinics are suf- fering in the meantime, and that's bad for our community. HIT Adoption event. The Te- hama County Animal Care Center is holding a special adoption event today and it's worth checking out. It's not of- ten you have the opportunity to gain a lifetime friend for a $25 fee, so look in your home, yard and heart to see whether you have room for a furry friend. MISS Better questions. We were disappointed by many of the questions submitted for lo- cal candidates during Tues- day's candidate forum hosted by the Tehama County Farm Bureau and the Daily News. Every year this event follows the same format, a fair for- mat — questions should apply to all candidates in a partic- ular race. Every year we toss out piles of questions targeting particular candidates. It would be nice if more folks would fo- cus on the issues affecting our community rather than going on the attack. HIT A breath of fresh air. The American Lung Associ- ation released a report this week listing Redding-Red Bluff as being one of the cleanest air areas in the nation, based on year-round particle pollu- tion. Let's hope the fire season ahead doesn't smoke us out for the summer. MISS Bomb scare. For the second time in six weeks, portions of downtown Red Bluff were shut down half of the day due to a suspicious device being found. Fortu- nately nobody was injured in either incident, but hours of law enforcement manpower were wasted and dozens of private businesses completed no commerce while the de- vices were destroyed. HIT Wilderness highlight. Without much fanfare it was announced about a week ago that Tehama County would play host to the Wilderness Trea- sures expo to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wil- derness Act. The event will feature all things wilderness with topics ranging from ecol- ogy to recreation. It will also draw thousands from through- out Northern California. What an opportunity for Tehama County to showcase all the out- door treasures it holds. Look for the event the second week of October at the Tehama District Fairground. MISS We said it before and we'll say it again: Tuesday could be a sad evening indeed for Tehama County folks if the Red Bluff City Council votes to approve a proposed further reduction of share of Tourist Occupancy Tax revenue with the Red Bluff-Tehama County Chamber of Commerce. That's the short-sighted — and per- haps personal agenda-driven — recommendation of its bud- get committee, consisting of elected Councilmen Wayne Brown and Rob Schmidt. If fu- ture parades and Round-Up events are canceled and pro- motion to potential visitors and relocating businesses is reduced, you might want to re- member how individual coun- cil members voted on this bad idea. Hits and misses Prayeraliveand well in Red Bluff Donald Sterling is a despica- ble human being. The racist land- owner and L.A. Clippers owner's years of racist activity included evicting a "smelly black woman" from her apartment because she complained about the leaking plumbing. Now the NBA has banned the owner of the Clippers from all bas- ketball activity for his racist rant recorded by his girlfriend and given to online scandal site TMZ. In an organization in which over seventy percent of the em- ployees are black, it is undeniably logical and moral that the NBA owners vote to force Sterling to sell the team. This option is within the realm of the NBA bylaws. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is the only NBA owner so far to voice concerns about a "slippery slope" that could result in NBA owners being compelled to sell their teams based on sur- reptitious recordings now so eas- ily created with cell phone apps. I doubt it. The outrage swelled because the NBA players are mostly black and Sterling told his girlfriend it's okay to have black friends and to have sex with them, but don't make it "public" and "don't bring them to games" and his claim that he "gave" them their houses, cars and big salaries. I think we can all agree that these athletes have earned their wealth and there's no room for Sterling's "plantation mentality," just as there's no room in Ameri- can discourse for racists like Ne- vadans Rancher Cliven Bundy and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid who speak of African Americans as some collective en- tity they like to call "The Negro." If an NBA owner is now caught trashing women, Jews, Italians or puppies he'll be embarrassed for a few days, make a contribution to the Jewish Italian Women's So- ciety for the Protection of Pup- pies and be done with it. Why? Because those groups are not a major constituency of the or- ganization. The business is the league, not the individual team. No matter how many millions of dollars owners spend on buying a team, they signed a contract that gives the league the power to limit the owners' behavior. Dog lover groups from around the country tried to keep dog tor- turer Michael Vick out of the NFL. They failed because they didn't have enough juice. Sterling got away with rac- ist behavior over the years for two reasons: First, his lawsuits were settled out of court for mil- lions of dollars in exchange for no admission of any guilt. Sec- ond, his financial contributions to the Los Angeles NAACP have been rewarded with awards from the NAACP. It was easy for the NAACP to overlook Sterling's publicly reported racist activity while the checks cleared. Donald Sterling is not the only one who's been revealed as a bad player. Stunningly, the President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the NAACP is prepared to forgive Sterling's sins of racism for a fi- nancial contribution. Yes, you read correctly. Af- ter reacting to the Sterling news story by rescinding their planned "Lifetime Achievement Award," L.A. NAACP President Leon Jen- kins said the following: "God teaches us to forgive, and the way I look at it, after a sus- tained period of proof to the Af- rican American community that those words don't reflect his heart, I think there's room for forgiveness. I wouldn't be a Christian if I said there wasn't," Jenkins said. "We are negotiating with him about giving more moneys to African American students at UCLA, and so we are in prelimi- nary discussions," Jenkins said. The NAACP is now selling "in- dulgences" to wealthy racist sin- ners. Perhaps the NAACP needs to take a vote among state chapters regarding Mr. Jenkins. Callers to my radio show noted some good news about the Ster- ling scandal: You'll be hard pressed to find anyone in America say Ster- ling shouldn't be punished or suspended from all NBA activi- ties for his racist behavior. Lib- erals, Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans agree. Sterling's supporters have to lurk in dark corners. Oh, they're out there, but they know the majority doesn't welcome their input. Nice to know that while there are racists in the country, Amer- ica is not a racist country. RickJensenisDelaware'saward- winning conservative talk show host on 1150AM WDEL and 93.7FM HD3, Streaming live on WDEL. com from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. PST. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen- 1150WDEL. Rick Jensen No room in America for 'plantation mentality' Cartoonist's take CAPTION Fullfundingforthe Chamber of Commerce Editor: The Tehama District Fair sup- ports the full funding by the city of Red Bluff of the Red Bluff-Te- hama County Chamber of Com- merce. During my years in public service, I have been confronted many times by proposals to de- fund or cut the city funding of the Chamber of Commerce. I would then ask if the proposer had they had ever seen a suc- cessful town and healthy busi- ness climate without a Chamber of Commerce. The answer was always no. The city government is in the business of providing munici- pal service and supporting eco- nomic development. What a city does not do is city promotion; the chamber does that. Without a co- ordinated effort at business pro- motion, the city revenues will not grow. I was astounded by the amount of hotel tax, known as transient occupancy tax (TOT), that is received by the city of Red Bluff, an amount over $700,000. Seven hundred thousand dol- lars is received by the City, be- cause its hoteliers support and collect the tax. Hoteliers are also business people who support the chamber. Of course TOT is gen- eral fund money for funding key general fund services and no state law and probably no city code requires it be allocated to support the Chamber of Com- merce, but business people recall that the city in the past commit- ted to a specific portion of its ho- tel tax to support the chamber. Whether there exists a writ- ten contract or a note in the Council Official Minutes to re- flect that commitment is irrel- evant. Whether a future City Council can be bound by a com- mitment given by a former coun- cil is irrelevant. All that mat- ters is that a majority of business people and residents did not op- pose the TOT increase, and it took affect without a referendum by the people being forced upon the city. The recession is over; the Red Bluff Dodge has returned to Red Bluff; Growney Motors is still here, and city employees are again receiving raises. Now is the time to restore the full funding of the Chamber of Commerce as originally commit- ted by the City. — Stephen Kimbrough, Corning Separation, say what? Editor: Having just received Tehama County's Sample Ballot, I noted the noble-appearing "Argument In Favor of Measure A." Then, I looked at the "Rebuttal to Argument Against Measure A." It appears as if the true intent of Measure A is subtly revealed in the latter. Under the guise of creating a better-represented and more democratic state, the proponents of Measure A will ac- tually be creating a more poorly represented and less democratic one for all of its citizens, with un- told consequences for the lands of Tehama County. "Local control of our chil- dren's education, funded by opening up our natural re- sources," the talking point says. What does that mean? Will our county be clear-cut of its forests and trees? Will we have open strip mines scarring our pristine landscape? Will we have vast sludge ponds of tar residue from fracking as they have in Alberta Canada? How about the ruinous dump- ing and leaking of toxic chemi- cals into the Sacramento River and smaller creeks, as happened in West Virginia and North Car- olina due to lack of regulation and oversight? Will eminent domain be used to take away our lands, as is be- ing attempted in the Midwest for the private use of the Keystone XL pipeline? "Public lands returned to the public," says another talking point. Doesn't the second use of the word "public" really mean private? Will our protected lands be sold off at auction to the high- est bidder? Who has the money to buy them? Corporations, American and foreign, of course. And their purpose for existing? To squeeze out every possible dollar to add to their bottom line. So goes the way of our history. "Laws don't protect health." Are you kidding me? That state- ment falls somewhere between naive and dangerously fraudu- lent. Laws are created to protect the well-being and health of all citizens from the few who would willful destroy them for their own gain. Residents of Tehama County, please look at all of the talk- ing points and rebuttal state- ments in detail. With great care and thought, tease them open and look inside at what is hidden from view. Research the issues brought up. Find out what has happened elsewhere as a result of nullify- ing protective laws. Don't take anything you are told on blind faith and trust. Search history and human be- havior for clues to understanding the meaning of Measure A and where it would take us. — Robert Keller, Red Bluff Your opinions You'll be hard pressed to find anyone in America say Sterling shouldn't be punished or suspended from all NBA activities for his racist behavior. A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Sounding off "The Jefferson folks did a fantastic job of ramming this. This whole issue has been so very swi and precipitous that we are still just getting our feet wet trying to re- spond. The responses to the Jefferson fantasy seem to fit into three categories — 1) it will never happen, 2) no way, 3) true believer. Unfortunately category 1) plus 3) might result in it passing." Dan a Johnson— Red Bluff OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, May 3, 2014 MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4