Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/406189
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 My mother was 13 years old, the oldest child in her family, the day the health department nailed the quarantine notice on her front door. Itwaslateinthesummer of 1951. My mother's younger sister, Cecelia, was just beginning the eighth grade when she came home from school with a high temperature, feeling very ill. The next morning, her legs gave out as she tried to get out of bed. By that evening, she was so weak she could barely move. She'd contracted polio. At the time, no one knew how the polio virus was spread. Many thought it spread through swimming pools, so the pools were shut down. The public was in such a panic, in fact, that an ambu- lance driver refused to take "Cece" to the hospital for fear other patients might be- come infected. Fortunately, my mother's uncle had a car and he drove her. The public had reason to worry. In 1952, America would have its worst bout with the virus. More than 57,000 cases would be reported nationwide. Of those, 3,000 victims would die and 21,000 would suffer permanent paralysis. And so my mother's home was quarantined for 14 days, the life of the virus. No one was to leave the house or visit during that time. Only her fa- ther could leave to go to work. Within two weeks, polio had ravaged Cece's body. Her arms and legs were in various de- grees of paralysis. She could barely lift her head. She was relocated to the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children in Sewickley. Her long, painful re- habilitation would just begin. It would be one year before she could move back home. Her rehab would continue for two years. She would need crutches for the rest of her life. Had polio not been cured, say the authors of "Freako- nomics," the United States would now be caring for at least 250,000 long- term patients at an an- nual cost of $30 bil- lion. But we did cure it. The March of Dimes mobilized millions to raise money. A long line of researchers, in- cluding Dr. Jonas Salk, refused to accept defeat. To- gether, we won. On April 12, 1955, almost one year after the trial of Salk's vaccine began, it was declared safe and effec- tive. It's easy to look with clar- ity at events that took place about 50 years ago, but harder to do so in current times — as Ebola is ravaging parts of West Africa and, in our tran- sient, global economy, is a po- tential threat to other parts of the world. And just as we addressed po- lio in the U.S., we need to come together to stop Ebola from be- coming a growing threat. Ebola knows no political party and all political pander- ing is a huge waste of time. What we need are common- sense measures that stop the Ebola virus dead in its tracks. Sorry, but a travel ban on af- fected regions needs to hap- pen. Politics needs to stop. The government has to get its act together. And let's redirect Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funds away from frivolous programs so we can create an Ebola vaccine that is effective. Do we really need the Na- tional Institutes of Health spending "$667,000 for a study on the health benefits of rerun television, $1 million on the sexual proclivities of fruit flies, $600,000 on why chimpanzees throw their poop, $350,000 on the importance of imagination while golfing, and $550,000 to determine that heavy drink- ing in one's 30s can lead to feelings of immaturity," as re- ported by National Review? Hey, we're Americans. We came together to prevent po- lio. We must come together if we're to have any hopes of clamping down on Ebola. TomPurcell,authorof"Misad- ventures of a 1970s Childhood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor colum- nist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons.com. Tom Purcell Beat Ebola like polio Had polio not been cured, say the authors of "Freakonomics," the United States would now be caring for at least 250,000 long- term patients at an annual cost of $30 billion. Cartoonist's take In 1968 the government of Canada decided to openly admit Americans seeking to avoid be- ing drafted into the US war on Vietnam. Before, would-be im- migrants were technically re- quired to prove that they had been discharged from US mili- tary service. This move made it easier for Americans to escape President Johnson's war ma- chine by heading north. Although a founding mem- ber of NATO, Canada did not join the United States in its war against Vietnam. The Canadian government did not see a con- flict 7,000 miles away as vital to Canada's national interest so Canada pursued its own foreign policy course, independent of the United States. How the world has changed. Canada's wise caution about military adventurism even at the height of the Cold War has given way to a Canada of the 21st century literally joined at Washington's hip and eager to participate in any bombing mis- sion initiated by the D.C. inter- ventionists. Considering Canada's peace- ful past, the interventionist Can- ada that has emerged at the end of the Cold War is a genuine dis- appointment. Who would doubt that today's Canada would, should a draft be re-instated in the US, send each and every American resister back home to face prison and worse? As Glenn Greenwald pointed out this past week: "Canada has spent the last 13 years proclaiming itself a nation at war. It actively participated in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and was an en- thusiastic partner in some of the most extremist War on Terror abuses perpetrated by the U.S." Canada has also enthusiasti- cally joined President Obama's latest war on Iraq and Syria, pledging to send fighter jets to participate in the bombing of ISIS (and likely many civilians in the process). But Canada's wars abroad came back home to Canada last week. Though horrific, it should not be a complete surprise that Can- ada found itself hit by blowback last week, as two attacks on Ca- nadian soil left two Canadian military members dead. Greenwald again points out what few dare to say about the attacks: "Regardless of one's views on the justifiability of Cana- da's lengthy military actions, it's not the slightest bit sur- prising or difficult to under- stand why people who identify with those on the other end of Canadian bombs and bul- lets would decide to attack the military responsible for that violence." That is the danger of inter- vention in other people's wars thousands of miles away. Those at the other end of foreign bombs — and their surviving family members or anyone who sympathizes with them — have great incentive to seek revenge. This feeling should not be that difficult to understand. Seeking to understand the motivation of a criminal does not mean that the crime is justi- fied, however. We can still con- demn and be appalled by the at- tacks while realizing that we need to understand the cau- sation and motivation. This is common sense in other criminal matters, but it seems to not ap- ply to attacks such as we saw in Canada last week. Few dare to point out the obvious: Canada's aggressive foreign policy is cre- ating enemies abroad that are making the country more vul- nerable to attack rather than safer. Predictably, the Canadian government is using the attacks to restrict civil liberties and ex- pand the surveillance state. Like the US Patriot Act, Canadian legislation that had been previ- ously proposed to give the gov- ernment more authority to spy on and aggressively interro- gate its citizens has been given a shot in the arm by last week's attacks. Unfortunately Canada has un- learned the lesson of 1968: stay- ing out of other people's wars makes a country more safe; fol- lowing the endless war policy of its southern neighbor opens Canada up to the ugly side of blowback. Ron Paul is a former Congress- man and Presidential can- didate. He can be reached at VoicesofLiberty.com. Ron Paul Once-peaceful Canada turns militaristic Another view By Tina Dupuy Conspiracy theories are easy to make up. They all follow the same formula: An omnip- otent force wills it, everybody is in on it, it takes place per- fectly and no one else will tell you this. Throw in some cherry- picked numerical clues based on arbitrary weights and mea- surements, and there it is: fod- der for the conspiracy grinder. Dead celebrities are still alive, random horrible events were planned meticulously and the government is hyper-competent and malicious. Spend one afternoon on any community planning commit- tee and see how easy it is to get people to work together to do anything—let alone something vast and secretive. Organization is a hard trick to pull off. Just ask former Secret Service direc- tor Julia Pierson. The only problem with the mythology of conspiracy theo- ries and their popularity is they can often muddy and cloud ac- tual conspiracies. The times co- ordination does work spectacu- larly well. One recent example is the television doctor, Dr. Oz, hawk- ing fake diet pills to hordes of loyal fans. The "studies" for the weight loss pills were fudged, the pills were manufactured and promises were made up. Then the product was adver- tised to desperate people using a trusted TV personality. It's not an easy scam to pull off, but it actually happened. Hundreds of thousands bought snake oil from a dude whose name is the same as the phony wizard in the fictional Emerald City. What are the odds? Consumer product fraud is not as insidious as the biggest conspiracy ever perpetrated against the underclass of poor people and minorities in this country: The War on Drugs. If you added up all of the per-capita incarceration rates of every other English-speak- ing country, they'd still have a lower rate than the U.S. We lock up more than Russia. Way more than China. We lead the world in warehousing humans. "The United States has about five percent of the world's pop- ulation and houses around 25 percent of its prisoners," writes Josh Holland at BillMoyers. com. There are currently 2.4 mil- lion people incarcerated in this country. That's like four Wy- omings just of inmates...or roughly one Nevada. The poorest state in the na- tion, Louisiana, has the most prisoners per capita. African Americans make up 13.6 percent of the country's population according to the 2010 census, while they make up 39.4 percent of our prison population. How does this conspiracy levied against the under-priv- ileged and under-represented get pulled off? A lot easier than you'd think. "Criminals are universally unpopular, and they can't vote," is an axiom for elected offi- cials, explained former Missis- sippi state Supreme Court Jus- tice James Robertson to the the Clarion-Ledger. His state's prison population has gone up 300 percent in the last three de- cades. People who can't afford to fight back are apparently easy targets. Pleasure-seeking is criminal- ized. And some pleasure-sup- plying enterprises are crimi- nalized. Hard work doesn't get rewarded in a monetary way anymore. People can work hard and still not support their fami- lies; then seeking out the chem- ical escape or serving in its co- inciding delivery business can land you in prison. Wages have flattened in the last 30 years, the same period in which the prison popula- tion has skyrocketed. The pov- erty class in this country gets to choose between corporate in- dentured servitude, made up of low wages and debt, or being an inmate in a for-profit prison. There's a system that's fig- ured out how to make money off poor people and it's not like we're going to stop making any more of those any time soon. It's not a theory; it's a con- spiracy reality. End the war on drugs. Tina Dupuy is a nation- ally syndicated op-ed colum- nist, investigative journalist, award-winning writer, stand- up comic, on-air commentator and wedge issue fan. Tina can be reached at tinadupuy@ya- hoo.com. Time to end the war on drugs Tom Purcell OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, October 29, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6