Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/438503
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 "You'veworkedforusfor10 years, Johnson, but I'm not sure how to grade you during this year's performance review." "What are you talking about, boss? I doubled sales over the year before." "Impressive, Johnson. But how often do you go to the gym?" "The gym?" "Yeah — work out, pump iron, run on the treadmill." "Not as much as I'd like. Look, not only did I double sales, I improved customer sat- isfaction by 25 percent!" "Nice going, Johnson, but you're looking a little chubby these days. Let me ask: If some- one set a Twinkie on a plate next to a low-fat Snackum, which would you choose?" "The Twinkie. Don't you see that every employee who re- ports to me has seen an in- crease in job satisfaction, which is up 32 percent?" "Not bad, Johnson, but what is of greater concern is this: Do you prefer trans-fatty marga- rine or butter on your toast?" "Margarine. Look, boss, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but did you see some of the customer-survey informa- tion my staff has gathered that has helped our company im- prove product designs, a key driver of increased sales?" "If you say so, Johnson. Tell me: Would you be interested in using a wearable fitness monitor to track your blood pressure and how far you walk every day?" "Oh, I see where you are going with this, boss. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that more companies are persuading their employees to participate in getting more fit due to the rising costs of health insurance." "Not a bad idea, Johnson. Would you be interested in join- ing our wellness program? We'll pay all of your costs!" "More companies are offering exercise classes, nutrition coach- ing and emotional counseling that employees can participate in during paid work hours." "All right, I admit it, Johnson. Health-care costs are killing us. We have little control over ris- ing premiums — ObamaCare was supposed to fix that prob- lem, but our premiums are soar- ing — but we can make our em- ployees healthier, which will re- sult in fewer health claims." "So that's why you got rid of the soda pop and snack vending machines!" "According to an econo- mist at Yale University, reports The Wall Street Journal, get- ting obese employees to normal weight, or even to just being overweight, would save us, on average, about 9 percent of the money we spend on health-care costs and lost productivity from employee sick time." "So that's why you're more worried about my chubbiness than you are about my job per- formance!" "Our company is not alone, Johnson. About a third of employ- ers are offering new health and wellness programs to help em- ployees. We could save a bundle on our insurance premium costs." "I don't know, boss. I was hoping we could keep my re- view focused on my business ac- complishments and not some- thing as personal as my weight- gain failures." "Johnson, with health costs soaring, your weight gain is our business. The Affordable Care Act gives us more leeway to per- suade employees to join well- ness programs." "But it's like you are targeting the chubbier employees, boss. Isn't that why the Equal Em- ployment Opportunity Commis- sion has brought several law- suits against various company wellness programs?" "Sorry, Johnson, but we can make a strong case that, as your employer, we have the right to persuade you to eat a healthful diet and forsake any bad habits that will add to our premiums." "Well, boss, what's most im- portant is this: How did I do on this year's performance review?" "That depends, Johnson. If you had to choose between chicken wings and tofu, which would it be?" TomPurcell,authorof"Misad- ventures of a 1970s Childhood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Hu- morist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pittsburgh Tribune- Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@ caglecartoons.com. Tom Purcell Healthy job performance review ...getting obese employees to normal weight, or even to just being overweight, would save us, on average, about 9 percent of the money we spend on health-care costs and lost productivity from employee sick time. Cartoonist's take Elizabeth Warren and plenty of media liberals are in a panic that the Omnibus bill, nicknamed "CRomnibus," is some sort of hor- rible right-wing Trojan Horse that will grind us all into domination by investment banks. Nope. While the Dodd-Frank bill al- lows Democrats and Republicans to repay big investment banks' campaign contributions by "un- winding" their exposure to bank- ruptcy the next time they use a government program to aid and abet criminal behavior, the changes made by Republicans don't allow these banks to engage in the "toxic" derivative plays that ushered in the Great Recession. The horrible, nasty Republi- cans opened up derivatives trad- ing needed by farmers. Granted, the whole concept of the omnibus bill is corrupt, lump- ing spending into 1,600 pages of bloat on programs that should be voted upon individually. It's very unlikely you will ever read the bill, so it's easy for liberal columnists and reporters to cre- ate rabid unicorns of death lurk- ing within then bill's dark cav- erns. Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat and key architect of the section in Dodd-Frank that put deriva- tives under regulatory control, supported the revision, as did 57 House Democrats. His spokesman, Greg Vadala, told reporters the revision would cover "plain vanilla" swaps, not the "toxic" variety that brought down insurance giant American International Group at the begin- ning of the recession. "Jim and others in Congress have long argued the most dan- gerous derivatives would still be kept away from government- backed banks under the provi- sion," he said. Here's how it works: Porky Spintail raises hogs and is a bit nervous about the prices for hogs and their famous bellies rising and falling for no apparent rea- son. In order to make a profit on his little piggies, Porky calls inves- tor Barry Madcow to agree on a futures contract. Barry agrees to pay 90 cents per pound when the hogs are ready for slaughter in five months, regardless of the market price. If, at that time, the price is a dollar a pound, Barry gets a nice profit as he buys the piggies for less than market cost and sells them on the market at a higher price. If the price goes below 90 cents, Porky is relieved as he sells the piggies for more than he would get in the open market. He's protected from price fluctu- ations. That's a form of derivative investing. Dan Freedman reports, "Himes and other supporters argue the law should permit banks to help farmers, airlines and others man- age risk while maintaining con- trols on other kinds of derivatives trading that are too risky." That's the point Himes, agree- able Democrats and the Republi- cans are making. These derivatives are market trades on future prices for com- modities and financing agree- ments. Farmers and their suppli- ers depend on derivatives for fi- nancial stability, unlike the failed mortgage-backed securities hawked by Goldman Sachs. I asked John Anderson at The American Farm Bureau to give us a little more knowledge. "Many of the downstream firms and input providers that farmers do business with do make use of more complicated fi- nancial instruments to manage risk in their normal operations. For example, a major grain dealer may use a swap to hedge against foreign exchange risk on grain that it plans to export at some point in the future. To the extent that these kinds of tools allow these firms to reduce risk and/or reduce costs, they are able to pass that along to farmers in the form of better terms on contracts and/ or lower prices for farm inputs or other services. For this reason, it is important to farmers that bona fide hedging activities — that is, market activities that have a real risk-reducing function for firms as opposed to purely speculative activities that increase risk — are not inadvertently curtailed by Dodd-Frank provisions." I don't think Democratic Party leaders hate farmers. They hate Republicans, especially when Re- publicans might get credit for helping working people. Democrats seeking animos- ity toward Republican additions to the omnibus bill might con- sider raging about cattle ranchers and dairy farmers being excluded from the potential carbon taxes they would like to impose on their cows' burps. That's surely giving liberals gas. Rick Jensen GOP helping farmers, not investment banks Another view By Tina Dupuy Last Saturday, I found my- self sharing a New York City subway train with protesters from the Millions March and drunken revellers from San- taCon. Both events drew com- parable-sized crowds, hov- ering around 25,000 partici- pants each. Both ended up on the tiny island of Manhattan on the same day. And this coinci- dence is a perfect metaphor for Christmas this year. In a town which gladly wel- comes some 54 million visitors annually, special contempt is held for the excretions from the tens of thousand of pub crawl- ers known as SantaCon. The swarm of stocking-hatted booz- ers descend onto New York much like the biblical plague of locusts (if locusts were noted for copious amounts of Garden State-bought Fireball vomit). This year they even hired a civil rights attorney, Norman Siegel—whose former clients in- clude the Occupy movement— to tell New Yorkers that San- tas have a constitutional right to treat the entire city like their frat house's bathroom. The group has roots in the culture-jamming anti-consum- erism subculture, yet has de- volved into a parade of public urination and indiscriminate puking. There's, of course, a tongue-in-cheek claim that it's for charity, but really it's an ex- cuse to travel to an iconic city and make a drunken, sloppy, red-clad mess of yourself, all in the name of this holiest of holy- days. This to me is the Ameri- can celebration of Christmas. It's summed up in those an- nual Lexus commercials that promise if you're nice enough to Santa or your spouse truly loves you enough, you deserve a $50,000 luxury car. Average Americans whose wages have flattened while the expense of everything from college to their calling plan has gone up, decid- edly put themselves in debt to consume as much as possible at the end of the year. Go to any store in December—tempers are short, patience is non-existent and Bing Crosby (an accused child abuser) is crooning about how great it all is. The Millions March, on the other hand, tells the story of the other America. The media treats our 47 million citizens in poverty like they're some kind of novelty. There are more Americans living below the poverty line than Canadians on this planet (35 million). Poverty has effectively been criminalized by the follies of the War on Drugs. During that time police have gotten more armor and more legal leeway. There's well-documented evi- dence people of color are dis- proportionately targeted and apprehended for drug crimes. So now we have a legally im- mune, self-policing, occupying army with a widely acknowl- edged racial bias loose in our cities. And your personal ex- perience with them is largely based on your income level, age and race. Eric Garner was choked to death for selling untaxed cig- arettes. He was a married fa- ther of six. He should have been fined at the worst. It cost more taxpayer dollars to arrest him than we would have ever made off of the singles he was hawk- ing. The only reason we know about this incident is because a man named Ramsey Orta filmed it and let the world see this stupid, cruel and now fatal policy at work. And even with the whole world watching, the police were not punished, pol- icies were not changed and we were all told it was justifiable homicide—so it was OK. Then those clenched fists, the timeless and ancient symbol of the disenfranchised standing up to subjugation, showed up en masse at City Hall last Sat- urday. The overlooked reality for millions of Americans per- fectly wrapped up in the chant, "We can't breathe." So there was simultaneously, the sick from consumerism- dressed-as-a-fairy-tale-fat-man who gives presents to "good" children (which means children of well-off parents) and the signs of anger at inequality and unequal treatment in the hands of the law. Those consuming themselves into oblivion and those protest- ing the all-too-obvious: the tale of two Christmases. © Copyright 2014 TinaDupuy. com, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syn- dicate. 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. The tale of two Christmases OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, December 24, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6