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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 Boy,doestheworldneedabettersenseof humor right about now. Humor,saysMerriam-Web- ster, is "the ability to be funny or to be amused by things that are funny." Humans are at their best when they are amused. Few things can better reduce stress or shed light on truth than a good joke. President Reagan had a grand sense of humor — and used it with great deftness to advance his program. He told one joke about a man, then living in the Soviet Union, who went to a govern- ment office to order a new car. When he laid down his money, he was told there would be a long wait. "Come back in 10 years and pick up your car," said the gov- ernment servant. "Morning or afternoon," said the man. "What difference does it make," said the servant. "Because the plumber is coming in the morning." British academic and joke theorist Christy Davies says a good joke can help clarify and express complex feelings. A good joke can cut to the heart of the matter better than any speech or law or government policy. The lack of a sense of humor can do the opposite. When I was younger, and going through a rough patch in my career, I was miserable. After I'd been moping around for a few months, my mother let me have it. "You have lost your sense of humor," she said, "and you need to get it back." She was correct. Lacking good humor, I trapped myself in the narrowness of my own small consciousness, making relatively small challenges into giant problems. A sense of humor is the way out of narrowness. Learning to laugh at yourself is healthy. And people who laugh the hardest are always the healthiest. True, laughter often de- pends, as the old saying goes, on whose ox is being gored. "Saturday Night Live" founder Lorne Michaels has noted that the show often pokes fun at Republican pol- iticians because Republicans find it funny — they don't take the ribbing as personally as do some with other political points of view, he said. I didn't know much about Charlie Hebdo, the French sa- tirical newspaper that was at- tacked by terrorists a couple of weeks ago. Two gunmen killed 12 people in the editorial of- fice. As it went, the magazine had published provocative car- toons that caricatured the founder of Islam, and the ter- rorists entered the building with guns to exact revenge. The cartoons apparently didn't tickle the gunmen's funny bone. The magazine has been crit- icized by some for publishing such provocative cartoons and for also lampooning Judaism and Catholicism in a highly provocative manner — one cartoon showed nuns mastur- bating, and another showed the pope wearing a condom. Though some may find such satire insulting and inflamma- tory, the Charlie Hebdo edi- tors and cartoonists did not de- serve to be killed for publishing it, and the acts of the two gun- men who killed them can in no way be validated by anyone. The handful of critics who suggest that the editors and cartoonists partly brought the attack on themselves are miss- ing the point. Nobody should be murdered because of sat- ire. Ever. The fact is, we have far more to fear from those who wish to repress expression and censor jokes and cartoons than we do from the jokes and cartoons themselves. And though biting satire may be unpleasant at times to some, one thing we can agree on is this: We need more good humor in the world and we need it fast. Here's one joke I think we can all agree on: "It's so cold today, the politi- cians had their hands in their own pockets." TomPurcell,authorof"Mis- adventures of a 1970s Child- hood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pitts- burgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons. com. Tom Purcell Why we need a better sense of humor A good joke can cut to the heart of the matter better than any speech or law or government policy. Cartoonist's take Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the dollar has lost over 97 per- cent of its purchasing power, the US economy has been sub- jected to a series of painful Federal Reserve-created re- cessions and depressions, and government has grown to dan- gerous levels thanks to the Fed's policy of monetizing the debt. Yet the Federal Reserve still operates under a congres- sionally-created shroud of se- crecy. No wonder almost 75 percent of the American public supports legislation to audit the Federal Reserve. The new Senate leadership has pledged to finally hold a vote on the audit bill this year, but, despite overwhelming public support, passage of this legislation is by no means as- sured. The reason it may be diffi- cult to pass this bill is that the 25 percent of Americans who oppose it represent some of the most powerful interests in American politics. These in- terests are working behind the scenes to kill the bill or replace it with a meaning- less "compromise." This "com- promise" may provide lim- ited transparency, but it would still keep the American people from learning the full truth about the Fed's conduct of monetary policy. Some opponents of the bill say an audit would somehow compromise the Fed's inde- pendence. Those who make this claim cannot point to anything in the text of the bill giving Congress any new au- thority over the Fed's conduct of monetary policy. More im- portantly, the idea that the Federal Reserve is somehow independent of political con- siderations is laughable. Econ- omists often refer to the po- litical business cycle, where the Fed adjusts its policies to help or hurt incumbent pol- iticians. Former Federal Re- serve Chairman Arthur Burns exposed the truth behind the propaganda regarding Federal Reserve independence when he said, if the chairman didn't do what the president wanted, the Federal Reserve "would lose its independence." Perhaps the real reason the Fed opposes an audit can be found by looking at what has been revealed about the Fed's operations in recent years. In 2010, as part of the Dodd-Frank bill, Congress authorized a one- time audit of the Federal Re- serve's activities during the fi- nancial crisis of 2008. The au- dit revealed that between 2007 and 2008 the Federal Reserve loaned over $16 trillion — more than four times the annual bud- get of the United States — to foreign central banks and po- litically-influential private com- panies. In 2013 former Federal Re- serve official Andrew Huszar publicly apologized to the American people for his role in "the greatest back- door Wall Street bailout of all time" — the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing program. Can anyone doubt an audit would further confirm how the Fed acts to benefit eco- nomic elites? Despite the improvements shown in the government-ma- nipulated economic statistics, the average American has not benefited from the Fed's quan- titative easing program. The abysmal failure of quantitative easing in the US may be one reason Switzerland stopped pegging the value of the Swiss Franc to the Euro following re- ports that the European Cen- tral Bank is about to launch its own quantitative easing pro- gram. Quantitative easing is just the latest chapter in the Fed- eral Reserve's hundred-year history of failure. Despite this poor track record, Fed apolo- gists still claim the American people benefit from the Federal Reserve System. But, if that were the case, why wouldn't they welcome the opportu- nity to let the American peo- ple know more about monetary policy? Why is the Fed acting like it has something to hide if it has nothing to fear from an audit? The American people have suffered long enough under a monetary policy controlled by an unaccountable, secretive cen- tral bank. It is time to finally au- dit — and then end — the Fed. Ron Paul is a former Congress- man and Presidential can- didate. He can be reached at VoicesofLiberty.com. Ron Paul If the Fed has nothing to hide, it has nothing to fear Another view By Tina Dupuy We often hear about the cor- rupting influence of money in politics. This usually means quid pro quos for moneyed in- terests. There's lip service paid to the amount of cash a pol- itician must raise in order to even run for office. Famously, former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer ran for pres- ident in 2012 by only taking $200 donations, proving one can't compete in the contest for the Oval Office by only tak- ing $200 donations. In the wake of the Citizens United decision and a provision tucked into last year's spending bill tripling the amount individ- uals can donate to national par- ties, money in politics should obviously be a concern. But what's even more distressing is that just having the potential to be president has become its own vocation. Welcome to the Also-Ran In- dustrial Complex. There's a pretty sizable, well- fed group of people who make a living pretending they want to be president: starting su- per-PACs, collecting speaking fees, selling email lists, selling books, scaring granny into buy- ing gold coins, scaring grampy into buying doomsday survival kits. It's less cottage industry, more McMansion enterprise. Running for president has become like marathon run- ning. No one expects to win; it's just entering the race that's im- portant. Running is its own re- ward. This reality is why former fraction-term Alaska Gover- nor Sarah Palin just up and said "thanks, but no thanks" to the voters of America's larg- est state. Why? Because there's so much more money in teasing media outlets about possibly maybe one day thinking about running for president than in holding down an actual govern- ment job. It was time to cash in. The man who pioneered making a living being a loser was really Newt Gingrich. After he left his House and speakership in disgrace, he "consulted" for Freddie Mac, started a production com- pany and toured as an orator. So it was no shock when the open casting call for the 2008 and 2012 Republican presiden- tial nominees came up, Gin- grich was there to grab some of that limelight. First he was considering running in 2008 and then actually throwing his hat into the ring in 2012. Since running, Newt's career has been on an upswing, landing a cushy gig on CNN. If it worked for someone as unscrupulous, immoral and un- likable as Newt Gingrich, it can work for anyone, The also-ran mold has been cast in Newt's image. Now, due to forces in publish- ing, cable news and lobbying, it's worth it for gadflies, huck- sters, Huckabees and wannabes to run for higher office and land with a bigger platform. As perennial-kook former Senator Rick Santorum won- dered in an interview earlier this week of the GOP hopefuls like Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio: "Do we really want someone with this little experience? Do we really want somebody who's a bomb thrower, with no track record of any accomplishments?" For president? No. But Senate first-termers Cruz and Rubio aren't running to be the next president, they're running to be the next Newt Gingrich. And Rand Paul? He's running to be the next Ron Paul. Am I just cynical? Do I not believe in the magic of that one special candidate I can fall in love with and know he'll/she'll be my everything in the Execu- tive Branch? In a word: Yes. Politics on this level is not about the voters. It's about the fans; it's about the fan- tasy. It's about the fringy niche politicians hating the same things you hate and be- lieving all the weird stuff you've read on the Inter- net too. It's about selling the dream of purists being in charge of this rapidly chang- ing and continually more plu- ralistic society. It's about tell- ing like-minded people ex- actly what they want to hear — that they alone are the can- didate who can take us back to a better time in the near future. Because no matter who be- comes president, they inevita- bly become a compromiser. All presidents let down those who love them most at some point. But someone with an Internet channel — or what used to be called a website — can suspend that reality and make us believe that we can be right, be on top and things can be simple once again. Just hit the "donate now" button. 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 also-ran industrial complex OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, January 21, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6