Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/467032
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 Howmuchshouldthegov- ernment fine people whose chil- dren are deemed by (some) well-meaning bureaucrats as "obese?" $500? $800? Senators in our friendly asso- ciated state, Puerto Rico, have been debating that very issue this week. Seriously. If you believe government certainly should be measuring your children for a "fat tax" in school because there are some unfit parents, you may want to inform your Democratic Con- gress Critters. Senator Gilberto Rodriguez (Popular Democratic Party) said in a statement issued Monday, "The bill aims to improve chil- dren's wellbeing and help par- ents make healthier choices." Here's how they envision this law will create healthy kids. A tape-measure wielding school administrator pulls a chubby-cheeked schoolgirl aside from her classmates, measures and weighs her. If she weighs more than the Government— Approved-Tonnage, they call in the Government-Approved- Health-Department-Official. The Government-Approved- Health-Department-Official ac- tually assigns a cookie-cutter diet and exercise regimen to the child. If the child has not lost an apparently random num- ber of pounds within the ran- domly selected time period of six months, the parent(s) will be fined $500 to $800, depending on how much the politicians be- lieve they can get away with. The bureaucrats would ap- parently be able to distin- guish between a sedentary life- style punctuated by the exciting sound of a potato chip bag rip- ping open and a medical con- dition. Who wants to wager they make a lot of misteakes ... um, mistakes? When Michelle Obama de- cided her legacy would be to create a population of healthy, proportionally fit children more pleasing to the eye, the USDA went right along with her to create the school lunch program that limits the lunch meal to no more than 850 calories. The problem is, one size does not fit all. Young athletes often need 3,000 or more calories per day to fuel their running, jump- ing, throwing and catching. Midwestern high school stu- dents produced a musical video depicting the sad physical and academic results of their Na- tional School Lunch Program starvation that went viral on YouTube. Local news outlets around the country, as well as The School Nutrition Association, have documented what totals to be over a billion dollars of food going into the trash. The SNA also warns that the 2015 costs to local communities and schools will total $1.22 bil- lion in food, labor and admin- istrative costs. That's up from $362 million last year. Then what? $360 million the next year and the next and so on? Last year, The Washington Times reported, "New school lunch standards implemented as a result of First Lady Mi- chelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign have led to more than 1 million children leaving the lunch line, according to a new report." The Government Account- ability Office (GAO) released a wide-audit of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act nutrition standards, finding 48 out of 50 states faced challenges comply- ing with Mrs. Obama's Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. The new standards led to kids throwing out their fruits and vegetables, student boy- cotts, higher lunch costs, and odd food pairings such as "cheese stick with shrimp" in order for schools to comply with the complicated rules. The federal government has actually compelled over a mil- lion kids to skip lunch alto- gether and throw away a billion dollars' worth of food each year. The Obama lunch program has also created an alternate universe in which a healthy lunch bureaucratically deemed "unhealthy" is replaced with processed chicken fingers. In North Carolina, a pre- schooler's turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice did not meet the Michelle Obama USDA guide- lines. It was all replaced with three processed chicken nuggets. Yes, it's safe to assume that the chicken nuggets are sup- plied by a contracted provider who makes money on every "meal" provided to school kids. This is what happens when government controls peoples' daily health and eating rou- tines. Should Puerto Rico ever be- come the 51st state, their gov- ernment overreach into your life will fit right in with the fail- ing, over-reaching big govern- ment Democrats are creating. RickJensenisDelaware's award-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. local time. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL. Rick Jensen Big federal government and fat taxes Caregiversdeserve respect from county Editor: The 800 In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) caregiver in Te- hama County are in a fight for raises and respect from the Te- hama County Board of Super- visors, which appears not to value our work. We do far more than the minimum for Tehama County seniors and people with disabilities, but we are only paid minimum wage. We lack the basic benefits and livable wages available to most healthcare professionals. For the first time in history we were slated to receive overtime, but it was yanked away by a federal judge last month. We were spe- cifically excluded from the new state law on sick time. We re- ceive no respite time or vacation time; we have no pensions, no healthcare, no guaranteed hours and no job security. Because of this, many care- givers and their families live be- low the federal poverty line and often rely on other public pro- grams just to meet basic daily needs. The Tehama County Board of Supervisors is truly our last hope for improved working and living conditions. We provide humane services to our clients including bath- ing, cooking, cleaning, transpor- tation to doctors' appointments, administering medications and assisting with physical reha- bilitation. We provide comfort to individuals who may be iso- lated, depressed, or disoriented and offer a lifeline to the out- side world. Our work requires thoughtful observation, skillful response, medical knowledge, and keen interpersonal skills. IHSS is a state program that ensures that California's low-in- come seniors and persons liv- ing with disabilities have the op- tion to remain safely and inde- pendently in their own homes, rather than being placed in un- familiar and costlier institu- tions. Our work greatly saves the county financially. But the IHSS program is in jeopardy unless the County's pri- orities can include making sure the program is improved and wages are brought up to a level that provides a stable living situ- ation for providers. Recipients of services hire their own provid- ers, but they can only offer the pay rate approved by the county. The lack of a living wage handicaps access to a skilled and stable workforce, thereby endangering the independence, safety and health of our most vulnerable citizens. Those re- ceiving care deserve a stable and professional workforce. The rate that IHSS consum- ers can pay providers is set by the county. Tehama remains one of a handful of counties in California that pays only min- imum wage. IHSS wages are publicly funded through a mixture of federal, state, and county dollars. In reality, Tehama County pays only pennies on the dol- lar for IHSS care —- less than 17 cents per dollar. For that 17 cent investment the county receives 83 more cents back into the economy. The county preaches economic development but ig- nores the bonanza of federal and state funds that IHSS pay- roll sends into the local econ- omy. Any of the county's eco- nomic development programs would be hard-pressed to de- liver such a return. IHSS saves lives. It is cost ef- ficient. It keeps families to- gether. It preserves the dignity, health and safety of our seniors and people with disabilities. It is hard to believe that paying working people the minimum wage with no benefits to do some of the hardest work in so- ciety is the moral and economic standard that Tehama County wishes to model. It's time for the Tehama County Board of Supervisors to step up and do the right thing — provide a living wage to those who care for our most vulnerable. Gail Ennis is the State- wide President of the Califor- nia United Homecare Workers and an Organizer in Tehama County. For more information or to help the cause of caregiv- ers in Tehama County, please contact her at 227-6344. — Gail Ennis, president of the California United Homecare Workers Whattodoabouteco-nots? Editor: Now that was a Freudian slip. I meant to write "eco-nuts" and it came out "not." Why? Be- cause no matter what anybody wants to do they have to file an injunction against it. And they always seem to find a judge that goes along with them. Take that screwball that shut down the diversion dam in Red Bluff because Sacramento River salmon are too stupid to climb a fish ladder. To paraphrase Henny Youngman, please. I saw in the paper today that the case over the fish farms was finally resolved in the Federal Appellate court. Although our forefathers set up a judicial sys- tem where legalities were to be settled by juries of our peers, we seem to end up with one person deciding what is best for us. Not a judge deciding what is legal; what is best for us. Now the eco-nuts are chal- lenging the elephant preserve that the Oakland zoo and asso- ciates want to build out north- west of Red Bluff. Now this pre- serve is being built to protect the biogenetics of the elephant on land that was previously used for raising beef cattle. Can someone explain to me the difference between raising cattle, raising pigs, raising ele- phants or raising sheep? Seems they are all mammals. Would these same people complain if a truck pulled up to that property and turned loose thirty Her- eford cows and a bull? Would that be any of their business? I think not and I think this ele- phant farm is an excellent idea. And don't tell me that ele- phants don't belong here. We had woolly mammoths living here in the distant past and an elephant is just a woolly mam- moth with a massive haircut. —Fred Boest, Red Bluff Your opinions Cartoonist's take Jeb Bush insists he's not his brother's keeper, but, alas, he's stuck being his brother's baggage schlepper. As evidenced Wednesday dur- ing a foreign policy speech, Jeb has the unenviable burden of run- ning for president at a time when painful memories of George W. Bush's toxic tenure are still abun- dantly fresh. Obviously he can't denounce his brother, so the best he can do is spin his brother's Iraq debacle in the best possi- ble way, and hope that voters will no longer sniff the ever-lingering stench. Good luck with that. For starters, it's hard to view Jeb as his "own man" when, in truth, his nascent foreign-pol- icy team is studded with retreads from his brother's team — includ- ing Robert Zoellick (who called for Saddam Hussein's ouster long before Bush's elective war), Ste- phen Hadley (who circulated false intelligence that Hussein was seeking WMDs), and, most noto- riously, Paul Wolfowitz (who said the war would be inexpensive, and that Iraqis would "greet us as liberators"). And Jeb was hardly his "own man" when he sought to make ex- cuses for his brother. In his tell- ing, it was the intelligence com- munity — not the W administra- tion — that screwed up. "Using the intelligence capability that ev- erybody embraced about weap- ons of mass destruction was not, turns out to not be accurate," Jeb said semi-articulately. That spin is lifted directly from his brother's 2010 memoir, "Deci- sion Points." It is a crock. The Bush White House cherry- picked the intelligence that seemed to buttress its case for war, and simply ignored the in- telligence that did not. At other times, it sold the public on pro- war intelligence that did not ex- ist. Any candidate who is truly his "own man" need only consult the historical record to see the truth. No way Jeb was going to go there. During his foreign policy gig Wednesday — this was at the Chi- cago Council on Global Affairs — Jeb did laud his brother for the '07 troop surge ("one of the most heroic acts of courage politically that any president's done"), which seemed a tad over the top, con- sidering the fact that his brother had needlessly ignited Middle East flames before finally find- ing the right fire hose four years later. But Jeb loves his brother, so there's that. As for the current Middle East, Jeb lamented the fact that Iran has so much influence in Iraq and Syria, but failed in connecting the dots to Obama. The reason Iran has so much sway these days is because W's removal of Hussein created a regional power vacuum that Iran speedily filled. Hus- sein and his ruling Sunnis were replaced by Shiites loyal to Shi- ite-run Iran. That's Foreign Pol- icy 101, but apparently Jeb can't grasp it — because he's blinded by his loyalty to his brother, or be- cause he's unsure which country is which (in his speech, he kept mixing up "Iraq" and "Iran"). By the way, when he was asked to expound further about the Mid- dle East, here's what he said (don't bother trying to comprehend the second sentence): "I don't have a so- lution. I mean, I- I- I've read arti- cles, you know, about whether the 1915 kind of breakout of the Middle East and how that no longer is a vi- able deal." Say what? And this guy is sup- posed to be the Bush family bra- niac? Bottom line: Jeb has already proven himself adept at raising money from deep-pocket donors loyal to the Bush brand, but you have to wonder whether swing voters will buy a guy who's lug- ging his brother's baggage. Jeb said recently that his bid "is not about re-litigating anything in the past," but it's hard to see him gaining major traction if he's out there spinning excuses for the past. Dick Polman is the national po- litical columnist at NewsWorks/ WHYY in Philadelphia (news- works.org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Philadelphia. Email him at dick- polman7@gmail.com. Dick Polman Jeb lugs his brother's weighty presidential baggage OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, February 21, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A5