Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/513885
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@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 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 OperationJadeHelmhasinspiredamillion jokes, and some of them have even been funny. But as much as comedians might jump on Greg Abbott for sending the Texas State Guard to monitor military exercises as the latest excuse to mock the reactionary rubes south of the Red River, Texas now faces an existential crisis: Is the Governor really this crazy? Fromadistance,Gov.Ab- bott indulging the paranoid delusion that a special opera- tions training exercise in Bas- trop County is a precursor to an invasion looks absolutely crazypants. Oh, look at the Texans, they say, they've gone and done it. They're being Tex- ans again. Said HBO's Bill Maher to Texas, "You are the White So- malia," which probably makes sense and might even be funny in context. Rachel Maddow, checking in from the liberal flagship at MSNBC, said the "panicked, paranoid conspiracy" is one big joke. "Fearful Texas GOP base amuses nation with con- spiracy panic," blared a head- line. Even for those inclined to agree with Maddow, the smug- ness was unbearable. Too many are using the paranoia as a joke that never pays off. The problem is that the set up is all "you gotta be kidding me," but the payoff is simply, "Nope." Just because something is ludicrous and embarrassing doesn't make it funny. Otherwise, I would have been more popular in high school. Once you get past the re- gional bias underlying most of the "jokes" about Jade Helm, what you find is actu- ally frightening: Greg Abbott either truly does not trust the United States military and the commander-in-chief to respect the sovereignty of Texas, or he's pandering to his slightly seditious and extremely para- noid base. Sadly, it's not clear which sin we need to forgive here. Obviously, Barack Obama does not want to invade Texas and place it under martial law. This is silly. What is not silly is that the Governor may have taken this idea seriously. So now Texas, by all rights a home to millions of reason- able and good people as well as many others, has to ponder whether it elected a Governor who keeps an eye peeled for black helicopters. I'm not remotely someone who would ever vote for Ab- bott, but even I would like to believe that he's pandering. The evidence to the contrary, however, is worrisome. For starters, when it comes to campaigns he's no smooth criminal. His huge margin of victory masked a ham-handed operation. His campaign spent two weeks flubbing the equal pay question, which was be- fore or after he got bogged down in questions about Ted Nugent. There was also that awkward period when he waited too long to disavow "re- tard Barbie." And who could forget the time he said Texans just needed to "drive around" to find out which warehouses contained chemicals that could explode? If Abbott were a peanut but- ter he'd be chunky because he is not and never will be smooth. Admittedly, there is recent evidence of him trimming his sails to capture the prevail- ing wind. When he went from insisting on a cut in property taxes to simply demanding a tax cut, he looked like a politi- cian who knew which way the wind blows. That's the kind of politician clever enough to pander to his base even when he doesn't necessarily agree with it. Abbott is more consis- tent as an ideologue. He fa- mously described his job as attorney general thusly: "I go into the office, I sue the fed- eral government, and then I go home." Keep in mind that Abbott is Ted Cruz's mentor. And while Texas' very junior senator bears all the tell-tale signs of having no core beliefs, there's not much in the way of evi- dence that Abbott is as calcu- lating. I would rather believe that I merely disagree with Gov. Ab- bott and not that he is so dis- agreeable as to think Texas faces a threat of invasion from a country it is, it should be said, already a part of. But whether Abbott believes that Jade Helm is the tip of the spear for martial law or whether he's merely pretend- ing to might, in the final anal- ysis, not matter. If the tin foil hat fits, wear it. JasonStanfordisaregular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman, a Democratic consultant and a Truman National Security Project partner. You can email him at stanford@oppresearch. com and follow him on Twitter @JasStanford. Jason Stanford The governor in the tin foil hat Cartoonist's take Since our local water use is now driven by state mandated policy, there will not likely be the rational discussion I alluded to re- garding water cut- backs; it remains a contentious mat- ter for those forced to reduce. We have little actual local groundwater data beyond the charts that DWR has for test bore wells documenting how far below the surface the liquid resides. The information on the depth and size of the aquifer supplying Red Bluff may surface; however, when the demand for a 25 percent re- duction comes from (the pomp- ous) Gov. Brown, or a local figure of 36 percent heads to the City Council for a vote, what choice is there but to comply as best you can? Red Bluff's water comes from deep wells, I understand; ex- perts cannot say with certainty from where such aquifers are replenished. In the Chico En- terprise-Record, "Study will look at where groundwater be- gins—rain or snow," (May 11 by Heather Hacking) it is reported that "The county Department of Water and Resource Conserva- tion recently asked for bids on an isotope analysis study" hop- ing to provide answers to such questions. "Studying the chem- istry of water underground helps researchers learn the ori- gin of the water." The article is good reading, not too long, and searchable by title. I don't hon- estly know if Butte County's study is transferable to our sit- uation but someone might have expert input on our aquifer and trends to share with readers. Some figures on projected water storage and the quanti- ties likely to be conserved by residential users make my case that reservoirs 1) are an essen- tial and effective means to tide us over the dry/drought years and 2) equate rather handily with the needs of California's residents. The bottom line is that, as reported in the April 3 Washington Post (the same ar- ticle that retailed the "farm- ers use 80 percent" misinforma- tion), the expected, anticipated reduction in residential water use if cutbacks are adhered to will be around 1.5 million acre- feet. Elsewhere, I read that the expected, quantifiable storage for the Sites and Temperance Flat reservoirs is perhaps over 3 million acre-feet. Actual storage over the years will certainly vary but it is in- disputable that if those wa- ter storage projects had been built in a timely manner—in- stead of being postponed by gutless politicians and water agencies afraid of rankling the environmental fanatics—we'd have available water sufficient to make the mandated cutbacks far less onerous. I also read that it is a fact that California's pop- ulation has roughly doubled, while residential usage has re- mained stable. It is also true for agriculture in the sense that self-imposed efficiencies have allowed far more production with no corresponding increase in water for crops. Apparently, some disagree that agriculture uses about 40 percent, not the 80 percent ban- died about by sources like Gov- ernor "Moonbeam" (yes, I mean disrespect) Brown, the Wash- ington Post and other green- sympathizing mouthpieces. Of course, when the undeniable as- sertion that fully half of Califor- nia's water serves environmen- tal functions is factored in, the remaining half is 40 percent for agriculture and 10 percent for residential. "Drought: 10 things to know about California water use," April 15, scpr.org (that's for Southern California Public Ra- dio), provided a handy break- down: "Wild and scenic rivers protected under federal law get 31 percent; In other rivers, we keep water flowing at a certain rate for recreation, environmen- tal reasons or both. Maintain- ing such 'instream flows' takes around 9 percent; Keeping sea- water out of the Sacramento- San Joaquin River Delta—the source of much of the state's drinking water—uses about 7 percent; managed wetlands get 2 percent; cities and towns get 10 percent; What that means is that agricultural irrigation ac- counts for around 41 percent of the state's water pie. "The Public Policy Institute of California helpfully short- hands that to: 50 percent envi- ronmental, 40 percent agricul- tural, 10 percent urban." Aca- demic environmentalists object, saying "the state's account- ing system is misleading and should leave out wild and sce- nic rivers, since it's impracti- cal to get water out of them for any kind of human use." Oth- ers might rightly point out that failing to allow for human use of such waters in a drought emergency is a choice, an arbi- trary judgment that should be reconsidered to allow for hu- man and economic needs. The Democrats and their me- dia adjunct mouthpieces are quite taken with themselves over thinking they have a massive "gotcha" question for Republi- can candidates: "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the Iraq War?" I am not, unfortunately, surprised that some of them fall for the trick, rather than immediately punch back with a rejection of the straw man argument that can be ap- plied to any war throughout his- tory. It's a completely speculative, and utterly indefensible question, to posit "time machine" type of fanciful scenarios. I just read that, if America had not entered WWI, Euro- pean nations would have fought to an exhausted standoff, then negotiated terms of peace which would never have been as onerous on Germany, which would have probably prevented the rise of both Adolph Hitler's Nazi regime and the Russian Communist tyranny. Anyone can re-wage any war with 20-20 hindsight. Republicans should throw out the question and insist that Democrats who predicted doom and gloom would follow Pres- ident Bush's surge admit they were wrong; make Democrats admit that Obama's boogy- ing out of Iraq is the proximate cause of the deterioration of Iraq and the rise of the barbaric Islamic State juggernaut. I'll defend the Iraq War decision based on the same information and intelligence available to the Clintons, the Democrats and Western spy agencies. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it Wet and wild; Iraq gotcha questions Greg Abbott either truly does not trust the United States military and the commander-in- chief to respect the sovereignty of Texas, or he's pandering to his slightly seditious and extremely paranoid base. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Great picture, proud of our firefighters. Pamela Maria: On photo of firefighters at the finish line of Survivors' Lap of Relay for Life I agree with you completely. I'm from Paskenta and every time I go to town and see all these new orchards I cringe. I don't understand what the hell is happening in our county except maybe money over morals. Josie Ulrich: On questioning of new orchards being planted in the midst of a drought Don Polson StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico 95973, 530 895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc. org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558-3160, governor@governor. ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Fran- cisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 YOUR OFFICIALS OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, May 19, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6