Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/567542
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 What could be more entertaining, on a hot summer day, than revisiting the American idiocracy, which is obsessed at the moment with the president's renam- ing of a mountain? Idon'tknowwherethis episode ranks on the list of scandals — maybe some- where between "terrorist fist bump" and the tan suit — but nevertheless it's clear that, after all this time, Obama- haters still have enough teeth to chew a carpet. Which is what's been happening ever since Obama's announce- ment that Mount McKinley in Alaska shall henceforth be known by its traditional name, Denali. Alaska Natives have called the mountain Denali since their arrival in the region sev- eral thousand years ago — in the local Athabaskan lan- guage, Denali means "the great one" — and nothing changed until a white pros- pector showed up in 1896 and decided on his own to re- christen it in honor of Wil- liam McKinley, an Ohio gov- ernor who had just won the Republican presidential nom- ination. McKinley had never visited the region, but Con- gress didn't care and ap- proved the name change in 1917. Problem was, Alaskans didn't like it. In 1975, the state defied the federal de- cree and officially reinstated the name Denali — solely for its own use. Since then, Alas- ka's representatives in Wash- ington have tried to remove "McKinley" from the federal register of place names. But those moves have been re- peatedly nixed by McKinley's latter-day protectors, the Ohio Republicans. Enter Obama, who said in a statement announcing the name chance, "Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska Natives. The name 'Denali' has been used for many years and is widely used across the state today." Cue the ritual outrage. Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro on Twitter: "Per- haps we should just be grate- ful Obama didn't decide to rename Mt. McKinley Mt. Trayvon." Headline on the right- wing Gateway Pundit blog: "Obama Renames Mt. McKin- ley (Named After Some White Guy) to Denali." A Gateway Pundit fan on Twit- ter: "Obama observes Islam practice of eliminating West- ern names." The right-wing blog Hot Air: "Obama apparently wanted a cheap win....It's a curious political choice to pander to Alaskans....It's an arbitrary and capricious use of executive power in pursuit of a petty end." But Ohio's Republicans are truly leading the league in head detonations. Congress- man Bob Gibbs says Obama's decision is a "political stunt" and "constitutional over- reach." Senator Rob Portman says Obama's decision "is yet another example of the presi- dent going around Congress." Gov. John Kasich, the pres- idential candidate, tweets: "POTUS again oversteps his bounds." The ironies in this faux- flap scream for attention. Don't Republicans pride themselves on being the party of state's rights and lo- cal control? For generations, Alaskans had insisted that the mountain be formally known again by a name that was indigenously Alaskan — only to be thwarted by Re- publicans back in Washing- ton. Then here comes Obama, standing up for state's rights and local control....and he gets hammered by the haters for kingly overreach. The thing is, Alaska's Re- publicans wanted to rein- state Denali. They know it means "the great one," and they were fine with that na- tive honorific. In the after- math of Obama's announce- ment, Senator Dan Sullivan said: "For decades, Alaskans and members of our congres- sional delegation have been fighting for Denali to be rec- ognized by the federal gov- ernment by its true name. I'm gratified that the presi- dent respected this." His GOP colleague, Lisa Murkowski, added: "I'd like to thank the president for working with us to achieve this significant change." With nearly 17 months still left on Obama's clock, the haters will move on and find something else to seethe about. Maybe Obama will salute with a coffee cup or something. Maybe he'll go skeet-shooting or something. And by the way, we can all take comfort in knowing that if Donald Trump wins the White House, he'd keep the name Denali. Once he hears its English translation, he'll just assume it refers to him. Dick Polman is the national political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Philadelphia. Email him at dickpolman7@ gmail.com. Dick Polman Obamahaters' heads detonate over Denali Cartoonist's take Labor Day, having come and gone, allows us an op- portunity to consider the ups, the downs and the ironies associated with the union movement. There would be no Labor Day commemora- tion without the trade unions that developed in the late 1800s. Sources of its history, such as en.wikipedia.org and the U.S. De- partment of La- bor (dol.gov/ laborday/history.hem), re- count the conflicts, violence and "deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Mar- shals during the Pullman Strike"; said strike preceded Congress voting unanimously for "legislation that made La- bor Day a national holiday." Grover Cleveland, a Demo- crat, signed the bill "a mere six days after the end of the strike. The September date— originally chosen by the CLU (Central Labor Union) of New York and observed by many of the nation's trade unions for the prior several years—was chosen over the more wide- spread International Workers' Day (May 1) because Cleve- land was concerned that ob- servance of the latter would be associated with the na- scent socialist and anarchist movements…" I can't help contrasting that understandable aversion to radical associations of the time, among Democrats and union leaders, with the cur- rent popularity of an ideo- logical socialist, Senator Ber- nie Sanders, among today's Democrats and unions. More- over, the most radical left- ist elements of our time—Oc- cupy Wall Street, the "net- roots" leftist bloggers and websites, ACORN and other Alinsky-inspired community organizations, radical black and brown race-mongers and open-borders activists—are the heart and base of the cur- rent Democratic Party. We have unions fully sup- porting Obama's executive ac- tions legalizing millions of job-seeking undocumented migrants. It could be construed that union bosses are willing to undermine the obvious eco- nomic interests of their rank- and-file for the crass, power- grabbing purpose of con- verting newly legalized immigrants into dues-paying members. Maybe their long-term strategy is to maximize their numbers, skim millions from paychecks and wield the po- litical power that that money will buy. Increased power translates to greater clout and say in who gets elected as a Democrat so that, as we see with Emperor Obama, the "right" kind of pro-union Na- tional Labor Relations Board members are appointed— members devoted to tipping the scales whenever possible toward Big Labor's interests at the expense of non-union- ized businesses and workers. I didn't create such cyni- cism; I'm just observing and describing it. Only in the last decade or so has Big Labor had a change of heart from anti- to pro-immigration, le- gal or not. Follow the money, as they say. What are the odds, so to speak, that the Demo- crat Party, and its blue-state strongholds with the stron- gest union presence, would conclude that using illegal alien pawns is their ticket to increased electoral power? If "The Immigration Boon to Democrats" (Ian Smith, 7/21) has any merit, it's a rea- sonable conclusion. The sub- head, "There's no mystery about why Democrats re- sist enforcing our immigra- tion laws," suggests a devious, well-thought-out strategy. "A new 'sanctuary cities' map from the Center for Im- migration Studies goes a long way toward explaining why open-borders Democrats are so addicted to non-enforce- ment of our immigration laws. When you consider the po- litical makeup of the cities, counties and states where il- legal aliens are welcomed, you start to suspect that the liberal elites in San Francisco and elsewhere aren't inter- ested only in cheap nannies and gardeners. For them, pulling in more illegal aliens is, perhaps first and foremost, about pumping up their political power. "The Census Bureau in- cludes immigrants (both le- gal and illegal) in the statis- tics used to apportion our 435 congressional districts. This has the perverse effect of helping states with big- ger non-native populations to inflate both their represen- tation in Congress and the number of Electoral College votes they are allotted (the latter is a function of the for- mer). "Just through their illegal- alien numbers, the states of New York, New Jersey, Cali- fornia, Florida, and Illinois, which all went for Obama in 2012, received eight ad- ditional congressional seats in the last reapportionment, with over half of those gains coming from their sanctuary cities and counties. It's clear, then, why Democrats resist enforcing our immigration laws: More bodies mean more power. "California…flipped from red to blue after the U.S. ad- opted an open-borders pol- icy." When national elections winners can have as little as a one electoral vote separa- tion from the losers, how can any American justify such a compromise of election integ- rity? The peaceful resolution of our political differences is threatened by the mere per- ception that the winners any- where rode to victory on the backs of non-citizens ineligi- ble to even vote. Speaking of our fair state, "these five counties (Bay area) account for over 330,000 ille- gal aliens, or half a congres- sional seat—or Electoral Col- lege vote…And if those five counties are taken together with Los Angeles County and two of its neighbors, Orange and Riverside Counties, their combined illegal-alien pop- ulation accounts for almost three congressional seats. "Naked self-interest has surrounded our apportion- ment system ever since it was revised by the Fourteenth Amendment…Roscoe Conk- ling from the big-immigra- tion state of New York lobbied hard for a broader apportion- ment base because, as Conk- ling said, the estimated 'un- naturalized foreigners' in his state contributed 'three Rep- resentatives and a fraction of a fourth.'" (Patrick Charles, Immigration Reform Law In- stitute). I see it as naked cor- ruption. 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 Union label welcomes immigrants I didn't create such cynicism; I'm just observing and describing it. Only in the last decade or so has Big Labor had a change of heart from anti- to pro- immigration, legal or not. Follow the money, as they say. Don Polson StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 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 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Richard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Corning City Manager, John Brewer, 824-7033 Your officials OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, September 8, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6