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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@ 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 HowscreweduparetheRepublicans?Just read the Wisconsin primary exit polls. It doesn't bode well for November when a huge chunk of the GOP electorate says it won't support its own presidential nominee. Yes,TedCruzburiedDon- ald Trump with a double-digit win Tuesday night, and he snatched nearly all the dele- gates, thereby upping the odds of a contested national con- vention. But if you dig into the exit polls, you discover this stunning stat: If Cruz were to win the nomination and face Hillary Clinton, a whopping 34 percent of the Republican pri- mary voters would not support Cruz. That's a bad sign for a party that hasn't won Wiscon- sin in a presidential election since, oh, 1988. But it's actually a choice between bad and worse, be- cause when the Republican voters were confronted with an autumn matchup between Trump and Clinton, 39 per- cent said they'd spurn Trump. Most said they'd be "scared" of a Trump presidency, while another 20 percent would be "concerned." No other frontrunner has ever had to tote that kind of baggage. Politically, that's a death sentence. And yet, the Wisconsin Re- publicans seemed reconciled to a grim fate. When con- fronted with the prospect of a contested convention — with no candidate having secured a majority of the delegates — they basically sided with Trump. A solid 56 percent said the nomination should go to the guy who won the most votes during primary season. So, the Republicans are probably screwed either way. If Trump fails to clinch on the first ballot (a scenario that's a tad more likely thanks to Wisconsin), he could ul- timately lose the crown to Cruz, the voters' runner-up. But if that happens, Trump's fans are likely to walk and thus doom the GOP in No- vember. On the other hand, if Trump weathers Wisconsin, wins big in the upcoming New York, California, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey contests, and man- ages to eke out a nomination victory, that too will likely doom the GOP in November. When Hillary Clinton is re- portedly trailing Trump by only three percentage points in Mississippi — three points, in a state that has voted Dem- ocratic just once in the last 13 elections — that portends de- feat. Courtesy of Wisconsin, Cruz will be emboldened to ramp up his quest for every last get- table delegate. His ground game trumps Trump's, a fact confirmed by Cruz's pickups last week in North Dakota and Tennessee. Nevertheless, Tues- day night's exit polls confirm what even Republicans have known for awhile, that they're basically stuck with a choice between repulsive and repug- nant. And that bodes well for Democrats, in a state they need to win this fall, a state that voted twice for Bill Clin- ton and twice for Barack Obama. They're far hap- pier with their '16 candidates than the Republicans are with theirs. Hillary Clinton got blown out by Bernie Sanders in the primary voting, but 68 percent of all Democrats said, nevertheless, that they're "ex- cited" or "optimistic" about a Hillary presidency; and when asked who'd be better at beat- ing Trump, they favored Hill- ary over Bernie by 11 percent- age points, 54 to 43. Sanders' fans will likely con- tend that Wisconsin has given him the "momentum" to over- take Clinton down the stretch — even though he barely dented her 2.4-million lead in the aggregate primary season popular vote. In fact, he barely dented her daunting delegate lead, which, by the way, is far bigger than Barack Obama's lead at this point in the '08 calendar. Sanders fans should read up on history. In 1976, Jimmy Carter was beaten repeatedly in the late primaries, on the way to his nomination and No- vember victory. In 1992, Bill Clinton suffered late-primary losses on the way to his nom- ination and electoral victory. In 2008, Obama lost six of his last nine contests on the way to his nomination and elec- toral victory. This is what Democrats typ- ically do. They send messages before they buckle down. David Plouffe, who guided Obama's '08 bid, knows this drill better than we do. Here's what he wrote on the eve of Wisconsin (which he pre- awarded to Sanders): "I be- lieve Hillary Clinton has a zero chance of not being the Demo- cratic nominee." Indeed. DickPolmanisthenational 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 The rising odds of Republican chaos Cartoonist's take For anyone wanting to know more about the Republican presidential campaign in Te- hama County, Heidi Cuny, the Tehama County Chairman for the Ted Cruz cam- paign, will be at tonight's Tea Party Patriots meeting, at 6 PM in the Westside Grange, 20794 Walnut Street. The Corning Patriots will have Sam Parades from Gun Owners of California at their Thursday meeting at the Veter- ans Memorial Hall, 1620 Solano Street, also at 6 PM. The Democratic economic il- literates in Sacramento (did any Republicans vote for this) just assured thousands of low wage workers that they will be un- employed because their labor is not worth $15 dollars an hour. Most labor costs will also spike because union contracts peg their workers' wage hikes on the minimum wage. Many of the apparently all- knowing legislators may have actually worked at an entry- level job, as I did. We were all worth less than we were paid because we either brought noth- ing but the experience of do- ing chores at home, or we luck- ily had some training alongside a parent, or we attended some vocational classes. Nonetheless, any employer or manager had to invest the monetary equiv- alent of on-the-job tutoring, classroom instruction followed by training, or assign a "shadow worker" to achieve proficiency. All of that has costs, which will hopefully produce a worker that contributes to a business's bottom line profitability. Busi- nesses are not social service delivery operations, although government has over 70 years turned them into health care/ insurance providers, greatly di- minishing the workers' owner- ship of their own health choices and economic decisions. Many restaurants are looking at replacing order-takers with self-service menu pads. "The real minimum wage is zero" link at Glenn Reynolds' Insta- pundit (pjmedia.com/instapun- dit/), shows a picture of a Japa- nese food delivery robot carry- ing a meal past onlookers. The bottom line is that if a business ekes out 5 to 8 percent profit af- ter expenses, and 20 percent of the cost of their product or ser- vice is labor, a few extra dollars added to the wage scale wipes out that thin margin; prices must necessarily go up. Either that, or the company just goes out of business and all of the employees lose their jobs. Such laws cynically force businesses to transfer money from custom- ers to workers, which drive cus- tomers, and their reduced cash, away. In San Francisco, some of the most pro-minimum-wage-hike crowd, liberal bookstore owners and workers, faced that bitter reality as they shut their doors for good out of economic neces- sity. In Seattle and other places that foolishly raised the min- imum wage, workers, who in- telligently run the numbers of their personal budgets, have begged to be given fewer hours of work at the higher wage. They don't want their food, rent, health or income bene- fits cut. Letter writer Joe Neff brought up several lucid, irre- futable points against the wage hike. I would add that it in- creases poverty by making it more expensive, to both busi- nesses and young "wannabe" workers, to provide an entry- level job. Hence, learning the most basic job skills—prompt- ness, thoroughness, and re- sponsibility in completing a task without direct supervi- sion—is out of reach for most 16-year-olds. Oregon passed a 3-tiered minimum wage hike, so rural areas wouldn't bear the urban wage burden; busi- nesses still see huge problems ahead. Minimum wage laws, given the ideological and irratio- nal devotion by liberals, also have the perverse effect of con- tributing to increasing unem- ployment during economic downturns like the Great De- pression. During deflationary cycles, economic pressures re- duce prices; employers must lower wages and salaries or fire people. In the 1930s, both presidents Hoover and Roos- evelt favored artificially keeping wages and prices at pre-depres- sion levels, in defiance of com- mon sense and economic real- ity. The results took many years to correct, during which misery spread. Another cynical aspect to the progressive minimum wage ex- periment: Liberals know that the laws will force young work- ers out of jobs; their solution is to use that as justification for ever-greater government benefit programs for the unemployed. That justifies more taxes on— workers. Speaking of artificial (mean- ing government created) fi- nancial burdens, "Report: Cal- ifornia carbon tax hikes gas prices 11 cents" (April 8 Daily News, AP), showed another perverse result of our state's "Don Quixote"-like assault on the earth's supposed fos- sil fuel-driven warming crisis. Last week, I found the Oregon gas prices to be 40 to 50 cents lower than California's, and you don't have to pump it. Ob- viously, the carbon tax doesn't account for all of the differ- ence; however, nothing but taxes account for nearly $2.50 a gallon here compared to sub- $2 a gallon gas in Bend, Ore- gon. Many columns and essays have been and could be writ- ten deconstructing and refut- ing the "global warming" the- ory but let's just consider that CO2, carbon dioxide, is called "pollution" at least 4 times in the shortened AP story. Manip- ulation of language precedes governmental fiat based on said verbiage; we exhale CO2 and plants require it to grow. But industries are tagged as "pol- luters" for the same exhalations without which life on earth would cease. The entire "pot-o-gold"- like search for environmen- tal/climate change purity has real consequences: The an- nual $2 billion gas climate taxes could build dams for wa- ter that would eliminate the need for residential brown yards and un-flushed toilets. "Moonbeam" Brown wants his high-speed train that will re- quire vast amounts of carbon to build, cost more to travel and be slower than current jets. Businesses and residents will fork over "cap-and-tax" money through the nose for virtually zero effect on the earth's cli- mate, which displays no evi- dence of crisis. 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 Minimum wage and climate taxes Courtesy of Wisconsin, Cruz will be emboldened to ramp up his quest for every last gettable delegate. His ground game trumps Trump's, a fact confirmed by Cruz's pickups last week in North Dakota and Tennessee. Nevertheless, Tuesday night's exit polls confirm what even Republicans have known for awhile, that they're basically stuck with a choice between repulsive and repugnant. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. I can bet cause of accident...speed. Hope everyone is okay. Cathy Lahey: On a truck that plunged down an embankment at Wilcox Road and I-5 Probably because most are doing drugs, smoking and eating crap food from Walmart. Ann Taylor-Minch: On report that Tehama County ranks low in annual health study Don Polson StateandNational Assemblyman James Gallagher, 2060Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916445-2841, fax 916 558-3160, governor@governor. ca.gov YOUR OFFICIALS OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, April 12, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6