Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/668461
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 You'llgetnoargumentfrommethatHillary Clinton is a flawed candidate — stonewalling the release of those Goldman Sachs chats is merely Exhibit A — but when it comes to bull-slinging and empty sloganeering, she's no match for her self-righteous rival. WatchingBernieSandersin Thursday night's Democratic debate — the last of the sea- son, if we're lucky — all too of- ten I was "Feeling the Bull." I realize that my perspective is anathema to those who shriek with Beatlemaniac delight at his every thunderous utter- ance, but what can I say. His passion for fantasy speaks for itself. Sanders riffed ridiculously from the opening bell. He re- conjured his dreams of free college tuition and govern- ment health care without once explaining how either would pass a Republican House or a non-filibuster-proof Sen- ate. And like any other in- side-the-Beltway politician, he kept saying stuff like "I have introduced a bill ... I have in- troduced legislation," which means squat, especially in light of the fact that he has done virtually nothing of sig- nificance during his three-de- cade congressional career. He had no explanation for his failure to release years of tax returns ("Jane does 'em"), he again had no coherent ex- planation for his votes against the gun-controlling Brady Bill, and his vote to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits. When asked to substantiate his standard portrait of Clin- ton as a special-interest lackey, he whiffed like Ryan Howard chasing a breaking ball in the dirt. His biggest con of the night was when he opined like a pundit about the status of his campaign. "Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the Deep South. No question about it. We got murdered there. That is the most conservative part of this great country," Sanders said. "But you know what? We're out of the Deep South now." I get that it's no fun to be losing so decisively (he's trail- ing by more than 200 pledged delegates and an insurmount- able 2.4 million popular votes nationwide), but that's a line he's been floating for weeks now, most recently on Larry Wilmore's Comedy Central show. And on so many levels, it's a laughfest. For starters, he's basically saying that Clinton's wins shouldn't count as much as his wins; that her primary wins in big racially diverse states shouldn't count as much as his lower-turnout caucus wins in smaller, overwhelmingly white states. Second, he's spe- cifically claiming that Clinton owes her southern victories to right-wing voters. In truth, she won big thanks to robust turnout from African-Ameri- cans — who just so happen to be among the most liberal of all Democrats on economic is- sues. Sanders, who has yet to break through with blacks vir- tually anywhere on the map, does himself no favors by in- sinuating that their votes are worth less than those of his young white legions. Third, he seems to have for- gotten the primary results in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Perhaps those states don't meet his definition of "Deep South." But all three are below the Mason-Dixon line, and all three are racially di- verse states that were key to the Obama coalition. (Virginia and Florida went blue in '08 and '12; North Carolina went blue in '08.) None of the three can be typecast as "very con- servative," at least not in presi- dential election years. All three, with heavy black and Hispanic turnout, slaughtered Sanders in the primary balloting. Fourth, it's a howl to hear him dismiss the "Deep South" as unimportant, considering the fact that he stumped in Di- xie last year, telling Louisian- ans about how important they are: "I'm here to tell you that the time is now for us to fight in 50 states of the country." Fifth, Sanders' bid to pin his deficit on the "Deep South" ignores the fact that he was beaten in Ohio (by 14 points in that swing state), Illinois, Mis- souri, Arizona, Nevada, and Massachusetts. Yes, he has run a stronger race than any- one envisioned, and, yes, a big slice of the Democratic base is wary of Hillary and weary of the Clintons, but the dele- gate math — undergirded by the popular vote gap — is ines- capable. And fatuous spin can't de- feat it. 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 Feeling the bull — Bernie's biggest con Cartoonist's take In "Gov. Brown Admits $15 Minimum Wage Does Not Make Economic Sense, Approves It Anyway," Reason. com writer Scott Shackford found a glittering jewel of liberal hypocrisy hiding in plain sight. He wrote, "Cal- ifornia Gov. Jerry Brown simply does not care about what will happen to citizens in non-urban parts of the state under a $15 minimum wage. He didn't lit- erally say that, but what he did say was that he understood that there may be some bad out- comes for such a massive, un- precedented mandate. And then he signed it into law anyway. "Here's the quote of what he said: 'Economically, minimum wages may not make sense. But morally, socially, and politi- cally they make every sense be- cause it binds the community together to make sure parents can take care of their kids.'" While he has previously been on record resisting it, it makes sense to him "politically" to pass the law. Shackford: "Politics don't hold communities together, but they can keep entrenched inter- ests in power." Please note that only a tiny percentage of parents with children work at minimum wage. The vast majority are teenagers still living at home. They have far greater need to learn the relationship of im- proving skills to commensu- rate nominal hikes in their hourly wages—leading to $10 plus rates that they earn— rather than having rates of pay they haven't earned handed to them by mandate. I believe the major papers in both California and New York (which also signed a wage hike) have spent little newsprint delving into the down side to minimum wage increases, al- though such evidence is eas- ily found. Economically liberal think tanks have provided sufficient complexities and obfuscation— together with disingenuous, slanted research—to allow the news media to provide cover for the politicians' efforts at in- come "justice," aka "redistri- bution." Likewise, they devote little space to the record low labor participation rate. The Sacramento Bee, for ex- ample, provided readers with a bit of incredible spin: "Brown, a fiscal moderate, had previously expressed reservations about a wage increase." They conveniently forgot Brown saying, in 1995, "The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the op- posite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs." Objectively, he's no "fiscal moderate," but in 2016's left-wing Sacramento, he might just be. Look up "The Cruelty of the $15 Minimum Wage," at Rea- son.com, where Nick Gillespie interviews economist Don Bou- dreaux, who blogs at Café Hayek (cafehayek.com). The 9-minute video is very enlightening on reality-based employment. The "cruelty" re- ferred to is the hopelessness of the unskilled entry-level worker who has no option to work for an "entry level" or learner wage because he or she won't be worth $15 an hour anytime soon. Another aspect of the de- bate is that unions are reported to have carved out an exemp- tion to the minimum wage hike. Here's how their little shame- less tactic works: They ap- proach fill-in-the-blank busi- ness looking at a potentially skyrocketing labor cost due to the hike. They say "You've got a nice little business there…it'd be a shame somethin' would hap- pen to it." No, that's in the movie caricature, but not far off. What they really say is that if Mr. or Ms. business owner agree to union representation for their workers, the union will exercise its prerogative un- der the law to allow the workers to be exempt from the higher wage mandate. Of course, the union gets sole representation for negotiating work rules and future wage and benefit packages. Get it? About those union dues… I mentioned that workers, calculating the maximum in- come available under the ele- vated wages mandated in Seat- tle, have asked for fewer hours so as to not jeopardize subsidies and benefits. Just to be thorough, I used the phrase, "Is Seattle's min- imum wage killing jobs" in a search box. Source links left, right and center showed up: Se- attle Times, LA Times, Fact Check, Forbes, Washington Post, and "therealmovement. wordpress.com.," a genuine anti-capitalist blog. Sure enough, at mynorth- west.com, I found "They asked for a higher wage, but now they want fewer hours," proving what I stated. The $15 minimum wage, which just went from "laugh- able" to "viable" according to a New York Times headline, was implemented in Seattle, WA, about a year ago and has fu- eled a major debate on the is- sue. As you would expect, where one sits depends on where one stands ideologically. This is demonstrated by the reaction to an analytical study by the American Enterprise In- stitute, by writer Mark J. Perry on Feb. 18, titled "Early evi- dence suggests that Seattle's 'radical experiment' might be a model for the rest of the nation not to follow." Conservative economists (I describe them as "reality based") are inclined to follow the maxim that, under the im- mutable law of "supply and de- mand," when other factors, like supply, remain the same, an in- crease in the cost of something will reduce the demand. If the supply of workers re- mains unchanged, then arbi- trarily raising the hourly cost of those workers will inevi- tably result in a reduced de- mand for said workers. Liberal (non-reality-based) economists disagree. In "Hey, Seattle! How's that $15 minimum wage working out for ya?" American Thinker writer Rick Moran, citing AEI/ BLS data, posits "the city has suffered the worst job losses since the Great Recession…the city's employment has fallen by more than 11,000, the num- ber of unemployed workers has risen by nearly 5,000, and the city's jobless rate has in- creased by more than 1 percent- age point (while) Seattle's sub- urbs increased employment by nearly 57,000 jobs." Just the facts, folks. 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 The more you know, the worse it looks He had no explanation for his failure to release years of tax returns, he again had no coherent explanation for his votes against the gun-controlling Brady Bill, and his vote to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Are you kidding me. Probably the same idiot as all the other times. Doesn't want to face his punishment. Go to court you moron and do your time save others the hassle of your stupidity. Don DeGraw: On a bomb threat at the Tehama County Courthouse Monday morning. Well somebody doesn't want to go to their court date. Bryan Reddish: On a bomb threat at the Tehama County Courthouse Monday morning. 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. Your officials OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, April 19, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6