Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/671362
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'retoast,andI'msmellingtheburn. Time to man up. Start dra ing your en- dorsement speech. Ifyouinsistonstaggering through the next few weeks, losing big in the string of Democratic primaries that are open only to actual Dem- ocrats, wagging your fin- ger at the injustice of it all, at least do the party a favor and nudge it toward unity. If you want to keep hawking your nonexistent revolution, fine. But it's time to start hosing down your pie-eyed acolytes and focusing on the existen- tial threat of Trump. Just get it done. You were gutted in New York Tuesday night, pure and simple. No lame spin can mask that reality. You devoted your- self to winning it — you spent twice as much as Hillary Clin- ton on advertising — yet you were eviscerated by 16 per- centage points. All your talk about Wall Street and billion- aires came to nothing; accord- ing to the exit polls (this stat says it all), you even lost by 20 points among voters who earn less than $30,000 a year. And yet again, just like in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, your "revolution" was feted only in the youngest age bracket. For the umpteenth time: You can't presume to have a broad-based movement if you're only cranking up the kids. Last night, people un- der 30 were just 17 percent of the electorate. You lost all the other age categories. In fact, 65 percent of the voters were 40 and older — and you lost them by a margin of 2-1. As for your performance among people of color ... let's just say that you're not in Kan- sas anymore. Roughly 36 per- cent of the New York elector- ate was black or Latino — a mirror of the national Demo- cratic electorate. You lost La- tinos by 28 points. You lost blacks by 50 points. Game over. You were 27 in 1968. So surely you remember what happened that year. A par- anoid low-road politician named Richard Nixon allowed his handlers to fashion a new Nixon — branded in the press as the "New Nixon" — and vot- ers were goaded into forget- ting his long history of gut- fighting smears. New Nixon was, supposedly, a mature statesman. I bet you didn't buy that con, and I bet you don't believe for a second that the suddenly magnanimous Trump can ever mask the clear and present danger that he poses to this country. All the more reason to draft that Hillary endorsement, to think of the greater good. In fact, you can start by putting a muzzle on your campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, before he again makes a fool of him- self — and you. When asked about Clinton's 2.4-million national popular vote lead (which expanded to nearly 2.7 million by late eve- ning), Weaver said on CNN the lead is way smaller if we count the teeny caucus tallies in places like Kansas, Wyoming, and Idaho. When asked about the racially diverse states still on the calendar, Weaver said that you're doing "increasingly well with Latino voters across the country." (Bernie, didn't anyone text him last night about the 28-point wipeout among Latino voters?) Then he insisted that you will do "very, very well" next Tuesday in Pennsylvania's Democrats-only primary (the polls say you're down in Pennsylvania by 13 points), and that you will fight Clinton at the national conven- tion no matter what. Don't do it. Don't be a fool. Face it, clawing Clinton hasn't worked. In the exits last night, 65 percent of the voters said they're "excited" or "optimis- tic" about a Clinton presi- dency, and 60 percent said that she's "honest and trust- worthy." A plurality of voters chose "the right experience" as the most important can- didate criterion, and that co- hort favored Clinton by a mar- gin of 9-1. Time to start ratcheting down the rhetoric. Time to stop deceiving your fans, like you did yesterday when you said that independents "lost their right to vote" in the New York primary. As you well know, they never had it to be- gin with. And I don't recall you whining like this when you won the closed contests in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Maine. Enough already. Time to take the high road, to draw on the party's deep reservoir of good will. That is indeed the mood, as evidenced by this striking exit poll stat: A land- slide 67 percent said that your contest with Clinton has "en- ergized" Democrats. Only 29 percent said "divided." (Con- trast that with the Republican exits. Only 36 percent of GOP voters said their race has en- ergized the party; a whopping 60 percent said the Trumpian hijinks have divided it.) So build on that Democratic energy. Don't blow it. This year, the stakes are too high. 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 Hello? Earth to Bernie Sanders? Cartoonist's take For those who like the "par- ticipatory" part of representa- tive democracy: There will be a State of Jeffer- son town hall at the Elks Lodge, at the south end of Gilmore Road, on Saturday. Doors open at 3 p.m., the 4 p.m. program includes spokesman Mark Baird. I must make an ob- servation about the Supreme Court "one man, one vote" de- cision. It narrowly applied to a Texas redistricting policy, which disallowed non-citizens in the population count for representatives. I pointed out last summer that including immigrants gives an empiri- cal advantage to Democrats— the districts with the larg- est immigrant (non-eligible to vote) population, have contrib- uted to an outsized number of Democrats in office. While the State of Jeffer- son cause may fall victim to the decision, the actual judi- cial opinion that changed Cal- ifornia's state senate from one based on counties to one based on similar population sizes (which greatly dimin- ished rural counties' political power in Sacramento)—that was not a part of the Texas case and may still have legiti- macy for future litigation. Hope lives. This last week included Earth Day events, which, while well-meaning, are rather benign and ineffectual even as they generate feel-good- ism and outsized media atten- tion. I know that because my Saturday paper had caressing hands holding a light green/ dark green globe with green things growing on top. Happy Earth Day! By luck or design, the top story was "Transportation plan approved," by Heather Hoelscher, outlining the im- provements voted on by the Corning City Council, which will "assist in advancing the city's effort to improve bike and pedestrian safety, design a signage system and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ac- cording to the agenda report." The first parts of that, re- garding "safety" and "sig- nage," are commendable and deserve the state grant which covers 90 percent of the cost. However, it might also back- fire when the bicycle lanes by design reduce the width of the traffic lanes for the good in- tentions of slowing traffic. Might there be an unintended consequence if someone de- cides to drive to the right around a left-turning car, thereby encroaching on the bi- cyclist's right-of-way? A new law entitles bike riders to a 3-foot buffer that may require a halt to traffic if there isn't 3 feet between said left turning car and the bicyclist. I can tell you assuredly from my exposure to Oregon media reports and analysis that, although it might be lit- tle noticed and rarely admit- ted, there is a dark underside to shifting "from sharing sin- gle passenger cars to more ac- tive forms of transportation." Public transit, bicycling and walking are intended "to de- crease vehicle miles traveled, reduce greenhouse gas emis- sions and improve public health." What often ensues over time is that efforts to facilitate the primary, and obviously the most practical, mode of trans- portation—the family car—be- come gradually disincentiv- ized to the point of gross in- convenience. In Portland, under similarly enlightened transportation overlords, ma- jor surface streets—4-lanes for cars with bike lanes commen- surate with the tiny percent- age of actual bicycle commut- ers—have in some cases been reduced to one lane in each direction while bike lanes be- come two-lane bike thruways. Yes, the auto traffic becomes congested, as you would ex- pect, while the expanded bike lanes remain largely empty. All in pursuit of nudging the populace out of cars and onto their feet or pedals, whether they want to or not. So, Corning's transportation plan is replete with the oblig- atory salutations to "reduc- ing greenhouse gases and im- proving public health." This is where the whole idea goes off the rails, as I see it. I'm sure some technocrats can jigger computer models and estimate that, for every reduction in ve- hicle-miles driven in Corning's downtown, there will be a sta- tistical decline in lung-related problems, or a projected im- provement in people's health through increased activity. First, few people will ever, in a retirement-oriented town, actually take up lengthy walks for their necessities—nor will they risk injury or death on bi- cycles on busy streets as their equilibrium declines. If they desire improvements in their health, it can be easily done at home with inexpensive equip- ment or by biking or walking around their neighborhoods. Let the record show that so- called "greenhouse gas emis- sions" have absolutely zero ill effects on peoples lungs. You disagree? Then please show me how carbon dioxide is si- multaneously exhaled from our lungs but, when emit- ted into our air in minute amounts from vehicles and power production, it somehow becomes a pollutant, harming our health. Ludicrous. When literally anything and everything done by you or our society is related to "global warming/climate change/climate crisis/cli- mate disruption, then noth- ing is so related. When ev- erything—from heat to cold, rain to snow, wind, storms or drought—proves global warm- ing, nothing proves global warming. And yet, also from the Earth Day edition, "Gov. Brown's greenhouse-gas cuts scrutinized" provided a glimpse into the lunacy of his jihad against global warm- ing. "High-speed rail officials tinker with $64B plan" high- lights, without intending to, the fiscal foolishness that is supported by illusory cuts in greenhouse gases to come from Brown's bullet train to nowhere. The best postscript to Earth Day is "The Stuff Greens Keep Getting Wrong," by J.C. Carl- ton (posted at donpolson. blogspot.com), which item- izes almost two dozen predic- tions over the last 45 years that have (often spectacu- larly) failed to come to fru- ition. "Why do we listen to people who have always been wrong?" 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 Does Corning really need cars? If you want to keep hawking your nonexistent revolution, fine. But it's time to start hosing down your pie-eyed acolytes and focusing on the existential threat of Trump. Just get it done. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Sad but true. Take a look at our city park, equally in desperate need of TLC. Anderson city park is gorgeous, what's up with our parks in the county? Vicki Davis Stroud: On cleanup efforts at Dog Island Park and Samuel Ayers Park On the one hand; great job. On the other hand; it took 30people 4days to clean out this mess, and it was last done only one year ago. Here is a radical idea; don't let these illegal squatters move back in. Larry Cowan: On cleanup efforts at Dog Island Park and Samuel Ayers Park 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 U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa, 507Cannon House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202225-3076 YOUR OFFICIALS OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, April 26, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6