Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/694155
JohnEnsignoncesaid:"Ibelievethatvotingis the first act of building a community as well as building a country." I wonder if our voting pat- tern reflects very well on our community. TwoweeksagoIwroteabout the importance of voting if we want to honor our fallen whom we memorialized on May 30. Those we honored on that one day gave up their lives and their futures so that we could live in a democracy; nevertheless, the voter turnout in Tehama County on June 7 must be making those fallen wonder why they gave their lives. Look at our election results: in Corning less than one fifth of the registered voters approved an increase in the sales tax that will be imposed on all of those shopping in Corning; Corning has a reputation for being a very patriotic city; nevertheless, it did not vote like patriots would. The rest of the county should also be embarrassed. Slightly more than one sixth of the registered voters reelected Steve Chamblin to his seat on the Board of Supervisors (17.5 percent). The other opposed incum- bent, Candy Carlson, was re- elected with only 15.8 percent of registered voters affirming her. Even Burt Bundy who ran unopposed garnered only slightly less than one third of the registered voters in his district. Voter turnout was an insult to our veterans throughout the county. In spite of the turmoil in the presidential primary, only 38.9 percent of registered Re- publicans voted; the Democrats were slightly less shameful at 41.9 percent. The turnout in the District One Supervisorial race was only 29.9 percent of regis- tered voters; for District Two it was 29 percent, and for District 5, 31.9 percent. I am not criticizing the re- sults; I am criticizing our un- willingness to actually vote. How can we complain about government while two thirds of us sit at home on election day? Would things be any bet- ter in the mythical poverty state of Jefferson? In Orange County there is another example of voter indif- ference or inattention; a sitting judge who had been chastised for having sex with two differ- ent women in his chambers was reelected; he won hand- ily with over 55 percent of the votes cast. We take pride in ourselves as a community; an important as- pect of community is participa- tion. We are not much of a com- munity if we rely on less than one third of us to make impor- tant decisions, allowing one sixth of us plus one vote to de- cide our future. Depending on what road you use to enter Te- hama County, you may see a sign that welcomes you and proclaims "We Honor Veter- ans." The signs are misleading because we did not honor our veterans, particularly our fallen veterans on June 7, election day. We need to change those signs or change our behavior. FDR once said, "Nobody will ever deprive the American peo- ple of the right to vote except the American people them- selves and the only way they could do this is by not voting." I hope he was not making a forecast. Speaking of numbers.... After the terrible incident in Orlando the debate over gun control has been reignited. There was a recent statistic pub- lished in the Washington Post that caught my attention; more people have been killed in gun violence in the United States since 1968 through 2015 than in all of the wars since the Revo- lutionary War until the present combined. The average per year in that 48-year period is 31,500 per year, which is more than the total causalities during the entire Korean War. The total killed in the various U.S. wars was 1,396,733. It is hard to con- ceive our domestic gun deaths were greater than that. It is cer- tainly food for thought. JoeHarropisaretired educator with more than 30 years of service to the North State. He can be reached at DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net. JoeHarrop Tehama County's one-sixth 'majority' We are not much of a community if we rely on less than one third of us to make important decisions, allowing one sixth of us plus one vote to decide our future. Cartoonist's take So U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan thinks Donald Trump's comments about the Mexican her- itage of a federal judge hearing a civil case against him are an ex- ample of "textbook racism," but he won't rescind his endorsement of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee? And U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R- Texas, says he'll vote for Trump "but in terms of getting my en- dorsement, I don't endorse peo- ple that bash a judge based on his ethnic heritage." Sorry, Republicans. As the old saying goes, you can't be kind of pregnant. By backing Trump, you're giving your explicit endorsement to whatever nonsense comes tum- bling out of his candyflake orange head. And no amount of rhetorical contortions will get you out of that one. You can't say you didn't know what you were getting into when he scurrilously sug- gested that all undocumented im- migrants were rapists and mur- derers; when he suggested that the odious "Operation Wetback" might be a good model for deport- ing 11 million people; or when he proposed an unenforceable and fanciful ban on foreign Muslims. Yes, the nativist twaddle Trump spouted worked to your advantage when he was deploy- ing it against President Barack Obama or presumptive Demo- cratic nominee Hillary Clinton, herself a candidate who is, in many ways, as flawed as Trump himself — as a pair of just aw- ful headlines related to her email scandal drove home last week. But whatever angles of attack open to Republicans on Clinton — and there are plenty — fall to the wayside as the national party (fill- ing the space that should be oc- cupied by Trump's campaign, but is not because of its well-docu- mented barebones nature) does damage control. So why are senior Republi- cans infantilizing Trump by hold- ing onto the vain hope that he'll somehow mature and grow into a proper presidential candidate? "Using a prepared text last night and not attacking any other Americans was a good start," Sen- ate Majority Leader Mitch Mc- Connell, R-Ky., said of a recent Trump speech. "I think it's still time for him to act like a presi- dential candidate should be act- ing. So I haven't given up hope." If you're rejoicing that he got through one whole speech with- out managing to insult a reli- gious, racial or ethnic group, then you've set the bar so low that it's essentially meaningless. Liberated from his tele- prompter, Trump took to Twitter to respond to the tragic shooting at an Orlando gay club, and ended up patting himself on the back. "Appreciate the congrats for be- ing right on radical Islamic ter- rorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!" As columnist Michael Gerson observed, Republicans are be- tween a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they can't very well turn their backs on the man who won the majority of the votes from GOP primary voters. On the other, they're spending all their available free time (and political capital) putting out the Trumpian brush fires that erupt among key constituencies — such as Hispanics — every time their presumptive nominee gets too close to an open microphone or a device equipped with any sort of social media application. Some Republicans, notably U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ben Sasse of Ne- braska, as well as U.S. Rep. Char- lie Dent, of Pennsylvania, have re- membered that both principle and the long-term future of the party are more important than short-term political gains. But they are in the profound minority of their party as more Republicans jump aboard the Trump train. Republicans, with justifiable pride, cling to their mantle as "the Party of Lincoln," and, for many years, that legacy stood in marked contrast to the Democrats of the segregationist south. As fringe elements have risen to prominence, particularly since the emergence of the Tea Party movement in 2010, those days seem to be increasingly in the rearview mirror. And Trump is putting ever more distance between them. At the dawning of the Amer- ican war in Iraq, another great Republican, Colin Powell, fa- mously observed that if the United States broke Iraq, it would own the damage. It was famously referred to as "The Pottery Barn Rule." Republicans own Trump now. And they own whatever damage he'll wreak on both their party and the nation if he wins in November. An award-winning political journalist, Micek is the Opinion Editor and Political Columnist for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Follow him on Twitter @ ByJohnLMicek and email him at jmicek@pennlive.com. John Micek You are either with Donald Trump or against him Another view By Rick Jensen Pink Pistols, an LGBT self- defense organization, doesn't care what color you choose for your weapon so long as you choose one. The Orlando massacre reig- nited spokesperson Gwen Pat- ton's passion for gays to pro- tect themselves, inspiring her to reach out to any and every media outlet that would listen to her. The message is quite clear: arm yourself and train with a professional to deter anyone who threatens your life. The idea for the group ema- nated from a 2000 column by Jonathan Rauch, who used the phrase, "pink pistols," playing on the presumption that all gay men are limped-wristed and weak. Gwen explains that is not al- ways the case.She describes a man in her Philadelphia Pink Pistols chapter as big, muscular and a deadly shot. She tells the story of another Philadelphian being followed down the street and harassed by a gang of men wielding metal pipes, exhibiting behav- ior that would not be described as "brotherly love." The intended victim turned on his would-be attackers, aimed his .38 pistol at them in self-defense and the thugs ex- ited the scene in a cloud of dust. The gun is the equalizer. Meanwhile, liberal Demo- crats would rather ban gays from defending themselves. They don't care that crimes in which the criminals used guns dramatically increased when the gun bans went into effect in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. They don't care that overall crimes involving guns have ac- tually decreased over the past 43 years. The Pew Research Center, a favorite among political pro- gressives, published a study based on research by the Cent- ers for Disease Control show- ing there were seven homicides by firearm for every 100,000 Americans in 1973. That has now been reduced nearly fifty percent to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2013. The total firearm homicides in 2013 was 11,208. In the same year, over 30,000 people died because they lost their footing somewhere. Liberals don't care. They want to ban guns, especially the scary-looking ones they call "assault weapons." The most stunning move made by left-wing American pol- iticians happened this past week. Democrats like Ted Deutch of Florida, Diane Feinstein of California and Chuck Schumer of New York fought to pass a bill that would ban civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis (D- Ga.) and anyone named Robert Johnson from buying a gun. That's because those names, and nearly 50,000 more, are on the United State's No Fly List. CBS's "60 Minutes" found a dozen men named "Robert Johnson" denied travel or in- terrogated because, well, there was some guy named Robert Johnson who once threatened to blow up a Hindu temple in Canada. Liberal logic dictates eve- ryone named Robert Johnson should be banned from flying... and therefore banned from ex- ercising their 2nd Amendment rights to own a weapon. You see, these Democrats don't really care if innocent people or women protecting themselves from stalkers need a gun for protection. If they did, they wouldn't come up with such a ludicrous scheme as tying the inconclu- sive No Fly List to a constitu- tional right. This scheme is typical of Feinstein, Schumer and their crowd as it completely ignores your constitutional right of due process. They want you to be presumed guilty before spend- ing thousands of dollars to prove yourself innocent. Do they even know that air marshals, whose jobs exist to protect Americans from terror- ists, have been refused seats on planes because some of their names are on No-Fly Lists?Of course they do.They have well- paid staff researchers. One of my erudite radio lis- teners wisely suggested that if being on the No-Fly List is so important that it justifies ab- dication of your constitutional rights to due process and bear arms, then the No-Fly List should be tied to Article 2 of the Constitution, forbidding an- yone on the list or under crim- inal investigation by the FBI from running for president, aka Commander in Chief. Good call. In related news, Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan con- firmed Hillary Clinton's email scandal is, indeed, an FBI crim- inal investigation. Rick Jensen is Delaware's award-winning conservative talk show host on WDEL, streaming live on WDEL.com from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pacific time. Contact Rick at rick@ wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL. Liberals have the wrong response to gun violence GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIAL BOARD 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, 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS By John Micek Joe Harrop OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, June 18, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4